How to Hack a Heartbreak Read online

  “What?”

  “Did you shut down the local firewall?”

  “No, why?”

  “There’s a virus on your laptop. It’s blocking your internet access.” This was the second time I’d had to clear malware from Josh’s computer in as many weeks. The first time, his desktop had become overrun with pop-up ads for adult chat rooms and discount designer sunglasses. “What kinds of websites have you been visiting?”

  He snorted. “You know, I don’t like what you’re implying. Don’t go accusing me of shit. Ever think that maybe you just didn’t fix the problem the first time around?”

  Stay calm. Don’t engage.

  “I’m gonna need a couple of hours to fix this. I can drop it off at your desk before lunch.”

  “Un-fucking-real.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “I can’t meet my deadline without a working laptop. What the hell am I supposed to tell Vijay?”

  That you’ve been surfing porn sites instead of doing your job.

  “I’ll get it done as quickly as possible, Josh.”

  “Make sure you actually fix it this time.”

  With a swivel of my office chair, I turned my back to him, pretending not to hear the swearing as he stormed away.

  The nerve of this guy, trying to pin his shady web-browsing habits on me. Then again, I’m not sure why I expected better behavior from someone who had a “Free Mustache Rides” sticker on the cover of his laptop. Which was most definitely in violation of Hatch’s Code of Conduct, but I wasn’t going to be the hysterical bitch who pointed that out.

  Instead, I calmly closed each one of the dozen programs Josh had open and rebooted the system in safe mode to prepare for yet another round of virus removal.

  While I waited, I pulled out my phone and saw a text from Whitney: That JerkAlert thing you sent last night is amazing. Where did you find it?

  Funny. She thought it was an actual website.

  MEL:

  I made it myself. Hilarious, no?

  WHITNEY:

  More like brilliant!

  Josh’s laptop flickered on, and I began the tedious process of scanning for vulnerabilities and deleting infected files. Between this incident and Greg’s coffee spill, I was basically a high-tech janitor, cleaning up the messes the Hatchlings so carelessly left behind. What a perfectly good waste of my eighty-thousand-dollar computer science degree.

  It constantly amazed me, how these irresponsible guys scored sought-after spots in one of the most reputable start-up incubation programs in the country. Maybe that explained why such a high percentage of them failed. Maybe they were really good at pitching their ideas during the application process, but when it came to following through on what they promised, they couldn’t deliver. Maybe all it took to succeed in this business was the balls to finish what you started.

  In that case, I’d have made a kick-ass start-up founder.

  “Knock knock.”

  I swiveled around to see Bob standing in the doorway of my cubicle, his arms folded across his chest, his face all scrunched up. He looked like he had indigestion.

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Just had a little visit from Josh Brewster. He wasn’t too happy.”

  “Is he ever happy?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” he said. “But he told me he’s been having an ongoing problem with his laptop and that you haven’t been able to provide a fix.”

  “The ongoing problem is that he keeps downloading viruses onto his computer.”

  “Didn’t you install security software?”

  “Yes, and I have no idea how these things keep getting around it. He’s probably disabling his virus scanners so he can surf around some shady corner of the deep web.”

  Bob sighed and ran a hand along his bald head. “Look, that’s the other thing, Melanie. You can’t go around accusing people of stuff you can’t prove.”

  “I didn’t accuse him of anything. I was only speculating. It’s my job to fix his broken laptop, right? In order to do that, I need to know what’s causing the problem.”

  “Do you have any evidence?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have no idea if that’s what he’s doing.”

  “Well, what kind of app is his team developing?”

  “You should already know this.” Bob scowled. “They’ve got Blitz. It’s a fantasy football app.”

  “There you go. He’s probably into gambling, and that means—”

  “Enough!” Bob’s sharp tone cut my conspiracy theory off at the root. “Stop with the Nancy Drew routine and just do your job. Which, if you’ve forgotten, is to clean up his laptop and get it back to him as soon as possible.” He turned to leave, then stopped abruptly, adding, “The guys are under a lot of pressure here. Stop giving them such a hard time.”

  I stared at the empty space he left behind, his final sentiment echoing in my brain.

  The guys.

  Yup, that was a pretty accurate description of the Hatch population. In the four years I’d been here, only a handful of women had walked through the door. My workdays were devoted to serving men. And not only did I need to keep their tech devices working, but, apparently, I was also responsible for protecting their fragile egos.

  Infuriating.

  I resumed my scan of Josh’s laptop, deleting suspicious registry entries and replacing hacked files. With each passing minute, my keystrokes grew more forceful. At one point, I smacked the keyboard so hard that I dislodged the space bar.

  Then, when I was sure his system was free from any and all traces of malicious software, I installed a little insurance policy: a keylogger. It’d run silently in the background while Josh did his work, recording each one of his keystrokes and storing them in an encrypted file. This way, if he disabled his virus scanner and went to a shady website, I’d have evidence.

  He’d never know it was there. But the next time he came into my cubicle, screaming his head off about my inability to fix his laptop, I’d show him my receipts. That’d shut him up.

