The Soulmate Equation

Lisa smiled genuinely. “Only three times.”

“And?” Jess’s heart started slamming against her breastbone. Her brain imagined a different slot machine now, one with 3,500 rows, and a single pull that lined up nearly every single cherry.

For the first time since she walked into the room, Lisa let the hypercompetent surfer-executive façade drop. She looked young, and hopeful, and awestruck: “That’s what gives me the most confidence in this company. Yes, three is a low number, but the couples who’ve tested above ninety are the three couples who’ve scored the highest on emotional stability, communication and collaboration, and sexual satisfaction. They’re Diamond Matches. Do we want more of those? Of course. I mean, the DNADuo has been tested on one hundred and forty thousand people and fully validated in nearly twenty thousand couples. That is an enormous study for a start-up of this size, but there are at least five million people on Hinge and an estimated fifty million people on Tinder. Until we can get the whole world of data in our server, we won’t know how many Diamond Matches are really out there.”

FOUR

FIZZY WAS CALLING.

Fizzy never called.

So even though it was 8:13, and Jess was supposed to have Juno at school in two minutes, and had yet to feed her child or have a single sip of coffee, and had a meeting downtown at 9:30, and was barely dressed, she answered.

“You never call,” Jess said.

“This app is insane,” Fizzy said.

Juno ran out, still in her pajamas. “I’m ready for breakfast!”

Tilting her phone away from her mouth, Jess whispered, “You need to wear actual clothing, my love.”

Her daughter groaned as she stomped back to her bedroom.

“I’m—” Fizzy said, and then paused. “Okay, good point. This shirt is pretty transparent.” Another pause. “Wait, how did you know what I’m wearing?”

“I was talking to my kid,” Jess said, laughing. “What is this about the app being insane? What app?”

“I’ve gotten twenty-three matches since my DNADuo results came in this morning.”

Jess did the quick mental math—it’d only been two days since their visit to the site. Either GeneticAlly was insanely efficient, or it wasn’t running many samples these days. She had to admit, begrudgingly, that any company that invested in a unique neural network was taking its data seriously.

“Twenty-three?” She poured a cup of coffee, and Pigeon wound her way between Jess’s legs, purring. Jess made the mistake of briefly looking down at the cat, and her cup overfilled, pooling coffee on the countertop. Cursing, she leaned over to open the front door, letting Pigeon out, then dug in a drawer for a dish towel. “That’s a lot of soulmates.”

“I cast a pretty wide net,” Fizzy agreed. “I said anything above a score of thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”

“It’s fun to just see what happens when you date guys with no expectations.”

Coffee dripped from the counter onto the floor, soaking through Jess’s lucky socks. “Goddammit.”

“It’s just a potentially terrible date, not plastic surgery.”

“I wasn’t goddammitting you, I spilled coffee.”

“Think of it as a character study,” Fizzy waxed on. “What happens when you put two completely incompatible people together? Will they beat the odds? Or come out fighting … each other?” She paused, and Jess imagined her friend reaching for her notebook. A weird alert sounded in the background. “Twenty-four!”

Juno wandered into the kitchen dressed for school, but her hair remained a bird’s nest. “Mama, can I have a smoothie?”

“Baby, go brush your hair.”

“I assume you were talking to Juno again,” Fizzy said distractedly.

“Can I, Mama?”

“I was,” Jess said to Fizzy, and then, “and yes, Junebug, I’ll make one, but go brush your hair and your teeth, too, please.” Back in the kitchen, Jess glanced at the clock and groaned. She pulled a basket of strawberries from the fridge.

“Okay,” Fizzy said, “I have a lunch date today with Aiden B., a Base Match with a score of thirteen, and a dinner date tomorrow with Antonio R., also a Base Match, twenty-one.”

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not adventurous.”

“Mom,” Juno called from the bathroom. “Remember, don’t let Pigeon out because the gardener is here today!”

Jess whirled around and stared out the front window, across the cat-less courtyard, and down the path to the open gate.

“Fizz, I’ve gotta jet.”

ONE EXPLODED BLENDER, one four-block cat chase, two changes of clothes (Jess’s), one impossibly double-knotted sneaker (Juno’s), and one tardy drop-off later, Juno was at school and Jess was finally hustling her ass downtown. A huge meeting with Jennings Grocery that morning, two potential new clients in the afternoon, and then a school meeting at six. Marathon, but doable. But why was it the nature of the universe that on the day Jess was already running behind, there was an accident on the 5, a detour at her exit, and not a single parking space to be found? She passed row after row of luxury sedans and was beginning to wonder whether every rich person in San Diego was in the Gaslamp at the same time, but then, huzzah: her prayers were answered by a flash of reverse lights to her right. She rolled forward, flipping on her blinker. Relief pumped adrenaline through her bloodstream like there was an actual prize for parking, rather than an intense meeting with some clients she was fairly sure wanted to cherry-pick their data to match their annual projections.