Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“Have any of them been matched?” Jess asked, digging into the platters.
“Brandon, yeah,” he said. “He met his wife in the …” River looked up, thinking, and Jess marveled over his dark-lashed whiskey eyes all over again. “I guess it would be the third phase of beta testing. Maybe four years ago now. They were a Gold Match.”
“Wow.”
He nodded, dishing some food onto his own plate. “I know. He was the first, and it was a really big deal.” Nothing like this, though hung unsaid between them. “Then Tiffany—you met her at the Results Reveal Disaster,” he said with a wink, and Jess burst out laughing. “She’s our head data analyst—she met her wife, Yuna, when they matched. I believe they were an eighty-four, and Yuna moved here from Singapore to be with Tiff.”
“How many countries have you pulled samples from?”
He didn’t even have to think. “Fifty-seven.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Wiping his mouth with his napkin, River was a portrait of manners and class across the table from her. Did it make her a terrible person that she was surprised this date wasn’t awful? The conversation flowed, the silences were easy. She hadn’t spilled anything down her shirt, and he’d called her competent. It was the best date she’d had in seven years. “And everyone else has dated pretty broadly, if they’re single and interested.”
“Do you think it’s a bummer for any of them who haven’t had a Gold or higher match? Like, do you worry within the company it will become a competitive or—I guess, like, a status thing?”
He stared at her, and then blinked. “You ask really probing questions.”
Immediately, Jess was mortified. “I’m sorry. I’m just—” Ugh. “Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay, it’s very … thoughtful.”
Warmth spread in a prickly rush along her skin. “I want to know about it,” she admitted. “I want to know about you, and this, and what you think about all of it. I mean, we’re here right now. I said I would enter into this agreement genuinely.”
“I know,” he said, and seemed to be quietly appraising her with new eyes. “I appreciate it.”
“Will you?” she asked, feeling her heart hit her from the inside like a gloved fist.
“I don’t really know any other way to be.” He reached for his water and took a sip. “You asked me before whether this result was an inconvenience. It isn’t. It isn’t an inconvenience, but I admit I’m not sure what to think about it. If I take it seriously, it rearranges my entire life. If I don’t take it seriously, I’m discarding everything I’ve worked for.”
“Which, incidentally, also rearranges your life,” Jess said, laughing.
He laughed, too. “Exactly.”
“Well, in that case,” she said, “I can be on board for Project Be Genuine but Cautious.”
He wiped his hand on his napkin and reached across the table for a handshake. With her heartbeat in her ears, she took his hand, and hers felt weirdly small in his grasp.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I guess we get together when we’re free,” he said, and her brain took off spinning about how that would work, where this could even go.
And where she wanted it to go.
“Okay.”
“Otherwise, we wait for marching orders from Brandon about any public appearances.”
“Brandon Butkis,” Jess whispered, partly to break the tension of imagining forging a personal relationship with River after tonight and partly because—how could she not say it? “Come on, you have to admit it’s a great name.”
Rama dropped the bill off at their table and River thanked him before sliding the small leather folder into his lap. Never missing a beat, River delivered the next bit of information with an admirably straight face: “His wife’s last name is Seaman.”
Jess gasped. “No.”
Finally, a smile broke across his face. “Yes.”
“Did they hyphenate?” She leaned in. “Please tell me they hyphenated.”
River laughed. “They did not.”
Small footsteps stomped along the sidewalk, and the weight and rhythm registered in Jess’s brain only a split second before a pair of small arms were thrown around her neck. “Did you save me some duck?”
Jess peeked over her daughter’s head to deliver an apologetic-mortified glance at River. Holding her kid at arm’s length, Jess gave the most convincing Mom Face she could manage. “What are you still doing up, honey? You’re not supposed to be out here.”
“I could hear your laugh in the courtyard.”
“But what were you doing in the courtyard?”
“Beating Pops at checkers.”
“Pops?” Jess called out.
“She’s too fast,” Pops replied from behind the fence.
Juno giggled.
“I’ve got her,” Jess said back. She relented and kissed Juno’s forehead before turning her around to face River. Apparently this was happening. “Sorry for the interruption.”
He shook his head and smiled warmly at Juno. “Not at all.”
“Juno, this is Dr. Peña.”
Juno reached out, and he wrapped her tiny hand in his large one. “River,” he said, shaking gently. “You can call me River.”