  It was noon when I finished. I tucked his laptop under my arm and headed toward the Blitz work area, steeling myself for what would undoubtedly be a torrent of insults and four-letter words. But Josh wasn’t there, and his team members didn’t bother to look up from their screens as I gingerly placed the repaired laptop on his desk and ran off.

  I took the long way back to my cubicle, skirting the window-lined perimeter of the office space, so I could enjoy the views. From up here on the twenty-ninth floor, New York looked divine. Sunlight sparkled off the East River. Boats glided beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving frothy white wakes. It was the ideal afternoon for an alfresco lunch.

  And by that, I meant sitting at one of those picnic tables on Fulton Street and snarfing down the peanut butter sandwich I’d thrown in my purse this morning. Not especially glamorous, but with my budget being what it was, I’d take what I could get. All I had to do was grab my stuff from my desk drawer and—

  “Melanie?”

  I spun around, and there was Alex, looking characteristically dapper in fitted chinos and a cotton oxford. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing the tiniest tuft of black hair.

  Stop looking at his chest.

  “What’s up?” I asked, completely calm, completely cool.

  “I’m waiting on a database build, so I’ve got nothing to do for the next hour or so. Are you free for lunch? We can go to a restaurant at the Seaport.”

  Unbelievable. After that debacle on Friday night, you’d think he’d have the decency to be contrite.

  “I don’t think so,” I sniffed, my gaze floating out the window.

  “You sure? It’s my treat.” He leaned in slightly, lowered his voice. “I’ve been looking forward to it all weekend.”

  “Have you?”

 
I fixed with him an icy glare. He drew back, his expression halfway between confusion and terror. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Does he think I’m a total idiot? “I met her, remember? Jenny.”

  His brow relaxed as he released a sigh of nervous laughter. “Jenny’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a girl I met on Fluttr. That was our first date. And, uh...it didn’t go so well.”

  “Oh.” Turns out, I actually was a total idiot. My face must have flushed a dozen shades of crimson. I could feel the heat radiating from my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I can see why you would’ve thought that. But now that we’ve cleared up that little misunderstanding, are you interested in getting lunch?”

  One side of his mouth quirked up in an adorable little half smile. There was no way I could say no.

  My peanut butter sandwich would stay good until tomorrow. Probably.

  “Let’s do it.”

  5

  We settled on Fresh Salt, a café on Beekman Street with outdoor seating. As I sipped my ice water, I took a moment to bask in how perfect everything was. A mild breeze floated off the river, and the snippet of sky visible between the surrounding buildings was blue and cloudless. For once, there were no construction vehicles spewing exhaust, no jackhammers clobbering the asphalt, no open bags of garbage festering on the pavement. The usual noises and odors of a New York City street were absent. It was simply a beautiful Monday afternoon.

  And the most beautiful part of this beautiful scene? Alex Hernandez, smiling at me from across the weathered wooden table. Tousled hair, tawny skin, the perfect amount of five o’clock shadow shading his jawline. Somehow, he was equal parts scruffy and tailored, and it suited him.

  “I have a question for you,” he said.

  “Go for it.”

  “Were you really meeting someone on Friday night?”

  “Yes. A Fluttr date, actually.”

  “Then why’d you bolt out of there so fast?” His eyes went all wide and disbelieving. “Wait a minute, did you stand him up?”

  “No! I would never do that.” I ran a finger through the condensation on my water glass. I wasn’t particularly keen on rehashing how I’d been blown off by some Fluttr rando, but there was no other choice but to tell the truth. “He stood me up.”

  “Ouch.” The look of pity on his face was unbearable. “Sorry.”

  “It happens.” I shrugged one shoulder, trying desperately to evoke a sense of indifference. “Getting jilted is just one of many risks you take when you decide to meet a stranger from the internet.”

  He chuckled. “Fluttr is the worst, isn’t it?”

  “The worst.”

  “I should just delete my profile. I’m convinced no one ever meets anyone worthwhile on that app.”

  “Actually, one of my best friends met her boyfriend on Fluttr, and they’re pretty serious.”

  “Is he a nice guy?”

  “I mean, he seems nice,” I said, realizing the only things I knew about Jay were the things Lia told me about him. They’d been dating for almost three months, but I still hadn’t met him. From the photos she posted on her Instagram account, it looked like they had a genuine mutual affection. But there was always some excuse why he could never meet us for a drink: late nights at the office, last-minute emergencies, business trips that sent him out of town for days at a time. I didn’t even know what kind of job he had that kept him so busy.

  What I did know was that Lia was the happiest I’d ever seen her.

  “He makes her happy,” I said.

  “They’re definitely one in a million. I’ve never hit it off with anyone I’ve matched with.”

  I smiled in solidarity. “Me neither.”

  “See what I mean? No one I know has. Which begs the question of why people keep going back for more.”

  “It’s those ads on the subway. They get inside your head.”

