The Blind Date Rerun

The school's winter formal matchmaking quiz had matched Layla with someone at ninety-four percent compatibility, a number the app displayed in celebratory confetti font. It was as though ninety-four percent were a grade rather than an algorithm's best guess based on forty questions about pizza toppings and preferred communication styles. She'd agreed to the blind-date setup mostly because her friends had filled out the quiz on her behalf and refused to disclose the identity of her match until the actual night. In retrospect, that felt like a decision she should have fought harder against.

Rarely had a confetti animation felt less reassuring. The identity of her match turned out to be Asher, which she discovered only when he arrived at the designated meeting spot outside the gym and they both, simultaneously, said "oh no."

"You have got to be kidding me," Layla said.

"Ninety-four percent," Asher said, checking his phone as if the number might have changed. "The algorithm thinks we're ninety-four percent compatible."

"The algorithm has clearly never watched the canoe incident."

Six summers earlier, at a camp neither of them had mentioned to a single mutual friend since, Layla and Asher had spent three consecutive weeks engaged in an increasingly unhinged rivalry. It began over a canoe race neither of them technically won — a disputed finish involving a capsized boat and a furious appeal to a sixteen-year-old counselor with no authority to rule on anything. By week three, the grudge had expanded to include the talent show and the dining hall trivia night. It even produced an entirely fabricated feud about whose cabin had the better view of the lake. What neither of them had admitted, then or since, was how much of that summer they'd spent thinking about the other outside of camp entirely.

"You cheated in that race," Asher said now, with the immediate, practiced outrage of someone who had clearly never once let it go. "You grabbed my paddle."

"I did not grab your paddle. Your paddle fell in the water because you were showing off."

"I was not showing off."

"You stood up. In a canoe. To wave at a girl from the other cabin."

Had either of them actually disliked the other back then, six summers of not mentioning it to anyone would have made considerably more sense than what she was starting to suspect instead. "Okay," she said slowly, "why do I remember every single detail of a rivalry from when I was twelve?"

"Because," Asher said, equally slowly, arriving at the same realization roughly one second behind her, "it maybe wasn't actually a rivalry."

"The algorithm might not be entirely wrong."

"I genuinely hate that for both of us."

They stood there a moment, recalibrating six years of a story they'd both apparently gotten wrong, before Layla finally held out her hand, palm up. "Truce. Also, you're buying the punch, since you clearly owe me for the paddle."

"I don't owe you anything for the paddle."

"Ninety-four percent compatible," she said, "and we're already arguing. This checks out completely."