Page 4 of Love’s a Script (Hearts Collide #1)
Chapter Four
Mary was steps from leaving her apartment for the day when she caught a whiff of something offensive. It was a cross between sour milk and whatever went on in the backroom of pet stores. With her keys, coat, and purse still in hand, she searched through her home for the elusive stink.
She lifted the frilly throw pillows on her sofa. Went low to look under the coffee table. She found nothing to blame inside the carts of the dishwasher or on the shelves in the refrigerator, and there was nothing more sinister in the garbage bin than a poorly flattened pizza box.
The source of the smell, it turned out, was inside the closet that held her laundry appliances. A load of clothing clung to the sides of the washing machine barrel. They’d been forgotten, left to fester for probably days.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, dropping her things. If she hadn’t been self-flagellating since the interview earlier in the week, she might’ve noticed the retching conditions sooner. With one hand, she poured liquid detergent over the smelly clothes, and with the other, she made a call.
“Hey, Willa!” Mary said brightly to the voicemail system. “Hope you’re doing good. It seems you forgot to remove your clothes from the washer. I’m restarting the cycle so if you could come pick them up when you can, that would be great. I’ll be home by six.”
What had started as a temporary arrangement between Mary and her neighbor had warped into a big inconvenience.
An uncomfortable chat was obviously necessary, but she kept putting it off to endless tomorrows.
After hanging up the phone, Mary noted the time and rushed out of the door.
Despite her best efforts, she hit red lights throughout her drive and got to work minutes late.
Her first appointment of the day was already seated in her office.
“Hello!” she said to the back of the person’s head. “I’m so sorry for the wait.”
Mary quickly moved around the room, talking about this and that as she unspooled her scarf and traded her soggy boots for heels.
When she made it to her desk, she got her first good look at her potential client.
He sat in the chair with his long legs crossed, somehow making the highly contemporary seat look comfortable.
His coily hair was cropped, and a generous collection of freckles peppered his brown face and neck.
He was dressed more casually than others typically did for first meetings in a gray sweatshirt with a faded print of the World Wildlife Fund panda on the front.
Handsome, she decided.
“As we wait for technology to cooperate,” she said, tapping the buffering screen of her tablet, “why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”
An impish half smile lit his face. “Well, I’m Ruben Byers. I’m thirty-four years old, and I’m a radio show host.”
* * *
Hearts Collide Matchmaking was located on the seventh floor of a downtown commercial building across from an orthodontics clinic.
Ruben had taken in the white surfaces, angular furniture, and severe lighting, and it was as though he stood in a biomedical megacorp’s headquarters where they harvested organs for the elite.
The receptionist who led him to the office rattled off options on an extensive beverage menu and returned with Ruben’s chosen glass of water set on a decorative tray.
He’d been inspecting the drink when Mary entered the room with a perky greeting.
She moved around in a hurry, her short, straight hair—the color of butterscotch—swishing in tandem.
She spoke with a forced effervescence one might encounter in a biomedical megacorp’s employee training video, but when she realized who he was, her grin waned.
Her displeasure was the first thing that had felt real since he’d walked in.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Byers?”
“Ruben. And it’s nice to meet you in person.”
She was beautiful with a round face, dark eyes, and perfect brown skin. Naturally, a wisp of attraction took hold, but Ruben stamped it out, reminding himself of the purpose of the visit.
“I’m here,” he said, “because we received a large response from our listeners following your appearance and?—”
“Glad I could help.”
Ruben was oddly delighted by the sarcasm. “Yes, well, on top of our weeknight broadcasts, we release a feature, a sort of radio documentary, every quarter, and we’ve decided our next one will be on modern dating.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“One research component would include me going through the matchmaking process with you.”
She was shaking her head before he finished his sentence.
“Hold on,” he said. “It won’t technically be a promotion, but Hearts Collide and your services will be highlighted. And if you want, we could do another interview.”
“So I can get hung up on again? I’ll pass,” she said.
“That was out of my control. It’s live radio, and I went over.”
“You also went off topic.”
“I’d say I went on reasonable, related tangents.”
“I didn’t go on air for reasonable, related tangents.”
