Page 10 of Minted

“Did you tell him they have a match every fourteen minutes?” Seren asks in the background.

“You told Seren?”

“We’re both excited for you,” Seren says. “We’ve been wanting you to find someone for years.”

Oh, good. I’m a charity case, now. “Listen, I appreciate your concern, but—”

“Or,” Seren says, “they have this one site called Millionaire Match, and you can find someone else who has a lot of money, too. They even verify—”

“That’s my biggest problem,” I say. “Half the girls I’ve liked turned out to only like me because I’m rich.”

“Well, that’s an easy fix,” Dave says. “I’m filling out a profile for you right now.”

“Dave, seriously?”

“They ask for income information. You can just say you only make two hundred grand a year.”

“Why two hundred?” I hate that I’m curious, but now I’m wondering why that’s the number he chose.

“Statistically speaking, women are way more likely to respond if you make more than a hundred and fifty, which makes sense. People want to have a decent quality of life.”

“Then I should put twenty grand,” I say. “That’ll weed out the gold-diggers.”

“And the good people too,” Seren says. “If you want people who just want to get laid, then do that.”

I groan. “I hate this. This is stupid. Surely you can see that.”

“I guess we’ll find out. . .” Dave says. “Bentley 1256. Because your account. . .” I can hear his fingers clicking on the keys while he hums the Jeopardy song. He finally quits. “Is live!”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Nope. I’ll text you the login info.” There’s a bing in the background. “Hey, you’ve already been matched!”

Two more bings.

“Wow, you’ve been matched three times already!”

I hear Seren clap and squeal. “This is so exciting.”

“Hey, shut off my account,” I say. “You two are weirdos.”

“But I like watching it,” Seren says. “This is so fun.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about how excited you are to see him get matched,” Dave says. “Do you wish you were on there?”

“Hey, guys, shut it off!” I’m not entirely sure they’re listening, but Dave does text me the information after I hang up. He shouldn’t really know my email address and password, but when you’ve been friends with someone long enough, at some point you wind up sharing so they can look something up, and then they remember that your password is Igneous1234, for the poor dog you named while you were obsessed with rocks as a kid.

I sigh.

And then I log in to my shiny, new eHarmony account with a lot of trepidation. “What in the world?”

When I bring up the list of people it has matched me with—eleven already—I can’t help noticing that one of them is someone I know in real life. Someone I’ve managed to royally tick off, even. This algorithm is clearly garbage.

Because match number six is Barbara.

4

Barbara

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