Matched

ed a man…

Marina, my best friend from grade school, is working on that for me.

She's a crackerjack coder, expert with algorithms and statistics and is working on a dating app that she plans on releasing this month, if the beta goes well.

Maybe, just maybe, she can find me a man.

It's been over a year since I split with my ex-boyfriend Blaine, who asked me to come with him to Manhattan and help him with his own startup.

When I asked him what I'd be coming as – a girlfriend or a business partner – he said the wrong thing.

"Whatever."

Not exactly the resounding endorsement of the depth of his feelings for me.

I couldn’t just pull out of Pacifica and move to Manhattan as a whatever… So, I cried my eyes out and said goodbye to him.

One day, when Pacifica is big enough and my shares are worth enough, I'll cash them in and move to Manhattan on my own. I have ambition. I'm not hoping that Blaine and I will re-unite or anything, but the future is not carved in stone and you can never know what lies ahead.

Jon and I are at the TechCrunch Disrupt convention together waiting for our session.

"Ready?" Jon asks, standing up from his chair in the room outside the venue and slipping his laptop into a briefcase.

"As ready as I'll ever be." I grab my own bag and follow him to the main conference room, getting high-fives from some of the techies who are standing outside the door looking in.

We stand at the back of the room at catch the last few moments of the session before ours. Being claustrophobic, I need to see a clear exit or I get the heebie jeebies. But with Jon by my side, who was a paratrooper when over in Afghanistan, I'm brave.

He puts a hand behind my back and propels me forward, up to the front of the auditorium so I can climb the stairs to the stage to give our presentation.

It's wonderful what we have together. We won’t let anything as crass as sex get in the way of our beautiful relationship.

Now, if only I didn't want him so badly, I might be able to get through this next hour and the coming presentation without imagining us together one more time…

Marina has got to come through with a match for me.

I need a man – badly.

Chapter 2

JON

We fist bump before she walks up the stairs and onto the stage and she gives me that smile – the smile that says, "I got this, Jon. Watch me blow their minds."

That's my girl – India Louise Ward. Girl wonder at twenty-five years old. BS (Engineering) Stanford. MBA Stanford. My CTO – Chief Technology Officer. She's also my communications lead for the company. She's our public face, because why not put your best face forward and India is definitely Pacifica's best face.

She's fucking beautiful.

We’re at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference and India is the speaker, talking about our experiences as a startup and how we went from my parent's garage in Pacifica, CA to a hundred-million tech business in Palo Alto. I'd be up there instead of India but I love seeing the audience when they realize that besides being smoking hot, she's smart.

Really smart.

Super smart. You can see it in her eyes. They're hazel with flecks of green and violet behind thick lashes. There's just so much going on behind them, besides being pretty.

Not that I'm obsessed with her eyes, mind you. But I'm a man. I notice those things.

Back to India – you have to be whip-smart to be successful in this business and she's a fucking rocket scientist. She's one of the few women in a position of power in the aerospace industry.

Pride fills me as I watch her step up to the podium. There's polite applause, and the faces I can see in the crowd are all interested. They've heard about the girl wonder with the flaky name at Pacifica Technology, Inc. Now they can see her in person, and she's an eyeful.