Page 109 (1/2)

"I'm low on trust?" Jon asks and looks to Marina for an answer

"Oh, yes," Marina says and takes the questionnaire su tohurt so you only date – and I say ‘date’ loosely – women who are not interested in relationships Who only are interested in fun and excitement"

"When did you do this?" I ask, taking the questionnaire fro it over once more

Marina san work on the app We had the first run at our algorithm and I had you both do the test questionnaire Remember that first one? It matched the two of you up from all the other candidates we had in the system All the other iterations of the questionnaire have been just getting the technical bugs out of the app's algorith"

"What about the bad dates you fixed Jon and me up with?" I ask

"Yeah," Jon says "They were like every other woman I would normally date, but none of them were serious matches for me I wouldn't consider any of them as commitment material"

"They were the worst matches for both of you, but ones that you both would have chosen yourselves," Marina says to me, her expression pointed "Jon wasn’t into commitment so he looks for women who aren’t into it either He knows you are, so he picks wo around each other for five years because neither of you were ready"

"Why didn't you just tell us?"

"You wouldn't have gone for it You wouldn't have believed it because you had both convinced yourself you weren't the right lib about relationships, and he thought you were too serious I had to force you each to see how good the other person really is by putting you with so for you"

She s time

"You manipulative little…" I say, at a loss for an appropriate insult that also sho impressed I am, but I can't think of one "All these years you've been pushing us apart!"

"No, I haven't When you and Jon first becaether But you both held off, giving all these excuses why I knew neither of you were ready Iand they were enough to keep you fro to each other"

"You never once said you thought we should be together Ever"

"If those arguments could keep you apart, neither of you were ready," she said "But I knew When I developed the questionnaire and saw the results, I kneas real, but your fear of commitment meant you had to learn to trust each other The only way to do that was to force you two to face up to your feelings"

"You are so conniving…"