Page 14 of The Rules

A message from Sonya. Attached was another picture from the wedding—Josh dipping Cat dramatically on the dance floor, Shawn and Minnie singing into their beer bottles. She caught a glimpse of herself in the background, sitting alone at the bar, chatting with the old man pouring shots, and groaned.

She clicked the attachment away and went back to her logo but her web browser icon taunted her. “Oh, fine.” It wouldn’t hurt to just look at the home page. She knew a shoddy website when she saw one. If it looked at all cheesy, she’d forget the whole thing and pride herself on her savvy consumerism.

Unfortunately, when she typed the site into her search bar, it was stunning. The design was young and modern. The testimonials sounded real instead of like scripted sales pitches. The entire aesthetic said: Trust us. We’re way better at this than you.

Damn it. Okay, she’d just click on one.

“I was at the point in my life where all of my friends were married off. The single life was great while it lasted, but I started to want more. Eight Dates matched me with eight really fun dates, and one of them happened to be exactly who I’d been looking for. Now I have someone to enjoy life with instead of sitting on the sidelines.”

Okay, the first half of that could have been lifted from her diary. She clicked another.

“I’ve never believed in the concept of soulmates. My friend suggested this site to help weed out all of the terrible dates I was meeting out in town. I didn’t have any expectations, but through Eight Dates To Your Soulmate, I met my fiancé and I couldn’t be happier to leave the single life behind for true love.”

She looked up from her laptop suspiciously. Did Benji hack into this website and write testimonials to mimic her life exactly? It wouldn’t be outside of his skill set. She navigated to the sign-up page, just to explore. There were about a million questions, which she supposed meant the process was thorough. Way more thorough than her own vetting process, if she were being honest.

She scrolled through pages of pictures of happy, smiling couples until she got to a section called “The Rules” and her cynic’s heart laughed. This could not be for real.

She was still chuckling when Benji came back in with their food and anI caught youlook on his face.

“I knew it,” he taunted.

“Don’t get excited. Did you read the fine print here?”

“What fine print?”

She narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t just a dating site where they match you up by twenty-one unique personality traits and you swipe right—”

“I think you’re confusing a couple of different apps, baby girl.”

“Anyway, there are rules. It’s like a dating boot camp.”

Benji turned away and unpacked his take out bag. “Of course there are rules,” he said, his eyes on his fries. “There are always controls in an experiment, and if they’re promising your soulmate in that short of time, they have to control the environment.”

“So you have read it.”

“I skimmed it.”

She pursed her lips. “Does Ronnie know that?”

“Oh my God. Stop. We looked at it together. We do have single friends, you know.” He pointed at her with a fry. “Case in point.”

“Well, then you know it clearly states that you aren’t allowed to sleep with any of your matches until you’ve gone out with all of them.”

“Yes.”

Dani scoffed. “And you thought I’d be interested in that kind of restriction? How exactly are you supposed to know which one is your soulmate if you’re not sleeping with them?”

“This is your problem, Dani.” He fell into his chair with his milkshake and rolled over to her desk. “Listen to what you just said. Now think about what you’ve told me time and again. ‘He’s between jobs, but the sex is great,’ or ‘Sure, he was rude to the waiter, but oh my God his tongue.”

“Those sentences sound vaguely familiar, but—”

“No buts. You deserve the whole package. Someone who is worth your time inandout of the bedroom. This way you make a clear decision. You’re not dickmatized into thinking you should cut a guy some slack on his behavior because he’s got other talents.”

“Okay, well there’s another problem.”

Benji huffed out a sigh. “What is it?”

“With my schedule, it could take months to go on eight dates!”

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