My Favorite Half-Night Stand(25)
This is good. This feels safe.
Without overthinking, I click SUBMIT and head for class.
My Research Methods in Criminology course meets at the end of the day, and by four o’clock the students are a squirrely bunch. It can be a fascinating course, focusing on crime mapping and analysis, but it can also be tedious. Aside from a looming research project, never-ending lectures, and countless stats and procedures to memorize, the students themselves can be their own worst enemy.
Like most faculty members these days, I’m in constant competition with cell phones and laptops and all forms of social media for the attention of my class. Reid has explained that the ability to stay focused depends entirely on two neural processes: directing our attention to goal-related activities, and blocking out irrelevant distractions. Which I think in the simplest of terms means The goal is to graduate, so turn off your damn Instagram. It should be easy enough—but apparently there are days where even I am not immune.
With just five minutes left of my last class of the day, I hear a buzzing from inside the lectern. Everyone is mostly working, quietly cleaning up lecture notes and jotting down project timelines from the PowerPoint still on the screen behind me. When the buzzing comes a second time, I pause.
I’ve been mildly on edge since loading my new profile a few hours ago, ignoring most of the group chat messages and avoiding the coffee kiosk and the guys altogether. I realize they were right and my Millie profile really did suck. But what if it isn’t just the profile—it’s actually me—and even with a more genuine version of myself out there, I still don’t get any good matches? Am I even going to tell them about Catherine—whom I’ve nicknamed Cat, and whom I absolutely plan to make much more emotionally healthy than Millie, and who easily discusses things like feelings and fears and long-term goals?
Surely I can do that much, even if it’s anonymous.
Thankfully no one lingers after class and I’m able to jog-walk back to my office and solitude. It takes a moment for the app to load, but when it does, a red bubble with a number six appears on the screen. Six matches, and a couple of the guys have already requested access to see my profile. Just like that, a mixture of adrenaline and dread trickles into my bloodstream. I check the first one: an aspiring writer from San Francisco.
Pass. Writers are crazy.
The next is a pediatrician who recently moved to Santa Barbara. His bio is funny, his photo is great, and there’s no wedding ring or wife accidentally snapped in the background. I press yes and share my profile with him.
But I never make it to the rest.
I’m not prepared for the next photo that fills the screen.
You have a new match. Would you like to show Reid C. your profile?
It takes a second for this to sink in. I matched with Reid? Well, Catherine matched with Reid, but since her profile is more genuinely me than Millie’s was . . .
I debate just ignoring the notification, but come on, this is actually pretty funny. According to the match notification, Reid and I are 98 percent compatible. He will love this.
Decision made, I click ALLOW and type up a short message before I can change my mind. I guess the guys will find out about Catherine after all. Reid gets me like nobody else. A Monopoly joke? I mean, come on. It’s so obvious.
chapter six
reid
I wake to the standard barrage of late-night texts from Ed and Alex—this time, it’s a debate about best underrated comic run in the past couple decades. Ed is fiercely arguing in favor of Hawkeye, Squirrel Girl, and Fence. Alex is just as vehement that Thompson’s Hawkeye is just as good as the Fraction run, and that Ed is being a sexist pig. Millie tells them both to shut the fuck up around one in the morning, and then the thread devolves into a string of increasingly filthy gifs ending with a video of a man dressed as a horse having sex with a woman. My friends, everyone.
Without studying any of the clips too carefully, I reply, I’m so glad I passed out at eleven last night.
It’s early—my alarm hasn’t even gone off yet—and outside the sky is a hazy purple-blue. I’m on the very edge of falling back to sleep when I remember that I matched with another woman on IRL yesterday, and curiosity over whether I’ve got any new messages is a weird, anticipatory thrill that feels like a streak of caffeine into my bloodstream.
In fact, I have two new contacts. Two women, Catherine M., and Daisy D., have offered me access to their profiles.
There’s a weird, low clench in my stomach at the sight of Daisy’s photo: she’s twenty-three, blond, and absolutely stunning. I can tell her profile photo was taken on the craggy rocks at the edge of Ledbetter Beach. Her extended profile tells me that she’s a graduate student in education, originally from Texas. The algorithm connects us as an 82 percent match, but I’m willing to put the remaining 18 percent of incompatibility aside for the sake of what I’m seeing in her profile photo.
Her message is simple: Hi Reid! Your profile seems really nice. This is my first time doing this, so I’m not sure how it works, but I’d love to talk to you some more.
Catherine is a professor as well—and although she doesn’t specify which school, I don’t know anyone with that name in the UCSB bio departments, so this doesn’t set off any alarm bells.
Hi Reid, her message begins. Apparently, we’re a 98% match (With odds like that we should take our wallets to Vegas or play Monopoly, I’m good with either).