How to Hack a Heartbreak Read online

“Wow.” I was shocked. Not because Ray’s reputation was clear, but because of the way Vanessa looked right now: totally lovestruck. “He is a great guy.”

  “Yeah.” She took another swig of wine, not bothering to wipe the resulting dribble from her chin. “You were right about him.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

  “If he moved out of Bensonhurst, I would totally consider dating him.”

  Vanessa may have been lovestruck, but she was still Vanessa.

  “I suppose it is less than ideal that he’s still living with his mother,” I said.

  “It’s bullshit.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I mean, he’s pushing thirty. And I’ve discovered that being a building super pays surprisingly well, so it’s not like he can’t afford to move out on his own. Or in with a roommate. Or anywhere that isn’t under his mother’s roof.”

  “Have you ever asked him why he lives there?”

  “To ‘save money.’” She rolled her eyes, using sarcastic air quotes, as if saving money was a ridiculous notion. “He’s waiting until he gets married to move out. By then, he hopes to have enough for a down payment on a house. Good luck in this market, am I right?”

  “Well, that’s kind of...cute, I guess. In an old-school way.”

  “It’s kind of stupid,” she muttered, scowling into her wine bottle.

  “He’s being responsible. Though I do think it’s important to live with someone before you marry them.”

  Her face flushed pink, the furrow deepening between her brows.

  “My point is,” I continued, “if this is the only thing keeping you from pursuing a relationship with Ray, maybe don’t let it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe dive in and start dating him, anyway. He can’t live with his mother forever. And, you know, he could change his mind.”

  “Men don’t change their minds.” Her hands tightened around the neck of the bottle, so hard that her knuckles turned white. “Men don’t change, period.”

  “Sometimes they do.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna jump into something with him and get all attached and then discover he’s one of the ones that don’t. I already did that once. And it was horrible.”

  “Bad breakup?”

  She tilted the lip of the bottle toward her mouth, paused, then said, “Bad divorce.”

  As she guzzled the wine, I struggled to hide my shock. “I didn’t realize you were ever married.”

  “It’s not something I like to advertise, you know. I prefer to pretend that phase of my life didn’t actually happen. I was really young and really stupid.” She sighed and looked up toward the ceiling. “The marriage only lasted for three months, anyway. At first, I was super happy, but he turned out to be a huge shithead. I walked away with a big lump of cash for all my troubles, but honestly, it wasn’t worth it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine now. But I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t expect guys to change for you. That’s why I usually vet them so carefully before I get involved. Ray was...an exception.”

  Vanessa pursed her lips, staring off into space with doleful eyes. It all made sense now, why she had such impossibly high standards. She was understandably reluctant to commit to a man again, afraid of going down another dead-end road on her journey toward the happily-ever-after.

  Surely, Ray was a thousand times better than whatever shithead she’d married. But it wasn’t the time to try to convince her of that. Not when she was two-thirds of the way into a bottle of Barefoot Pink Moscato. So instead of talking, I patted her shoulder. Just to let her know that I was there, listening.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, then blinked at me. “Anyway, what about your man?”

  “Alex? What about him?”

  “Have you looked him up on JerkAlert?”

  Ugh.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  There was nothing I wanted to do less than rehash this with Vanessa. But like Alex had told me, my silence spoke volumes. In a flash, she loaded the search screen.

  “How old is he?” she asked.

  “Twenty-six, but—”

  “And he lives in FiDi, right?”

  “Right.” I buried my head in my hands, unwilling to look at the profile I’d already viewed well over a hundred times since Sunday.

  “Oh.” Her voice was ominous. I peeked through my fingers and saw her reading the screen with a disapproving grimace. “Well, that’s not good.”

  “I know. At first, I wasn’t sure if I should believe it. People lie all the time on the internet.”

  “But why would two different people lie about the same thing?”

  “What?” I snatched the phone from her hand and scrolled through the page. To my horror, someone had posted a second review.

  Review: lying scumbag.

  “This wasn’t there before,” I said, panic rising in my throat. “I mean, there used to just be one review. Now there’s two.”

  Vanessa clucked her tongue. “He’s got a reputation.”

  “And it’s so vague.” I stared at the words on the screen, willing them to reveal some hidden meaning. “I wish there was more information. Scumbag is such a harsh word, you know? What did he do that was so bad?”

  “Can you message the women through JerkAlert? Ask them what happened.”

  “No, I purposely didn’t build that feature.” Shut up, shut up, shut up. “I mean, that’s not something you can do on the site. The whole point is that it’s supposed to be anonymous, without a messaging system. Otherwise, guys would start sending harassing messages to women who posted stuff about them.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad. It would be really helpful to get some more info.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking. “Do you know anything about his ex-girlfriends?”

  “No.”

  “Have you Google stalked him to get more dirt?”

