‘Two!’
‘One!’ Rory’s eyes met mine, the nerves suddenly disappearing and morphing into something more like elation. His eyes were bright, and I could see my own excitement reflected back at me. This might have been a team effort from over thirty people, but at its core, it was a dream concocted between the two of us in our university bedrooms.
‘We did it.’ I finally exhaled, resting my head on his shoulder.
Feeling his head lean on mine, I could imagine him smiling to himself. ‘Yep, we made an app.’
Everyone in the room had their phones out, checking the app store and typing in the word ‘Level’. Shouts went up almost collectively as it appeared: our little green logo, painstakingly designed (and redesigned and redesigned). Just one of the many elements that had taken us four years to get right. But it was real, and it was there. Life started now, and I couldn’t wait.
***
‘I was just telling the barmaid that my best friends are going to change the world,’ Maeve said as she came outside with a white wine spritzer for her and a pint for me, placing them on the wooden table in front of us and shimmying onto the bench, pulling her jacket closer to her body. It was that time of year, early spring, when it was definitely not warm enough for a beer garden yet, but everyone still gave it their best shot because the thought that pints in the sunshine might be just around the corner made the cold weather that bit easier to bear.
‘Does your world-changing best friend not deserve a pint?’ Rory leaned behind me to shoot her a look. ‘I’m dying of thirst over here.’
‘Dexter has everyone else’s.’ She pointed at our lead programmer, who was balancing five glasses in his hands.
‘Should I just change my job title to programmer/bartender?’ He looked down at Rory and me through the huge Nineties-style glasses he had always worn. ‘This balancing act was definitely not in my job description.’
We helped pass pints down the table, Rory clinking his against mine for an initial private cheers, just between us.
‘To the most organised, picky programmer I know.’
I snorted. ‘And to the messiest, most argumentative one I know.’
Ella held up her glass for the official toast. ‘To a year of incredibly hard work, and the brilliant team that we couldn’t have done it without.’ Rory held up his pint, and the rest of us reciprocated. Maeve planted a big drunken kiss on my cheek, putting her arms around Rory and me to pull us close.
‘I’m very proud of you guys. Extremely so.’
Tonight, she was wearing her favourite dangly earrings that looked like boobs, and a bright orange crop top. It was one of her tamer outfits. I wished I had the confidence to take full advantage of her bulging wardrobe in the room adjacent to mine, but I had a love affair with neutrals. Brown, beige, white, black. I had a system.
‘It’s a pity you’ll never get to be a guinea pig for Level.’ I grabbed her phone, gesturing to the missed call from Adrian, her long-distance boyfriend of two years. ‘It’s a symptom of my control-freak nature that I’m saddened by the fact we couldn’t be responsible for finding the love of your life.’
She grinned. ‘There are so many things that I could unpack there, but I’m off the clock.’
‘You’re right.’ I took a swig from my glass. ‘And trust me, we don’t have the time or the money to dig into that.’
Dexter interrupted the mini conversations going on down the table, calling out another live update from his phone. ‘One hundred downloads! And it’s only been’ – he checked the time – ‘one hour and thirteen minutes.’
I tried to tamp down the excitement that bubbled inside of me whenever someone checked the stats. We’d had some expectation that the app would get a good initial reception – our crowdfunding success had generated some publicity for us in the last couple of years – but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t just fizzle out after a few days. People might download the app, but would they actually use it? And more than that – would it actually work?
‘Level is on its way up.’ Harriet was the oldest, wisest, and chicest member of our team, least likely to ever need a dating app (although she did threaten a test run when her husband forgot to take the bins out), but one of the most enthusiastic about its success. She’d been in communications for over a decade; taking a chance on a start-up was an unnecessary risk. But she had twin daughters in primary school, and the thought of them as teenagers downloading unsafe apps was enough to swerve her career trajectory. ‘The hashtag “Level” is trending on Twitter.’
There was a whoop from somewhere at the bottom of the table.
‘Tell the story again.’ Maeve was stirring her spritzer with a bamboo straw that she never failed to pull from her bag. ‘The Level origin story.’
Rory grimaced. ‘It’s not a superhero.’
‘Not yet.’ Maeve stuck her tongue out at him. ‘And you’re lying if you say you haven’t pictured yourselves in Lycra.’ She turned to me. ‘If you can’t tell that story tonight, of all nights, when can you?’
She had a point. I relented, tucking my hair behind my ears and taking a big swig. ‘Fine. But if you get bored because you’ve already heard this a million times, it’s on you. Help me out, Ror?’
‘What? Sorry, I’m still stuck on picturing certain team members in Lycra …’
I shoved Rory, who was smirking at me.
He shoved me gently back. ‘I’m talking about Dexter, obviously. Anyway, let us begin.’
My cheeks warmed. ‘Okay, so it was six months into our fourth year, when we were in the middle of applying for our Masters. I’d been on a really bad date –’
Dexter interrupted. ‘How bad are we talking?’
‘Fifteen minutes into our date, he revealed that he’d expect his tea on the table when he got home from work. Just like his mum had always done.’
Maeve tutted, fiddling with a boob earring and psychoanalysing subconsciously.
‘We’d been talking for a week or so, about surface-level stuff, and there’d been no sign of his glaring misogyny and obvious mummy issues. It really annoyed me, how carried away I’d got believing that we were on the same level. When clearly, a week of conversations about dream holidays and favourite cocktails does not a connection make.’
‘She moped about it for a full week.’ Maeve flicked a droplet of condensation from the side of her wine glass in my direction.
It was true, I’d moped. But not because I’d thought that particular date was going to be the one. I’d never been close to finding the one, and I didn’t care. It was what that date had represented. How was anyone supposed to find someone that they genuinely connected with when the entire talking stage was an act in pretending that the reason the conversation was happening in the first place was not because of a shallow set of photos? How was I supposed to avoid fuckboys and subpar stretches of time in dive bars after work, if every conversation was meaningless and began because of how someone rated my face in a few snapshots? I said as much.
‘Hence the moping.’ Rory gestured to me in a sweeping motion. ‘She had a point, though. I was going through the same thing. Pointless dates, boring dates, dates where the other person wouldn’t stop staring at my eyebrows like I’d somehow tricked them in the photos.’
They really were one of his best features, but took people by surprise. Rory had incredibly bushy eyebrows. Tweezers cowered in fear.
‘So, after my week of moping …’ I let Rory finish.
