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Number 5
By the 4th or 5th time Eva slid a thumb down her iPhone screen, nervous sweat left a trail of magnified pixels over her Outlook inbox as it refreshed. Another blurry male figure entered her peripheral vision, drawing her eyes from her phone past a hissing La Marzocco Linea to the open glass doors of Sightglass Coffee, again turning out not to be her date. Two days earlier, Alex, who she was expecting, had picked out the industrial-chic designed two-story café as the spot for their first date, and she had since been anticipating it with an unusual sense of optimism that manifested in behavioral symptoms her therapist might have labeled anxiety. It was her fifth first date in six months and the first that showed any real potential of living up to the exhaustive list of traits for an ideal partner she had rattled off to Mia, her best friend who suggested she try this new dating app, HeartSync.
It wasn’t unusual for an exhausted Mia to throw a monkey wrench into the high-speed gears of Eva’s overthinking mind in the form of a spontaneous idea, often preceded by her favorite exclamations: “Jesus fucking Christ” or “for the love of fuck,” Eva’s personal favorite. Mia and Eva’s favorite late-night topic had been their respective love lives ever since Mia confided in Eva about the against-company-policy love affair she was having with one of the executives at QuantiFI, the fintech company where they first became friends six years ago.