I looked up. “Want to help? I’m back on the apps.” Quinn set his beer down and clapped his hands. Quinn didn’t date much. He’d been on and off with his partner, Sam, for seven years now, since we were sophomores in college. Right then they were off, had been off for the past six months or so. I knew it would only be so long until they got back together; they rarely dated other people. It was like they were actually meant for each other.

But he loved to live vicariously through me. Loved to vet and interrogate all the guys who had come home with me over the years, commenting on their clothes, their hair, their smell, their faces, forcing me to tell every minute detail about the sex, the morning after, whether they snuggled me up close at night. Whether they followed my instructions in bed, asked what I wanted, needed.

So I wasn’t surprised when he plopped back down on the couch, grabbed my phone away from me and began to swipe.

“All these people have liked you?” he asked, eyes roving over the screen. I nodded. “Damn, Vera, you haven’t been on this app in ages, have you? You have like fifty likes.” I nodded again. I hadn’t gone out with anyone in a few months, mostly because of new responsibilities at work. It wasn’t even like I felt incapacitated by those responsibilities; I just had no wish to spread my enthusiasm for work thin. Dating forced me to spread it thin, and if I were being honest, the whole process of dating made me utterly exhausted.

But now I had a handle on everything. I was ready to start anew, begin the process yet again like every other mad straight woman always assuming the next man will be different. And I was bored. I hate that most of all, that I was bored. My whole life in pieces because I didn’t buy a good enough vibrator.

“So you get to ‘like’ them back? And that’s a match?”

“Yes. If you gave me my phone, I could show you.” But it was no use; he was already at it. “You know, we have different tastes. You keep swiping no on people I think are cute.”

But Quinn kept the phone. “Babe, I have better taste than you. Just trust me.” And I did.

In a few minutes he passed back my phone. He’d only “liked” three people back: a tall, built guy with too many selfies. A dweeby-looking dude with excellent education credentials, but barely any neck.

And Him. Tom Newburn. Older, the oldest end of the spectrum I’d set. Thirty-seven—ten years older than I was then. Square jaw. Slicked back, dark hair. Shapely lips. One child. Liberal.