It sounds like I’m interviewing him for a job, which in a way, I am. But had I known the conversation was going to be like forcefully wringing out a damp rag, just hoping to squeeze out something semidecent, I would have never invited him to join me at the wedding. In fact, I likely wouldn’t have gone through with a date, of any kind, at all. Conversation skills rank high on my list of preferred qualities in a mate. Looks like he’s the exception to the rule that attorneys are good linguists, because my app sure as shit didn’t predict this fail.

So how does my software work, then? Well, it’s all about compatibility. My algorithm is programmed to know what I like and what I’m looking for in the long term. So to see if a guy is a match, I comb through his online profiles, enter the facts I find out about him, and generate a report that indicates how likely he is to be my future husband or how likely we would be to get a divorce, for example. One of the most helpful stats is how likely we are to go on a second date. I’ve determined that anyone scoring above 70 percent means that chances are good we’d go out again. And, well, a second date is the first step to marriage. You get the point. Anyone below a 70, I ignore and move on. Chad pulled a 74, which is a solid C if you’re using a high school grading system. Not stellar, but certainly passable with room for improvement.

As it’s turning out, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

“Huh? I’m not in real estate,” he says with a confused look on his face.

“Oh, Monica said you were an attorney at Laird & Hutchinson?”

“Well, yes, that’s the name of our firm. The Laird side is real estate. But they acquired Hutchinson a couple years ago, and that’s the side of the practice I work on.”

“What kind of law is Hutchinson?”

“We’re the ‘Life’s too short, get a divorce!’ guys. You’ve probably seen a few of our company’s billboards.”

Chad slides his business card my way, and as soon as I see the logo, I picture those billboards slathered all over the bus stop benches down Laurel Canyon Drive and feel physically ill. Not only because he’s in the business of making divorce seem cheeky, but also because I’m wondering what other things I might have missed or gotten wrong about Chad.

“Wait. So have you ever been divorced?” The question pops off my tongue involuntarily. As soon as the words come out, I remember he reserves the right to ask me the same question in return and immediately regret posing it. I’m not ready to explain the demise of my first marriage.

“Me? Nah. Never married.”

Luckily, a server reappears to take our dinner order. But let it be known that if Chad had asked, I would have explained that I didn’t give up on my life partner because I was frustrated he failed to load a dishwasher in any sort of methodical way. I didn’t just get bored and say “screw it,” chalking the whole thing up as just a starter marriage (google it, this is a thing now). In fact, if anyone abruptly left anyone, he abandoned me out of nowhere.