Page 17 of Meet Cute Reboot

Madison rolls her eyes and then tosses me the towel. “Your turn.”

I wash my hands, pull up a chair by Madison, and grab a handful of beans, quickly snapping off the stems but leaving the opposite ends intact.

Aunt Suzanne pulls up a third chair and snatches a handful of beans. She’s still in her scrubs. The weary set of her eyes tells me she had another long shift. If the hospital keeps running her ragged, they’re going to lose a good nurse.

“Don’t underestimate Cassie,” Madison says continuing the remodeling discussion. “She lit up the greater Charleston broadcast area Friday morning. Did you watch it?”

Nana dumps Mom’s diced potatoes into boiling water. “I saw Luke Curtis’s handsome photo and you sitting there like you’d never met him before.”

My face warms.

“Did you two plan it?” Madison asks.

“Why would I plan anything with Luke?” I pick up my pace, finding relief from each snap.

“So, his profile just happened to come up? You had no idea?”

“None whatsoever.”

Madison raises an eyebrow at me, joined by her upper lip—an incredulous expression. “He just happened to be in your database, and his profile just happened to come up while you were on live television pitching your application.”

“That man always was an opportunist,” Aunt Suzanne says.

I grit my teeth and take a deep breath. “It was just a coincidence. Weird, huh? He said one of his investor friends at Excel invited him to beta test the app.”

Mom turns around and leans against the counter, wiping her hands on a towel before crossing her arms. “You two always did have a lot in common. Maybe Cupid is on to something.”

“Cupid definitelyisn’ton to something,” I reply.

“You don’t think?” Mom says. “I thought you programmed her to churn out soulmates.”

“Well—”

“I still find it odd that his profile justhappenedto come up,” Madison says, cutting me off. She throws a handful of beans into the colander.

“It wasn’t my favorite moment,” I say.

Madison shrugs. “You played it off well.”

“How did your date go?” Mom asks.

As far as I know, no one in the room has an Instagram account, so they were spared that trainwreck. Madison’s weird about sharing her personal life on the internet. Mom, Nana, and Aunt Suzanne just post Wordle scores on Facebook.

Nana walks over, grabs the colander, and starts rinsing the beans. “You and Luke went on a date?”

“I thought you said you watched the entire news segment,” Aunt Suzanne says.

“Granny needed help in the bathroom. I may have missed a minute or two.”

Madison catches Nana up. “She and Luke went on a date on Friday and livestreamed it. They’re going to be on I107 on Monday to tell us whether they hit it off or not.”

Nana props her lower back with her hand and looks at me like I just grew horns. “You livestreamed your date?”

“Not all of it,” I say.

“So, you went on a date, live, with the guy who cheated on you, but you were pretending you didn’t know him. And this all happened on Instagram?”

“Yep.” I snap my last green bean and drop it onto my pile.