“No, but I did find a couple of bullshit hot takes,” Taylor said, picking up her phone and swiping her fingers across it. She held it face out. “This one believes the three of us can benefit from a life coach who can help us build up our self-esteem, because the only way a woman would allow herself to be taken in by a guy like Craig is if she secretly hates herself.”

“The fuck?” London said, grabbing the phone from Taylor. “Who in the hell is Andrea Krammer, and who in the hell asked her opinion?”

“She’s not the only ‘lifestyle blogger’ with an opinion about us,” Taylor said.

“That pisses me off so much.” Samiah pitched the tortilla chip she’d just grabbed back into the bowl. “Everyone has a platform to spew nonsense these days. They make assumptions based on what they think they know about a certain situation without knowing jack shit about what’s really going on. And you know the worst part? People believe them! Just because this Andrea person has made a name for herself online, she’s considered an expert by random people who will now judge all three of us.”

“Forget her,” London spat. “Why should we care what this Andrea person or anyone else has to say?”

Samiah nodded her agreement. She shouldn’t care. She knew this.

She’d come up against this crap ever since she told her high school guidance counselor that she wanted to study computer engineering. It didn’t matter that she’d had the grades to back it up, or that she once took apart and then reassembled an entire circuit board in science class. People made assumptions about her based on what they thought she was—a black girl from inside the Loop in Houston who couldn’t possibly have the capacity to understand how microprocessors and custom integrated semiconductors worked.

She hadn’t allowed Mr. Sharp to attach his own labels to her back in high school and she’d be damned if she would allow some Internet blogger to do it right now. This situation with Craig would not define her.

She authored her own narrative. No one else had the power to write it for her. It was time she take back control of her life story. If she was going to be known for something, let it be a kick-ass idea that helped to create some good in the world.

Like her app.

Thoughts of it had bugged her all week long, lurking around the edges of her brain. She’d become a pro at talking herself out of giving that long-held dream a passing thought. The fear of devoting precious resources to her app without a guarantee that it would be a success had stymied her for years.