“Your roommates let me in,” he says, a little more duh in his voice than I’d prefer. “I didn’t want to bother you, since you had quite an intense night. So I thought I’d just work until you woke up.” He says all this while still typing, only slightly slower than before. “But I wanted to catch you as soon as you did, so I thought I’d work here.”

I pad across the room and take the spot next to him. “Work on what?”

“This,” he says, turning the laptop toward me. I examine the code. The style is probably less elegant than what I would write, but it’s easy enough to read.

“What exactly did you do...?”

The front door swings open before I can finish my thought, and none other than Braden Hart saunters in, carrying a tray of coffees and a box of doughnuts.

“We formalized it,” he says, holding out a latte to me with that stupid, cute smile plastered across his stupid face.

Chapter Eight

Roberto

“What does that even mean?” Sara looks at me and runs a hand through her blond hair, which is still slightly disheveled. Even with sleep in her eyes and last night’s makeup on her face, she looks beautiful.

She turns to Braden, who is still holding the coffee out to her. She rolls her eyes but takes it.

“Well,” I say. “Last night, after Braden and I walked you back from the frat house, we got to talking about all that social status stuff you and I discussed at the party and—”

“It’s a dating app!” Braden’s eyes glow. “But instead of being for creeps and losers who can’t get dates in the real world—”

“Braden!” Sara looks appalled.

I shake my head and reach for my laptop, hoping that if I show her more of the code she will be less appalled by the way he is pitching it.

“Sorry.” He shrugs. “Instead of being like that, the selling point is that the most desirable people in the area are on it.”

“How?”

“Well, Sara, I’m glad you asked.” He sounds like he’s hosting an infomercial. “Like on Tinder, users of this app can swipe yes or no for the profiles of other users, but unlike Tinder, the rating doesn’t just affect whether they match with the person, but contributes to an overall score, which determines someone’s overall rating—platinum, gold, silver, or unrated.”

“I don’t know.” Sara wrinkles her nose. “This sounds like an asshole thing to do. Rate humans like that. And it’s misogynistic to award one girl ‘platinum’ status over another because, what, more strangers think she’s hot?”