  “No!” I don’t know why I acted scandalized by this question; it’s not like every woman didn’t occasionally Google stalk their dates. Or their boyfriends. Or their boyfriends’ exes. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “If I were you, I’d get on that, ASAP.” She swigged from her bottle and suppressed a belch. “But right now, I need to go to bed.”

  Honestly, so did I. It was creeping up on midnight, and I had to wake up early for work in the morning.

  Sleep was hard to come by, though. My mind raced with panicky thoughts, trying to piece together all the bits of information I’d accumulated over the past few days. There was the JerkAlert profile, both the old review and the new one. There was his weird relationship with Greg and the Hatchlings—how he complained about the frat culture in private, but failed to publicly call it out.

  Then there were the convenient excuses he had; work was always to blame for everything. You know who else always used work as an excuse? My dad. And look how well his marriage worked out.

  Lying scumbag.

  My jaw throbbed from clenching my teeth. It was painful, being in the dark like this. Not knowing if I was being lied to, or who was telling the truth. It felt like my life was completely out of my control.

  There was only one thing left to do: just fucking Google it.

  I pulled out my phone and started typing every combo of every keyword I could think of that might provide me with valuable information.

  Alex Hernandez girlfriend.

  Alex Hernandez New York girlfriend.

  Alex Hernandez lying scumbag.

  But nothing turned up. There were so many people named Alex Hernandez in New York City alone, it was virtually impossible to find out anything about him.

  If only I’d built in a messaging system, like Vanessa had mentioned. Then I’d
be able to contact these women and ask them exactly what they meant by these comments. I knew it would never work, though. The whole allure of JerkAlert was that it was a safe space for women. Introduce DMs, and it’d undoubtedly turn into a free-for-all of abuse and harassment.

  Then it hit me: I could message them. Users who registered with JerkAlert were required to provide an email address. It was my way of preventing spammers from flooding the site with gibberish. Email addresses were hidden from other users, but because I owned the database, I had unfettered access to them.

  Sure, it could’ve been construed as a violation of trust between a webmistress and her visitors. But honestly, wasn’t that what the spirit of JerkAlert was all about? Women helping women to steer clear of lying scumbags. If they’d been wronged by Alex Hernandez, surely they’d want to help me avoid the same fate.

  Once I’d convinced myself that swiping these email addresses would not only be virtuous, but essential, I flipped open my laptop and queried the JerkAlert database, pulling data for all users who’d logged reviews to Alex’s profile.

  My search returned exactly one record. Meaning the same woman had written both reviews, at different times. And her email address was [email protected].

  Now I could find out the whole story.

  With shaky fingers, I opened my browser and pasted the address into a new email. But when it was time to compose the body of the message, I froze. Because what was I actually supposed to say to this stranger?

  * * *

  Dear JBoogie,

  You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I happened across your email address...somewhere. Anyway, a little birdie told me you used to date Alex Hernandez, and that he treated you like crap. Care to elaborate on why you think he should never be trusted?

  Thanks!

  Melanie

  * * *

  No. This was a terrible, horrible idea.

  There had to be a better way to find out the truth. Like, maybe, coming right out and asking Alex about it.

  Or, better yet, Googling this woman’s email address.

  I deleted my draft and typed “jboogie2592” into the search bar. The first result was a Twitter account:

  j*boogie @jboogie2592 nyc

  25 | sagittarius | nyu stern mba candidate | i tweet about beer, books, and bad dates

  The profile photo was a Bitmoji avatar wearing a dragon costume.

  It didn’t give me much to go on, but it seemed like a promising start. I scrolled through the feed, passing right over the Goodreads reviews and Brew York retweets, looking for the latest news on JBoogie’s bad dates. Finally, I found one from Sunday evening:

  is there anything more cathartic than logging some douchebag on #jerkalert?

  No, I thought, but I’d love to know why you did it.

  I continued to scroll, looking for clues. It turned out JBoogie was pretty funny, and her takes on the NYC dating scene were spot-on. She took screencaps of her cringeworthy Fluttr exchanges and chronicled her romantic disappointments in a way that was sharp, sincere, and totally relatable.

  After ten minutes or so of reading her tweets, I felt a kinship with her. I wanted to take her out for drinks and commiserate with her about how shitty guys were and how much better off we were without them in our lives. We would’ve understood each other. In an alternate universe, I could even see us being friends.

  When I happened across a tweet from a couple of weeks back, it was almost like she was speaking directly to me.

  so sick of men and their empty apologies.

  Without even thinking, I tapped the little conversation bubble and typed:

  I feel this tweet hard.

  After I sent the reply into the ether, I had a sudden twinge of regret. Should I really have been interacting with the woman I’d just Google stalked? As far as she knew, I was some random internet stranger who’d stumbled across her Twitter profile by following the #craftbeer hashtag. She had no idea that I’d hunted her down in a depraved moment of jealousy and paranoia. What I was doing was wrong and dishonest and, frankly, weird.

  It felt even weirder when she liked my reply.

