My Favorite Hal-Night Stand - Christina Lauren Page 0,29
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).
This brief, easy introduction makes me laugh—and there’s something so genuinely easygoing about it that feels immediately appealing. But it’s hard to get an instinctive, physical response to her: her profile picture is only of her shoulder and neck; her head is turned away, allowing just a glimpse of her jaw. Since it’s a black-and-white photo, I can’t even tell what color her hair is.
Alex’s voice rings in response: Only ugly chicks go for the “artful” profile pics.
I swear he’s ruining us all one by one.
I’m in the lab all morning with Ed watching a demo of a new imaging system, but he’s clearly been holding out on me: as soon as we get to lunch, he pulls out his phone and shows Millie the photo of a woman he matched with last night. I watch him for a lingering beat, aware again that he seems genuinely invested in all of this.