“Was it one of your clients?” Lillian asked. That would be bad. It could really throw Rose off, and she was just getting started.
“Thankfully, no. But I think I can fix it.” She jogged off, gathering her things. “Sorry,” she said, “but duty calls!”
“Wait!” Lillian yelled. “Take me with you!”
It was too late. Rose disappeared through the door as she yelled, “I’ll be back in a few minutes!”
Lucy placed a hand on Lillian’s shoulder. “Get up there. I’ll spot you.”
Lillian sighed, looking up. It was really happening.
“Get your foot in there,” Lucy insisted, looping the silk around Lillian’s foot.
“All right.” She’d have to wait to hear about the excitement later. There were silks to wrestle. “I’m going, I’m going.”
Chapter Sixteen
The gym was stifling and hot – too much sweat from too many bodies crowded together.
Rose hated gyms. She took a seat outside on a bench and breathed in the cool air before searching online for the video from the news story. It took her a minute to find it, but the mortifying title was quite specific. “SerenadeMe matched me with a CREEP!”
Rose cringed. Creeps were bound to pop up, but it didn’t make it any less painful. She clicked play and watched the forty second video, cringing the entire time. Then she watched it again.
The date was bad from start to finish. The guy showed up looking nothing like his pictures, so much so that the woman suspected he’d stolen them from a friend. Then he offered her a drink he’d “brought from home to save money,” took offense when she wouldn’t try it, and told her to stop being paranoid because it would be easy for him to track her car and figure out where she lived anyway.
For a date that lasted all of thirty minutes (the time it took the woman to pay her tab and sneak off to her car), it truly was awful.
Rose sat for a while, scrolling through the comments on the video and wondering what SerenadeMe could possibly do to prevent something like that from happening again. Panic buttons in the app? Facial recognition software for new users? Creep reports?
She vaguely remembered hearing about safety initiatives during her first week, but she couldn’t remember much of it. She had an idea, and it was building like a wave.
Surely Craig wouldn’t mind a quick call to brainstorm?
She dialed, figuring even if he answered, he was probably busy and –
“Rose. Hey!”
Not so busy, it seemed. “Hey Craig. Did you see the SerenadeMe creep story?”
He sighed. “Yeah. I heard about it yesterday. We’ve got security looking into this guy’s account. We’re not sure who he is yet – it looks like he used a stolen email. We’re not sure what his deal is.”
“Ah. Do you work with other apps to ban known nuisances?”
“You’d win the Nobel Peace Prize if you could get companies to get along like that,” he said with a laugh. “The board’s nervous about what’s going to happen when markets open on Monday, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Bad dates happen.”
Though she technically agreed with him about the inevitability of bad dates, she had to disagree. “But itisa big deal! Our app matched her with a weirdo! Told her he was her soulmate! Can you imagine how demoralizing that must be?”
“Er…” He let out a small laugh. “I guess I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I have a plan. Let me find her a match. We can waive the fee.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “But I appreciate you trying.”
“Why not? Is it the money?”
“No, I don’t care about that. I just – I think it’ll blow over on its own.”
Rose sighed. “Don’t you think this could be an opportunity? If we get it right, it’s free publicity.”
