“The ‘best thing ever,’ remember?” Sara says.

“Oh.” I feel a smile spread across my face. “I saw two sorority girls talking about the app, and I swear to God I thought one of them was going to cry. How amazing is that?”

“Braden, you can’t celebrate a girl crying.” Her nose scrunches in a look I’m sure is meant to intimidate me but is way too cute to work.

There’s the Sara I know.

Roberto laughs, almost tumbling over the arm of the couch he is sitting on.

“Okay, okay.” I take a seat, setting my bag on the ground and flipping my chair so I can sit backward. “That’s fair, but she didn’t actually shed any tears. Anyway, you’re missing the point—people are getting into our app.”

“That is kind of cool,” Sara says. A smile plays on her lips. And I don’t know if it’s all in my head, but I think she might be slightly less antagonistic toward me. And not just in that pitying way of before. I smile back and for a moment my gaze lingers on her.

An email alert sounds. We reach for our iPhones simultaneously, but it was me who got the message.

“USC!” I say, standing up as I read the email. “That’s ten!”

Perfect. Another big school that ranks high on US News & World Report. Not to mention one full of rich kids in the middle of Hollywood, greedy for this sort of status.

I look up from my phone and turn to Sara. “How long will it take you to get things ready for that?”

She looks at Robbie. “We already bought the extra server space. But we need to make sure the algorithm is ready to scale.”

Robbie types a few things before looking up. “We are adding a way to sort your general location, so people here won’t see profiles of people at, like, USC or wherever.”

“All right, nice.” I nod. “We also should put out a press release when we do the next launch.” The wheels in my head start turning, already trying to perfect the way we present this next move.

“Sure,” Sara says.

Robbie shrugs, eyes still locked on his screen.

I wish they understood how important this part is. Otherwise it would just be us three and their CS study group on the damn thing.

“They’ll want to know numbers too,” I say.

“Two thousand users,” Sara says. “As of this morning.”

“No,” I reply. “That’s not how we should say it.”

“Why?” Sara asks. “That’s what Michael asked us.”

I cringe at the mention of the meeting. But I’m glad that she at least used a neutral tone.

“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “But we shouldn’t say that figure.”

“Why?” Sara says.

Robbie is plugged into whatever he is doing, this discussion apparently not even warranting his attention.