He considered telling her she’d done a great job nonetheless, and that if it hadn’t been for the time constraint on their interview, he’d have stayed volleying with her for much longer.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead. “I was concerned with the larger context we were having the conversation in. It wasn’t personal. ”
“All right, but I still don’t think you’re the right fit for our agency.”
“Why not?”
There was a pause. “We have an in-depth admission process,” she said.
“That’s fine. I’ll do whatever is required of me.”
“We’re also an expensive service, as you know.”
He smiled. “The invoice will be paid in full.”
“None of my clients signed up to be part of a documentary.”
“My reporting will be on my experience, not on any specific person, and I’d disclose my work and assignment to each match.”
After a bout of silence and some hope on his end, Mary crossed her arms and told him no. “I’m here to help people who’re actually looking for love,” she said. “I can’t in good conscience bring on someone who doesn’t believe in this method.”
Any persuasive argument Ruben might’ve offered would’ve required him to lie about his perspective on matchmaking.
“I understand,” he said and thanked her for her time.
If he’d learned anything from his years in radio, it was to be adaptable.
Things changed on a dime. News broke, equipment failed, and interviews fell through.
An aggrieved matchmaker would not derail progress.
* * *
There was a certain kind of character native to sitcoms that Mary always admired. They were the ones who weren’t afraid to say what needed to be said in a deadpan aside, to call out the hypocrisy, the irony, or the absurdity of characters and situations.
Mary had sent Ruben packing without placation or apology, and she swore it was worthy of the cheers from a studio audience. She felt boundless, and at the first opportunity, she recounted the interaction to another matchmaker.
“You’ll never believe who I had a meeting with first thing this morning,” Mary said to Francine as they fell into step with each other on the way to the break room.
“Who?” Francine asked, her brows raised as high as the Reloxin in her forehead would permit.
“That radio show host who interviewed me on Monday. He wanted to join the agency for a documentary.”
“What did you tell him?”
“No. Obviously.” Mary laughed, expecting her colleague to join in.
“Why did you say that?” Francine asked.
“Because he insulted me and the agency as a whole.”
Ruben was so sure of himself, so sure of his perspective, and she blamed the combination of his wit and handsomeness for that.
“All right, but, hun,” Francine said, “that could’ve been good publicity.”
“I don’t think he’s all that interested in finding love, though,” Mary said as they arrived at the break room. “He wants to do this solely for his documentary.”
His enrolment would’ve meant betraying the purity of the process and that wasn’t worth it. Mary assumed their boss would feel the same way.
“What documentary?” asked Sienna from the kitchenette where she was refilling her outsize tumbler with water. Eden, already seated with her lunch, looked up, curious as well.
“The radio host Mary had a little spat with,” Francine explained, “wants to join the agency as part of a documentary.”
“And she’s not taking him on—you’re not taking him on?” Sienna asked.
Mary shook her head.
“But that’s free advertisement,” Sienna said.
“That’s what I was telling her!”
Feeling desperate to make them understand, Mary said, “He thinks our operation works through mind control. Like we’re puppeteers or witches.”
The Twins entered the room at that moment, asking, “Who’s a witch?” And Francine, once again, explained. Meanwhile, Mary joined Eden at the table with her lunch, hopeful her sharp, no-nonsense colleague would validate her choice. “You get where I’m coming from, right?” Mary asked.
“Yeah, and I agree with you,” Eden said. “But I also get what they’re saying. Cassidy is a businessperson first before she’s a matchmaker.”
Mary fell quiet as the fizz she’d been coasting on all morning flattened. Deep in thought, she picked at her food and tried to hold on to her convictions, so she didn’t immediately notice when the Twins, Sienna, and Francine assembled before her.
“We don’t want you to think of this as a poaching situation,” one of them said, “but we were wondering if you would be okay with one of us taking on the radio host as a client?”
Mary realized then that because she’d misjudged what her boss’s position on Ruben’s enrolment would be, she hadn’t appreciated how the situation could be personally beneficial. In bringing this opportunity to Cassidy, Mary might begin to repair the damage she’d caused with the radio interview.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Mary told the other matchmakers. “He’s mine. He’s my client.”