  Fluttr had recently launched a marketing campaign aimed at New York City straphangers. They featured photos of radiant couples embracing against breathtaking backdrops, like rain forests and white sand beaches. Big, bold letters across the top screamed Fluttr: Don’t Let the One Get Away.

  And though I knew damn well there wasn’t some male model impatiently waiting to whisk me away on a fantasy vacation, these ads always stirred an urgency inside of me that was hard to suppress. If I wasn’t swiping through Fluttr this very instant, I might miss the man of my dreams and never see him again.

  Alex nodded. “That’s true. Those ads always make me feel bummed out about being single.”

  “It’s just so hard to meet people.”

  “But it doesn’t seem like Fluttr is making it any easier. We have too many choices, too much information. It’s paralyzing.”

  “So you think we should go back in time to the days of... What were those called? When people would print dating profiles in the newspaper?”

  “Personal ads.”

  “Right.”

  “No,” he said, carefully. “But I feel like we don’t take the time to get to know our potential partners anymore. We spend maybe two seconds looking at someone’s picture before—” he whistled and mimicked a swiping motion, flicking his finger through the air between us “—writing them off forever. I can’t help but think we’d be better off meeting people in person.”

  “Like at speed dating events.”

  Alex laughed, an infectious rumble. “Maybe.”

  “Or in bars.”

  “Or in the office.”

  After he said that, he looked right at me, biting his bottom lip like he was suppressing a smile. My stomach did a little somersault when I saw his dark eyes dancing with mischief.

  Was this a date?

  As I tried to discern wishful thinking from sad delusions, the server came along and placed a platter in the center of the table. “Here’s your antipasto.”

  “Looks great,” Alex said.

  I nodded in silent agreement and the server took off with a polite smile.

  The platter did look heavenly. There were plump green olives, slick with oil. Great hunks of hard Italian cheese. Thin slices of prosciutto and thick rounds of salami. Crusty bread and crispy crackers. A dollop of jam and a honeycomb.

  This was so much better than a lukewarm peanut butter sandwich.

  Before I could decide which delicacy to sample first, someone behind me yelled out, “Yo!” and Alex released a string of curses under his breath. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Greg crossing the cobblestone street, headed directly toward us.

  “I apologize in advance for anything he says,” Alex uttered, then gave Greg a sharp little wave.

  “S’up, man?” Without asking if he could join us, Greg yanked a chair from the adjacent table and pulled it up to our tiny little two-top. “That database finished or what?”

  “It should be soon.” Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “I started the build before I left. That was, like, twenty minutes ago. I’m sure by the time I get back we’ll be ready to roll.”

  “Cool.” Greg reached for an olive and tossed it in his mouth, then reclined, swinging a casual arm over the back of his bistro chair. “You catch the fight last night?”

  Alex threw me a feeble smile of apology. “Nope.”

  “It was sick. Austin jammed Hammill with these crazy kicks to the middle, so when he fell down, I was like, okay, this shit’s over. And then out of nowhere, Hammill popped up with these hammer fists like an animal.”

  As Greg went on and on about what I assumed was some sort of cage fighting match, he helped himself to a slice of baguette, piling it high with prosciutto and cheese. Alex looked on in bewilderment, before blocking Greg’s outstretched hand from grabbing
the salami.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Greg gave him that same dopey look he’d given me last week, when he destroyed his laptop. “What?”

  “That’s our lunch, man. Hands off. And, by the way—” Alex gestured toward me “—this is Melanie. Mel, this is Greg. Not that you need any introductions, since I know you two have already met.”

  I could tell by his frown lines that Greg had absolutely no idea who I was. I’d spent hours salvaging data from his coffee-drenched hard drive, and he hadn’t bothered to commit my face to long-term memory.

  “Anyway,” Alex continued, “we’re kind of in the middle of something here. Can you give us some space?”

  “Uh...okay.” Greg stood, jamming his pilfered food into his mouth before ambling away. He left his chair jutting out into the middle of the sidewalk. Alex replaced it at the neighboring table.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  I forced a laugh. “It’s okay. Totally not your fault.”

  “It kinda is. Greg’s my partner, after all.” He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls. “Which is something I regret more with each passing day. I wish I’d never signed on to this project with him.”

  “That’s awful. I’m sorry.” Though, truth be told, I was a little relieved. If Alex had actually felt like Greg—slack-jawed, tactless, dim-witted Greg—was an ideal business partner, I would’ve questioned his judgment. As it was, I couldn’t figure out why he’d teamed up with him in the first place. Or how they’d managed to score a spot at Hatch.

  “Greg talked a big game when we first met,” he said, snapping a cracker in two.

  “Did he?” Skepticism oozed from my pores.

  “He seems stupid, I know, but he’s just really good at playing dumb to get out of things. When it comes to sales pitches and presentations, he’s a rock star.”

  I tried to picture Greg standing in front of a room full of suits, delivering an articulate speech, gesturing to a polished PowerPoint presentation. The vision was incongruous with the Greg I knew, the guy who spoke only in sentence fragments and never looked me in the eye.

  “How did you meet him?”