Two weeks later, and I’ve given up trying to hide the heartache. Why try to put on a brave face when I could wallow in despair instead?

“McKenna, pick up!” Maggie’s voice comes through my speakerphone. “I know you’re there. Come on, you’re probably watching bad holiday movies and eating your body weight in pad thai.”

I raise my head amid the blankets and takeout boxes littering my sofa. She knows me too well.

“McKenna . . .” She urges.

I waver, and then sink back into the sofa. I don’t feel like talking to anyone. Okay, I haven’t felt like talking to anyone since the party, but I have the weekend off. I’m allowed to engage in maximum wallowing.

My stomach grumbles. I check the boxes within reach, but they’re all empty now except for smears of sauce. There’s a box with some pizza still in the fridge, I think. But how long ago did I order that pizza? How old is too old?

Hmmm.

A banging comes from my door.

“Open up, Mac!” Jill’s voice calls. “We know you’re in there, and we know you need to get out.”

“Please, McKenna,” Tessa follows up. “We just want to know you’re okay.”

The worry in her voice makes me feel guilty enough to get me onto my feet. I trudge over to the door and unlock it.

“I’m fine,” I say as I open it. “I’m just . . . relaxing.”

They both march in. Jill looks me up and down. I’m suddenly hyper-aware of my rumpled bathrobe and all the crumbs sticking to it. My hair that I haven’t combed, let alone washed, in about five days. Uh, maybe I have let things slide a little too far.

“All right,” Tessa says briskly. “Consider this a broken heart intervention. You need some air and some company.”

I start to mumble a protest, but Jill claps her hands. “No excuses! Get yourself into the shower and into some clothes, and then you’re coming with us. You’ve got more holiday shopping to finish anyway, don’t you?”

I do. So I trudge into the bathroom and emerge a little while later in jeans and a slouchy sweatshirt. Jill doesn’t look much more impressed by that choice of outfit, but she and Tessa bundle me into my winter coat and out the door.

Normally I hate the holiday bustle in the last week before Christmas. But wandering through the department store crowd with my friends on either side of me, I actually start to feel a little normal. There are sparkly Christmas trees and big red bows and carols playing. The world doesn’t stop just because some guy was an asshole.

“I’m really sorry,” Tessa says, putting an arm around me.

“What for?”

She grimaces. “I encouraged you to go for it with Jack. I had no idea he’d jerk you around like that.”

“He’s a jerk, plain and simple,” Jill cuts in. “It’s a shame looks like that get wasted on guys like that so often.”

“How has it been at work?” Tessa asks.

I shrug. “The good news is, everything’s moving ahead at full speed with launching Perfect Match. Even with our new goal of recruiting a hundred thousand users for the new year. It’s really going as well as I could have hoped.”

“That’s great!” Jill squeezes my arm, but I know they’re waiting for a different sort of commentary.

“I hardly see Jack around the office anyway. He’s been traveling a lot. And I’ve been working from home. Honestly, I know more about what he’s been doing recently from the gossip columns than firsthand.”

The gossip columns, which have been all full of remarks about the various events he’s been showing off his perfect match at. By all appearances, he’s now been hooking up with Claudia longer than he was officially hooking up with me. Which I guess goes to show how not-real that “relationship” was.

“At least the most important things are on track,” Tessa comforts me. “You can’t blame yourself for how he acted. That’s obviously all on him.”

“Yeah,” I say. But her comment gnaws at me as we stop at the bakery counter to grab a snack. We sit down at one of the cramped tables, nibbling cupcakes that aren’t half as good as Maggie’s. It’s better to let the truth come out, isn’t it?

“The worst part is, I don’t know what this says about my whole approach with the app,” I admit. “If you go by my algorithm, Jack was the worst possible match for me. But I totally fell for him. And I’m furious at him. I’m telling people I know all the answers, but I don’t really have a clue.”

“No,” Jill says firmly. “No way. You can’t think that. It was a fluke. These things happen. And it happened because he was putting on an act, pretending he was the kind of guy you’d want to get with. Just forget him.”

“You still haven’t really tried Perfect Match for yourself, have you?” Tessa asks. “Except for that date for the magazine article—what was his name? Peter? Have you talked to him at all since then?”

I pick at the cake. “Not really. He texted me last week just to say what a great time he had, and that he’d be up for a second date if I decided I was, but I didn’t answer.”

“Why not?” Jill demands. “You don’t have any reason to turn him down now.”

“Yeah.” Tessa nods. “You told him you weren’t interested because you were all wrapped up in Jack, right? But Jack’s out of the picture now. You never gave Peter a real chance.”

I pause. Maybe they’re right. I was so busy thinking about Jack that I couldn’t give Peter my full attention. But . . . “I still feel so awful. I’m not exactly in a dating mood.”

“Mood, schmood,” Jill says. “Text that guy right now and ask him to dinner. You’ve got to get back on the horse, girl. See all those other fish in the sea.”

“Any more mixed metaphors for me?”

She grins. “I’m just saying. There’s a whole world of guys out there who will appreciate you more than Jack Callahan.”

“I don’t know . . .” I’m still reluctant.

Tessa grabs my purse. She fishes out my phone. “Hey!” I protest, but she’s already skimming through my messages.

