Esther rolled her eyes. "He's talking about that stupid Cinder app."
With a deep breath for patience, I went back to work behind the espresso machine.
Three cappuccinos and two hazelnut mochas later, the man was still swiping.
"Enough!" I grabbed the phone.
That got his attention. "What's with the hostility?"
"I'm not hostile!" A few heads turned, and I lowered my voice. "Okay, maybe I'm a
little hostile. This swipe-to-select coupling, and all these amped-up matches-it's like
romance on Red Eyes. In my view, love should not be a sport."
"Not a sport, Clare, a game . . ." Snatching back his phone, Matt waved me closer.
"Check this out-"
Like a little boy with a new toy, he showed off the screen. The word Cinder crackled in
red letters, tongues of flame licking the edges. Below the logo were colorful animations-
a glass slipper, fluttering fairy, and pulsing pumpkin-floating as innocently as Disney
props.
Matt's finger stroked the tiny pumpkin. It jiggled and bounced, then grew and grew.
Fairy dust fell from the digital sky, and the pumpkin transformed into a royal carriage
with a purple banner reading-
TODAY'S CINDER-ELLAS!
Thumbnail images of a dozen women flew out the carriage door and formed a grid
pattern. Matt tapped one of them, and a profile opened, showing an attrac tive woman
with a forced coquettish smile, bangs arranged over one eye with great determination.
"I just swiped this Ella into my Pumpkin Pot. If she swipes my profile right by
midnight tomorrow, I'll get a Tinkerbell notification."