The Blind Date

Riley still looks a little worried. “Are you sure he’s okay on your rug? And what if he gets on your couch?”

“It’s fine. I’m sure,” I assure her, pulling her in for a kiss. “And if he’d rather, I bought him a dog bed. It’s over there” —I point to the fluffy, furry pouf the saleswoman assured me was top-tier for dogs— “next to the toy basket, and his water and food bowl are right there. I think I got the right food. It’s in the cabinet, so you can check it.” I point to the basket and then bowls on the rubberized mat in the kitchen.

I think I did pretty well making my apartment a place where Raffy can feel at home, and the saleswoman who was helping me said my dog was a lucky animal. I’d corrected her that it’s my girlfriend’s dog, and she’d said, ‘Lucky woman then.’ But when I look back at Riley, she’s got tears in her eyes, though she’s trying to hide them with her hands.

“What’s wrong, baby?” I ask, gathering her in my arms.

“You did all this for Raffy?” she mumbles into her fists. I nod, suddenly thinking I might’ve gone overboard. I mean, maybe it’s a lot, but the websites I looked at said new places can be anxiety-producing for animals, and having comfort items can make them settle more easily. That’s all I wanted to do . . . make Raffy feel secure so that Riley would be comfortable here too.

An instant later, she throws her arms around my neck and gives me the sloppiest kiss ever. I love it.

“That’s the sweetest thing ever!”

They’re tears of happiness, salty bits of her joy spilling out of her heart and down her face. I smile, wanting to lick her cheeks to taste that happiness, but I settle for swiping her tears away with a gentle thumb.

Riley goes off in a whirlwind of bliss. “Look, Raffy,” she tells him as she shows him the dog bowls, “these are for you.” Raffy sniffs the bowls, but he must not be hungry. Hopefully, it’s that and not that I bought the wrong food. Riley picks him up and carries him over to the bed, placing him in the middle of the pouf. “This is for you too.” She picks up a squeaky bone and lays it at his feet. He sniffs it once, licks it, and then starts gnawing on it like it wronged him in some way. The more it squeaks, the more he attacks it. The bone is a major hit.

“Tell Noah thank you, Raffy,” Riley tells the dog expectantly.

He looks up from the bone and says, “Thank you.” Well, in Riley’s head he must, because she praises him with pats and loving whispers, but of course, he didn’t say anything because he’s a dog. Not even a bark of appreciation.

But Riley’s appreciation is all I need.

“I know it’s a little early, but are you ready for dinner? I worked straight through today, never stopping for lunch. The last thing I had was my protein smoothie after my run and then copious amounts of coffee all day. I don’t even want to discuss the amount of caffeine running through my veins right now.”

“Sure,” Riley says agreeably, following me into the kitchen. “Why’d you work through lunch? Everything okay?”

We work together in a dance, pulling out the Thai takeout I ordered and putting it on plates to reheat in the microwave.

“Yes and no. River and I have been busting ass, working with the whole team to get the stats up. Downloads and usage aren’t what we hoped they’d be. They’re fine, keeping up with our conservative predictions, but only by the skin of our teeth, and they’re definitely not on the upward trajectory we’d actually hoped for. The plateau is killing us.”

“Meeting expectations is good, though. It means your planning was accurate. If you were way over or under, it’d reflect that you didn’t do your market analysis correctly. And we both know that would never happen,” she teases, knowing me too well. “I mean, I know you want to have higher stats, obviously, but BlindDate is doing well, right?”

“Currently, I’d agree. But there’s a launch period of huge growth followed by stagnation. Standard market introduction excitement. The concern is that if we’re only touching at the numbers with the momentum of the launch, the sustainability won’t be there. And if people aren’t joining every day, existing members leave the app because they don’t get new matches.”

I’m not telling her anything she doesn’t already know. Riley is all too aware of how marketing and social media work, but apps are a different creature, and even a single one-star review can tank a year’s worth of work.

We carry our warmed plates of chicken Pad Thai to the dining table and sit down. Raffy eyes us, hoping to be called over for his own plate of dinner, but this is too spicy for him. He’ll get no table scraps tonight, but I might’ve also bought him a few more blueberry muffin biscuit treats. Just in case I need to bribe him a bit.