Feedback appreciated. Any comments/notes/observations. First time trying to write anything in a long time.

“Like, I’m intrigued, but the stains on the shirt and the shower curtain are throwing me off”, my best friend says in response to a screenshot I sent her of Matt, 27’s Hinge profile. The photo shows a handsome brunette, posing in a mirror selfie against the backdrop of his bathroom, wearing a brown T-shirt with the words “Electric Cheetah” printed above a photo of a cheetah on it. I reply a few minutes later, “omg my coworker just got fired”, and Matt, 27, is never spoken of again.

That is, until a year later, when I’m back on Hinge and see his somewhat familiar face pop up in my likes. The stained T-shirt and off-kilter shower curtain are no longer on display, but I can still recall Matt, 28. He’s ruggedly handsome and has chosen to show this off through a selection of photos on his profile that show him hiking, walking down the aisle as a groomsman at a wedding, and holding an adorable yellow lab. It also included a list of his simple pleasures: sunlight, The Rolling Stones, crosswords, Steinbeck, Renoir, flowers, slow mornings, and iced coffees. Big if true.

He liked a bikini picture of me, emerging out of the Mediterranean ocean onto the side ladder of a boat, hair slicked back with salt water, skin glistening under the sun. I send him a like back, and we match. 6:03 PM. I wait as long as I can, sixteen whole minutes, and at 6:19 PM, filled with anticipation, I scrounge through his profile for a prompt to respond to. Under a picture of a lumberjack-like man outfitted in full hiking gear with a backdrop of Patagonian mountains reads “My greatest strength: 2 house margaritas at my favorite Tex-Mex spot, bench press, or my turnaround jumper. Pick your poison.” Good enough. With some earnest curiosity, I type, “What’s a turnaround jumper?” and hit send.

Five hours and forty-four minutes later, 12:03 AM, my phone lights up. It’s a link to a YouTube video titled “Skill Breakdown of Michael Jordan’s Turnaround Fade-Away”, followed by a message that just says “Required”. I spend a few seconds deciding whether or not to click the link. What if he’s a catfish, and this video is some sort of phishing attempt for my information? What if it’s one of those videos where a car is driving down the road with no sound, and 10 seconds in, a monstrous face pops up at full volume and screams at the watcher? The man presented in front of me was aesthetically perfect, with perfectly workshopped simple interests, showing interest in me. This was not to say that I’m not worthy of an attractive man’s attention; I’ve just been ignored by too many perfect men on dating apps before to believe beyond reasonable doubt that this man was real and could be as into the idea of me as I am of him.

I click into the video link, and a 6-year-old YouTube video pops up. In the video is a man who looks to be in his 30s, standing in his driveway with a basketball hoop behind him, as he walks his audience through what a turnaround jumper is and the steps required to accomplish one. “What made Michael Jordan’s turnaround fadeaway SO good is that he could go either way”, he shares. “He’d go over his right shoulder or his left, and the defender had no idea which way he was going. So he would force the defender to commit to one way, and then go the other way to counter their movement so that he’d get the separation he needed.” I watch the whole 2-minute and 10-second video. Informative. It starts to feel like an inside joke between the two of us, a minuscule window into his life, but one which gives me just enough breathing room to start imagining the type of guy he is. Someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. I reopen his profile. If I were to create a man from scratch, this is what he’d look like. I think of what to respond, and find myself fighting too hard to try to sound interesting to someone whose response does not indicate it received the same amount of thought. He’s probably sent this link to any girl who’s ever asked him this same question. This realization hits me hard enough to push me back into reality, and I decide that a YouTube link and an eight-letter word sent at midnight on a Friday do not make up a worthy response. Matt, 28, is once again forgotten about.

Another year later and still on Hinge, during an “on” point of the vicious on/off cycle I have with the app, I see Matt, now 29. I mentally debate if he’s hot enough to send a first like to after a lackluster conversation when he was still Matt, 28. He is. A decision I came to after spending too many minutes doing a critical analysis of every photo attached to his profile. Or maybe the decision had already been made, and I just needed an excuse for myself to spend those too many minutes looking at the only five photos I have of him. I ultimately decide that I’m fine with the worst outcome here being a strange (but sexy) man from a dating app potentially finding me desperate, so I send the like. I continue to methodically check my phone, pretending only to myself that I’m checking text notifications from my friends when I know beyond doubt that that is a lie. The next morning, as I’m eating the worst bagel I’ve ever had, Matt’s name pops up on my phone. This time, it seems he’s done the scrounging. In response to my prompt that read “My biggest weakness: a high Lexile reading score.”, Matt, 29, says, “I don’t want to brag, but my Lexile score as a child was outstanding”. This is where our love story begins.