  The right thing to do would’ve been to close the browser window, shut down my laptop, and go to sleep. To forget all about JBoogie and her Twitter account.

  And I swear, that’s what I was about to do.

  But then my phone buzzed with a text from Alex: I’m so sorry about tonight.

  Of course he was. He was always sorry.

  I was so sick of men and their empty apologies.

  Ignoring his message, I tossed my phone aside. Instead, I went back to jboogie2592’s Twitter profile and clicked Follow. Seconds later, a notification appeared: j*boogie followed you back.

  I was officially Twitter friends with Alex’s ex.

  18

  It took me a while to fall asleep. All told, I probably got about two hours of shut-eye that night. When my alarm sounded at 7:00 a.m. I snoozed it three times before forcing myself to face the inevitable: another shitty Wednesday at the office.

  Before I dragged myself out of bed, though, I scrolled through my phone, checking up on all the important social media I missed out on overnight. There were photos of Dani’s late-night writing session on Instagram, Snapchat videos of an art opening for one of Whitney’s clients, and a couple of witty one-liners tweeted by JBoogie, including:

  just received the most offensive fluttr message ever sent in the history of offensive fluttr messages

  I replied: More offensive than a dick pic?

  Thirty seconds later, she DMed me the screencap of her exchange with Nick, 29, from Crown Heights, who’d composed a detailed description of everything he wanted to do to her ass. It included sushi, body paint, and a bow tie.

  NYCTechGal: Wow. I’ve had plenty of offers for generic “butt stuff” but nothing quite so...specific.

  jboogie2592: what’s the worst message you ever got?

  NYCTechGal: Hmm, lemme think. There’s so many to choose from.

  I switched to my photo app and swiped through my camera roll, looking for screencaps of old Fluttr conversations. Obviously, I hadn’t saved every single message I’d ever received; just the ones that were super gross or shocking or hostile.

  So maybe, like, half of them.

  Finally, I selected a gem from last month in which Ryan, 34, from Jersey City had told me I was “a solid 7, but after a few beers, might be considered a 9.” Then I sent it off to JBoogie with the message: This guy was a real charmer.

  i hope you logged him on jerkalert, she replied.

  My thumbs hovered over the screen as I contemplated my response. This was the perfect opening. A chance for me to ask her all about the guy she’d logged on JerkAlert. And why she’d logged him. Twice.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Google stalking Alex was one thing; all that info was out there, in the public domain. To come right out and ask JBoogie about her experience with him crossed a line, though. This was no longer research. This was betrayal. Wasn’t it?

  There wasn’t enough time to decide. I’d already procrastinated enough this morning, and now I was running twenty minutes behind. I typed off a hasty Not yet, then launched myself out of bed, threw on the least wrinkled outfit I could find, and ran out the door. By some divine miracle, the A train was waiting for me when I got to the station, and I arrived at the office only ten minutes late.

  No sooner had I sat down than Josh Brewster had materialized in the doorway of my cubicle.

  “Nice of you to finally show up.”

  He was the last person I wanted to deal with right now. Or ever. But I needed that paycheck. So even though I already knew what the problem was going to be, I took a deep breath and asked, “How can I help you, Josh?”

  “This piece of shit—” he held the laptop aloft “—is still n
ot working. Since you’re obviously incapable of fixing the problem, can you just give me a new one already?”

  “A new laptop isn’t going to fix your issue.”

  “What? Of course it will.”

  “No. It won’t.” My voice was steady, my mouth was a hard line.

  “You really have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Then he sneered, “You must give good head or something.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, you’ve gotta be slobbing somebody’s knob. Because there’s no other explanation for how someone as incompetent as you are can manage to keep this job.”

  My cheeks burned. Even though I knew Josh was a moron, even though I knew everything he said was total trash, that glare he was giving me made me feel inferior. Like maybe I actually didn’t deserve this job.

  In a flash, I came to my senses. Because Josh had no idea I knew what he was up to. No clue that I was thinking two steps ahead of him. After all, I was just a girl who must’ve sucked someone’s dick to get a shitty job at the help desk. A girl who could never outwit a Hatchling.

  Well, fuck him.

  “I know what you’ve been doing,” I said, low and ominous.

  He sucked his teeth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about.” We stared at each other, not saying a word. Soon enough, his brow twisted in confusion, and I realized he really didn’t know what I was talking about. So, I clued him in. “You need to stop going to all those shady websites.”

  “I’m not going to any shady websites.”

  “Stop lying, Josh.”

  His voice grew louder. “I’m not lying.”

  Clearly, Josh wasn’t going to listen to me unless I provided irrefutable proof of his offenses. Which is why it was a good thing I’d never actually uninstalled that keylogger.

  I snatched the laptop from his hands. Two quick taps of the trackpad and the keylogger interface filled the screen. An organized record of everything he’d done on this laptop for the past week and a half, on full display. Things he’d never thought anyone would see.

  For once, Josh Brewster was speechless. But I still had a lot to say.