AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
By his third day delivering the mail, Nate had established a rhythm that allowed him to do mental work for his real job: developing First Sight, a dating app. Mail delivery was repetitive. Boring might be a better word, but that was a good thing. The West Houston suburb where he had picked up a temporary route had no mailboxes. Instead he had to park at the end of the neighborhood and walk to each house with a messenger bag, putting mail in old-fashioned slots in the door. Nate did his best thinking while moving, so this temp job gave his mind plenty of time to be active.
As he walked toward up to traditional two-story brick home, Nate’s mind visualized lines of code. The beta users found part of the First Sight interface clunky, so he needed to rework the design. During the first hour, he had come up with a potential solution for the operational efficiencies with their servers. Zane and Todd would be shocked when he came back to the office later with actual solutions. He pushed a stack of envelopes through the slot on a red door with a wreath of mini pumpkins, a little premature for late September. The weather was glorious for walking: almost ninety degrees and sunny outside. It was still hurricane season and one was brewing in the Gulf, but hopefully wouldn’t come their way.
The guys thought he was crazy for taking another job so close to launch. “We’ve got three weeks before we present at Tech Start,” Zane had shouted. Nate didn’t mind getting yelled at. He was used to his friend’s fiery passion. It was one of the strengths that he brought to their team.
Todd had looked more concerned than angry. “You don’t think this is going to…stress you out?”
“You mean make me have a panic attack?” Neither Zane or Todd had been able to meet his eyes when he asked this. “It’s okay to say it. I’ll be fine. Trust me, this job will take a few hours every afternoon. It’s not a full route. And I’ll be working on app stuff in my head while I walk. I think best in motion. You’ll see.”
Neither one of them looked convinced, but they would be when he came in today able to fix the operational issues that had threatened to overload the servers. Ever since his last week of college, when Nate had a panic attack and had been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Zane and Todd had struggled to understand. Not that they weren’t supportive, but they thought every little thing might send Nate over the edge.
They’d been tentative about coming on board with the First Sight to begin with, which was understandable. Nate missed their senior project presentation because he was hospitalized after a panic attack. They still got an A and Nate was still able to graduate after missing the last week of classes, but their trust in him was shaken.
The three of them had great synergy still, but he could feel their concern, sometimes more than he would like. The app was a sure thing, filling a gap in a dating market saturated with hook-up and swipe-something apps. He convinced them ultimately with money: the possibility—probability, he liked to say—that they would make millions selling the app and its patented algorithm. Plus, salaries for both of them. He said the money came from an investor, but really Nate had staked almost every bit of the money his Nana left him when she died two years before. Todd and Zane came on board, but he knew they still worried Nate would crack.
It had been over four years since the diagnosis. Nate spent months in cognitive behavior therapy, which helped immensely. There were certain daily habits he had grown used to that made an enormous impact: bullet journaling, exercise, breathing exercises, and some mindset work. He also took daily medication and had Xanax in the case of acute times of stress.
He hadn’t suffered from a panic attack or even an anxiety attack since, though there had been a few close calls. For the most part, Nate felt like he could do daily life again—even better now that he understood why his mind worked the way it did and how to manage it. Some of the things that contributed to his anxiety—attention to even the smallest detail, the habit of playing out worst-case scenarios—actually made Nate better at what he did.
A dog barked as Nate approached the next house. The gate looked closed, but he had pepper spray on his belt. Not that he could ever imagine pepper-spraying a dog, but it was part of the training. Apparently, it wasn’t just a cliché that dogs hated mailmen. Hopefully he wouldn’t ever have to find out. Three more weeks until they would launch at the Tech Start Conference, hopefully get multiple million-dollar offers for the app, and then he wouldn’t need to deliver the mail or do anything if he didn’t want to. Of course, he’d probably finish out the full six-week temp position. Quitting would feel too much like breaking the rules.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and Nate paused on the sidewalk to check his notifications. He felt a familiar thrill seeing that it was a message on the app.
Sewzy:How much longer do we have to wait, again?
Sewzy:Call me a desperate woman, but I’m really excited to meet you.
Sewzy:Oh gosh. I TOTALLY sound desperate.
Sewzy:If you break up with me, this would be the first time I’ve had a guy break up with me before actually meeting me.
Sewzy:Is there some kind of prize for that?
Nate couldn’t help grinning. It was his reaction every time he saw a message from her on the app. Pausing under the shade of a live oak, he thought about his reply.
The First Sight app was totally unique in that it matched people up by an algorithm he and Todd built. Using information from a questionnaire the users filled out, the algorithm suggested compatibility matches based on personality type, goals, history, and more. But the app didn’t allow for you to meet or even see a picture of the other user until you’d talked on the app for four weeks. Then their photo would be unlocked and users could set up a date.
So far in the beta testing pool, 75% of people matched by the algorithm were still dating after actually meeting. They had set up a test group of beta users who got to choose their own matches, still without seeing a photo. Of that group, only 10% continued to date after meeting. The algorithm worked. It was almost scary how well.
Nate’s fingers hovered over the screen of his phone. As always, his excitement messaging Sewzy was tempered with guilt. Unlike the beta users, he had seen her picture and knew exactly who she was. Only she had no idea that he did. And if she knew, he wasn’t sure that she would still be talking to him.
When they were starting the beta testing, Nate had suggested that all three of them test the app. “We’ll sign up and let the algorithm work.”
“Um, hello. I have a girlfriend,” Todd had said.
“I need a girlfriend, but maybe not right now when we’re about to launch an app,” Zane said.
“We won’t actually date,” Nate had said. “We’ll see who the algorithm picks for us. We’ve got access to the data, so we can check out the photos as well as their full information. Just to see if we actually feel like the matches could work for us.”
But when Nate looked at the matches the algorithm picked for him, he had been shocked to see a picture of Colby. He hadn’t seen her in four years, but she looked the same. Her long dark hair was a little longer, but she had the same bright eyes and the one dimple in her cheek when she smiled. That dimple kept him distracted through the whole semester of the Cultural Geography class they had both been stuck in—two seniors missing the same prerequisite for graduation. He spent every class that semester trying to make that dimple appear with whispered conversations and shared notes passed back and forth. He even scribbled silly captions to the photos in his textbook, to the point that he never would have been able to sell it back. It was worth it to see her smile or to hear her laugh.
Nate almost couldn’t believe that it was her. He hadn’t talked with her after that semester, but assumed she moved back home to Virginia after graduating from Rice. But her address was a P.O. Box in Houston. And she was still single? He had trouble wrapping his brain around any of it.
Colby was beautiful, but she was also bright and fun. She had a quirky sense of humor and liked a lot of the same science fiction and fantasy stuff that Nate did. Though he was always trying to get her to smile, she could make him light up without even trying. Being around her made Nate happier than he had ever been.
Seeing her on the app was like fate with a twist of tech. Fate that she was somehow chosen to be a random beta tester through a series of Facebook ads they had run. Tech that the algorithm had matched them together. It was perfect.
