Chapter One
This Is Not My Story
The phone woke me at 6:47 AM.
Not the alarm—I’d turned that off hours ago, somewhere around the third glass of wine and the decision to eat an entire sleeve of Oreos while watching a documentary about cults. No, this was the buzzing. The relentless, bone-deep, possibly-haunted buzzing that had started last night at Cassie’s house and hadn’t stopped since.
I cracked one eye open. Tequila—sixteen pounds of orange judgment wrapped in fur—sat on my chest, staring at me with the expression of a cat who had watched me make every bad decision of my adult life and was frankly unsurprised by this latest development.
“Don’t,” I told him.
He blinked slowly. You did this to yourself.
“I didn’t do ANYTHING. Cassie’s magic rock touched my phone. That’s not my fault.”
You went to Sunday dinner. You brought your phone. You sat next to the cursed crystal. You’re also out of the good wet food, by the way. I’ve been eating the salmon pâté like a peasant.
“The salmon pâté is six dollars a can.”
It tastes like compromise.
I loved my cat. I also sometimes wanted to punt him into the sun.
I reached for my phone, which was vibrating so hard it had migrated six inches across the nightstand and was now threatening to fall behind the bed, where it would join the graveyard of hair ties, chapsticks, and that book about mindfulness I’d been meaning to read for three years.
The screen glowed with notifications. I squinted at the number.
347 unread messages.
Three hundred and forty-seven.
I’d gone to bed with maybe 120 matches—already insane, already impossible, already the kind of thing that made me want to throw my phone into a lake and become a nun. Now the app had apparently decided that sleep was for people who didn’t have romantic destinies to fulfill.
I thumbed it open with the resignation of someone walking into a staff meeting they’d already mentally checked out of.
The matches scrolled. And scrolled. And kept scrolling.
Men I’d dated. Men I’d almost dated. Men I’d made eye contact with at a bar in 2007 and never seen again. There was a guy I was pretty sure I’d only ever spoken to on AIM, back when that was a thing people did. His profile said he was “looking for his soulmate” and his photo was definitely from the 90s.
“This isn’t happening.”
Tequila yawned, showing me every one of his teeth. It’s happening. Also, your breath is a war crime.
“Thank you for that.”
I’m here to help.
I tried to close the app. It reopened.
I tried to delete it. A cheerful popup appeared: Tinder cannot be removed at this time. Your matches are waiting!
“They can keep waiting.” I held down the power button. The screen went black. I exhaled.
Three seconds later, the phone turned itself back on. With a ding.
348 new matches.
I sat up so fast Tequila tumbled off my chest with an indignant yowl. “This is insane. This is—Cassie. I need to call Cassie.”
She’s probably asleep. Like normal people. At 6:47 in the morning.
“She has a talking cat and a Scottish handyman living in her house. She lost the right to ‘normal’ weeks ago.”
The phone buzzed. 349. 350.
I threw it across the room. It hit the wall, bounced off my laundry pile—the one I’d been meaning to fold since last Tuesday—and landed face-up on the carpet, screen glowing, still buzzing.
Tequila looked at the phone. Looked at me. Looked at the phone again.
That seems like a you problem.
“Everything is a me problem. That’s the problem.”
That’s the spirit. Now feed me.
