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Superhero costume? She took another glance at her button-down. It was blue and fitted and didn’t seem much like a costume of any kind, much less a superhero one.
But she suddenly felt much better about her choice of clothes. The next time she was feeling like being a woman in science was an uphill battle, she would remember that Jason had called her the smartest person in the room, and she would straighten her shoulders and keep marching.
“Don’t worry, though,” he said, clearly unware of the great change in her perspective that he’d just made. “I’m man enough to stand close to the sun.”
“Follow me,” the hostess said as she grabbed two menus and gestured at them. They followed her to the back room.
“The waitress will be by soon to tell you the specials.”
“Thanks,” Marsie said a little breathlessly. Jason had called her a superhero. He’d said that someone had to be man enough to stand close to the sun when they were around her.
In one casual conversation, he’d given her more sincere compliments than Richard had in their years of dating. She peeked over her menu at him. The hems of his yellow polo shirt were tight around his biceps, and a small touch of hair poked out from around the collar, where the top button was undone. His carefully maintained scruff looked a little rougher at the end of the day, but his eyes were still a clear, sparkling blue.
And she felt like she was seeing him for the first time.
“So how was your date?” He asked the question with the same breezy casualness with which he’d told her she was amazing. The same breezy casualness that he used for everything.
He might think she was the smartest person in the room, but they were here to talk about other people they’d been on dates with.
And smart wasn’t the same thing as attractive or can’t live without.
And Jason wasn’t her type anyway.
“Oh,” she said, pasting cheer in her voice while slapping a smile on her face. “My date was good. Trevor was his name. He got a near perfect score on my algorithm. Not a fluke. He seemed as good in person as on the screen.”
Jason’s head whipped up. “Algorithm? I think I know what an algorithm is, but I also think I’ve got to be wrong, because I don’t know how you use one dating.”
Marsie flushed. “I’ve got an equation where I put a score on all the men I’m interested in online. All the scores are weighted based on what I think is important. The score determines if I’ll email someone or go on a date.”
He put down his menu. “Do you score all the men you see?”
She didn’t understand what he meant. “If I’ve gone on a date with them, they have a score.”
“No, I mean, when you get a list of ‘men chosen just for you’ or browsing around at photos or whatever, do you score every man you see. That sounds tiring.”
“Oh. No.” She bit her lip. “I score all the men the site’s algorithm says I should look at. But if I’m just poking around on the site, I only score the ones that look attractive in the first place.” She stared at her menu without seeing any of the words. “It’s a flaw in the system. Attractiveness isn’t even weighted highly in my algorithm. So I shouldn’t be weeding men out of the pool on it. But I do.”
His mouth dropped open, but the appearance of the waitress to take their order stopped whatever he was going to say. They ordered some appetizers and a pitcher of beer to share.
“So what I was going to say is…your flaw in the system isn’t that you’re weeding men out of the pool, or however it was you said that. It’s that you have a system in the first place. Love and romance isn’t about math, it’s a gut feeling. Sparks.”
“Sparks?”
“Yeah. You know, that buzz in your blood. Excitement. Interest. I’m not saying that the angels will sing when you meet the right person, but you’ll know.”
“But what if those sparks come with someone completely unsuitable?”
He shrugged. “What’s unsuitable? Is the person a drug dealer? Twenty years younger than you?”
“No, but you don’t share the same interests. You don’t have the same education or you don’t understand the other person’s job. There are base things you have to have in common or no amount of sparks will keep that relationship going for longer than a year. Maybe two. Long enough for it to change your life, and probably not for the better.”