“Here he is! Let’s see. Hey, Peter. Sorry for the late response. Free tonight?”

“Tessa!”

She grins and hands the phone back to me, with the message already sent. I groan. An answer pops up a moment later.

Great timing, my plans just fell through, Peter has written. Did you have something in mind? And my spirits lift, just a little.

He wants to see me again. And, God, he was so nice, and smart, and pretty damn good-looking too. I bite my lip.

“Come on, Mac,” Jill says. “I know you’ve got it in you.”

“All right, all right.” I take a deep breath.

How does dinner and a movie sound?

---

“So then on the very last day, my sister goes up to the front of the bus and says, ‘I know this might sound really bizarre, but I’d really like to get to know you better. Can we get a coffee sometime?’ And the driver says, ‘I was hoping you were going to say something like that.’ And I was Man of Honor in their wedding three years ago.” Peter grins. “So true love on the public transit can actually happen outside the movies too.”

“They should make that story into a rom com,” I say, waving my fork at him. “It’s got all the elements.”

“Hmm.” Peter leans back in his chair. We’ve both just polished off some excellent pasta in the little bistro he recommended near the movie theater. “I wonder who they’d get to star in it. I don’t think my sister would be happy unless she’s played by Keira Knightley or Emily Blunt. She’s always wished she was born British.”

“The magic of movies can arrange anything,” I say with a smile. I am not going to think about a certain British person whose voice was charming me over dinner just a few weeks ago. Nope, no way, goodbye. Especially not when Peter is being quite charming himself.

“Should we get dessert?” he asks as the waiter heads our way.

I pat my stomach. “I don’t know how much more deliciousness I can fit in there.”

His grin turns sly. “What if we split something? I’ll pick up your slack if I need to. The chocolate fudge cake here is amazing.”

“You make a compelling argument. All right, let’s do it.”

The cake is as amazing as promised. Our forks clink against each other as we steal bites. And I try very, very hard not to remember sharing food with another guy in the dark. In a cozy ocean-side bistro. In silky bathrobes in his kitchen after—

Yeah. I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about that.

When my stomach is achingly full, we pull on our coats and amble down the street outside. The night is crisp but not painfully chilly. The city lights glow around us. A perfect romantic evening. A lot like the one when Jack playfully got down on bended knee and—

No. Shut up, brain. I wish I could scrub all those memories of Jack right out of it. They clearly didn’t mean anything to him.

“So what is it that you like about romantic comedies?” Peter says. “I’d have thought that when you study real relationships, it might be hard to get into the fictional version. Kind of like how history majors get peeved by all the inaccuracies in period dramas.”

“I don’t know,” I say, and then realize that’s not true. “I guess I like the sense of order to it. The people who belong together end up together in the end. There’s always a way to overcome any misunderstanding. And they’re all about compatibility. Showing how some matches don’t work and others do. Maybe it’s romanticized, but I think that’s still a good message for people to remember.”

“That makes sense. Although they do seem to focus on ‘opposites attract’ more than any other principle.”

“Well, there’s some truth to that. And it makes for more entertaining conflicts.” I smile at him. “They’ve still got to be a good story. No one wants to watch two people being blissfully happy at each other for two hours.”

“Point.” He smiles back and reaches to take my hand. His fingers close around mine, warm and gentle—and my mind is slipping back to other hands, other smiles, yet again. I close my eyes for a second when we hit a red light.

“Is everything all right, McKenna?” Peter asks. “I mean, I’m having a great time, don’t get me wrong, but I get the impression your mind is somewhere else.”

“I—” I start, and my throat closes up. I have to swallow before I can keep going. This isn’t fair to him. It really isn’t. I’ve got to get over Jack, absolutely, but this isn’t the way to do it. “I’m really sorry. I thought this would be a good idea. And I have really enjoyed going out with you! You’re great. Maybe if it’d been another time . . .”

I trail off. Peter waits patiently. God, he is too sweet. If there’s any justice in the universe, he’ll find his real perfect match tomorrow. “I’m getting over someone who hurt me a lot,” I admit. “I thought I was ready to get out and date again, but it looks like I was wrong. Again, I’m really sorry.”

He looks rueful. “That’s OK. Some things aren’t meant to be. Whoever that guy was, he should be kicking himself.”

That does make a satisfying image. I manage to smile again. “Thank you. Um, I can say that we’ve got a whole bunch of new people signing up for the app every day, so if you want to take another look for someone who might really be meant to be . . .”

He laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind. You take care of yourself, all right?”

---

Peter’s kindness sticks with me all the way back to my apartment. Handsome, funny, and gracious? He really was a perfect match. But when I walk inside to the stacks of food delivery boxes, my heart sinks again. I sit down amid the mess and pick up my laptop.

Warren set up a membership ticker only we can see. In the Perfect Match admin interface, the number is sitting at 89,756. So close to our big goal. It slides up one, and another one, and another one right before my eyes. I wait for the thrill of victory to hit me, but all I feel is empty.

I told Peter to go back to the app and keep searching, but can I really say that’s going to help him find the right person? I thought I had love all figured out, down to the decimal point.

Now I wonder, is this whole app a lie?