Page 5 of Love’s a Script (Hearts Collide #1)

Chapter Five

However, on this particular morning, he’d abandoned his routine for a dense questionnaire from Hearts Collide Matchmaking. Yesterday, two days after Mary had refused to take him on as a client, he received a call from her boss.

“We’d love to extend an offer to you to join our agency,” she’d said.

Ruben wanted to say he was no longer interested.

He’d already been rethinking alternative framing devices for the feature.

But one thing he and Chesa had agreed on from the show’s inception was that they’d produce the best shows they could regardless of topic, and he knew the feature would be better with the matchmaking element.

“Which matchmaker will I be working with?” he’d asked.

“Mary Neilson. Unless you’d prefer someone else.”

“No, I’m happy to work with Mary.” It was unclear if she would feel the same about him, but if he was going to have to bear this process, he’d prefer to do it with someone who knew his opinion on matchmaking and he didn’t have to humor.

Slouched against his headboard, he worked through the questions, struggling to understand how the agency knowing his favorite candy (Swedish Fish), favorite color (green), and the side of the bed he slept on (middle) would lead to meaningful matching.

He ditched the documents to get ready for the day, and after leaving his apartment, he stopped at the coffee shop where he and his cousin met up on some mornings.

In that bubble of chatty early risers, hissing espresso machines, and blaring blenders, Ruben easily spotted Junie with her heavily pierced face and long twists she’d fashioned high on her head.

“Your tea’s cold,” she said when Ruben dropped into the seat across from hers.

“Sorry.” He took a drink from the mug anyway. “I got caught up with some work.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Actually, yes. You’re looking at the latest client of Hearts Collide Matchmaking.”

“Man, what’re you talking about?”

“I’ve joined a matchmaking service for research purposes.”

“You’re lying,” Junie said, so he pulled out his laptop from his weathered messenger bag and showed her the evidence.

“There’s a lifetime’s worth of password security answers in here,” she said, horrified. “You’ve never downloaded a dating app in your life, but here you are doing all this.”

“It’s for work,” he said.

“Don’t lead with that on dates,” Junie said. “It’s no way to get a woman to marry you.”

“Marry me? Lots of intermediary steps missing there.”

“But that’s the goal of a service like this, no? Marriage is in the realm of possibilities.”

“Same could be said about winning the lottery,” he replied flippantly.

“It won’t kill you to express some optimism, you know.”

“You’re right. I have hope in my heart that—” Ruben suddenly clutched his neck, making a show of gasping for air before dropping his head sideways.

Junie threw a crumpled napkin at him. “All I’m trying to say is you don’t disclose information about your bank account balance when you’re just looking for a hookup.”

Nothing his cousin said was untrue, but Ruben didn’t have inherent faith in much, and matchmaking was, at this point, an unproven method. So he was going to take everything one step at a time, and currently, he had about twenty different forms to complete.

* * *

A new sculpture of Jesus on the cross had been erected at the front of the church auditorium, and to Mary, he appeared unusually—and perhaps sacrilegiously—ripped.

She was crammed on a velour-covered pew between her sister and her dozing father, scrutinizing the marbleized son of God and wondering if she was the only one who was. Mary believed Jesus, at least this version of him, ought to be lanky, tortured, stoic. Not rendered in the image of Calvin Klein.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her sister’s knobby elbow jabbing her side.

“What?” Mary asked, and Hattie, with her eyes still fixed on the pastor, smacked the purse Mary held in her lap.

Only then did she register the muffled chirp of her ringtone.

Quickly, she dug for her phone and silenced it but not before receiving some glances and waking her father.

She used the interior of her purse as cover to text the client who’d called, promising to respond in an hour.

The pastor eventually dismissed the congregation with hopes of a blessed week, and while they filed out of the sanctuary, Hattie said to Mary, “You should remember to put your phone on silent.”

“I thought I had,” Mary said.

“It’s rude and a distraction,” Hattie continued as they stopped shy of the building exit for the brief conversation their family always had before parting ways each Sunday.

“I know that.”

“If you were a neurosurgeon on call, I’d understand, but?—”

“Nice sermon, wasn’t it?” their father said with put-on pep.

The sisters, though impartial, nodded. They weren’t really a religious family, but when Mary was twelve, their dad, a recent divorcé and single father to two girls, had believed church was the best way to combat the threat of teenage pregnancy.

Fortunately, the sisters had attended public school with competent sex education.

Nowadays, habit and the reality they’d only ever see each other during the holidays kept them regularly attending.

“How was your week?” their dad asked.

“It’s still diapers and spit up all day and all night,” Hattie said.

“Work’s been good,” Mary offered. “I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but I’m up for an exciting project.”

“Is that right?” her dad said. “I’m sure you’ve put in the work to earn it.”

His words were sincere, but he was also a math professor at the community college and didn’t quite get Mary’s career, and Hattie, who was not only an engineer but married to the guy she’d loved since high school, even less so.

For that reason, Mary avoided going into much detail about her job, but after a difficult week, things were looking up and she’d had the urge to relay that optimism.

She’d presented Ruben’s proposal to Cassidy over the phone, and her boss had been all in.

“Excellent work securing this, Mary.” Even their discussion about the botched interview had gone well.

“I’ve never heard you so riled up,” Cassidy had said with a laugh.

“Didn’t know you had it in you. But you did good defending the agency. ”

The fake reviews were being taken down, and just like that, the fretting Mary had done was obsolete, her guilt unnecessary.

It left her free to imagine grander things like increasing her chances at cruise lead by successfully matching Ruben.

All she had to do was put aside her misgivings about his motivations and treat him like any other client.

When the routine family chat ended, Mary’s father bid her and Hattie goodbye with a kiss to the back of their gloved hands and began a careful shuffle to his vehicle.

Mary made a move to also leave, but Hattie stopped her.

“We need to talk,” her sister said, pulling her back into the church foyer. “Dad’s seeing someone.”

“As in he’s dating? How do you know?”

“He came over to see the boys, and he was checking his phone constantly. He doesn’t remember to charge the thing half the time, so it was weird. I asked him what was up, and he told me.”

Mary couldn’t say she was surprised. It had been a while.

Their father had mostly stayed single after the divorce, but when they were still teens, he’d dated a busty woman who always left her lipstick on their glassware.

Mary hadn’t known the woman was her father’s girlfriend until Hattie started talking about weddings, but any subsequent worrying Mary had done over the reputations of stepmothers hadn’t mattered because Lorraine had stopped coming around soon after.

“Her name’s Aurora, and she lives five hours away,” Hattie said.

“Pretty name.”

“Sure, but who do you know over the age of thirty-five named Aurora?”

“Wait a minute,” Mary said. “Are you thinking he’s being catfished?”

“Well, yeah. He’s in the targeted age range for it. Also, the details he was giving me about her were vague as hell.”

“He’s smart, Hattie. Maybe he wants to keep things private for now.”

Her sister rolled her eyes. “Don’t do that.”

“What?” Mary asked.

“That let’s-all-get-along positivity crap you do. I’m not the bad guy for being concerned.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Say you’ll do some investigating. Doesn’t your job have software for background checks?”

“No, we require independently done background checks for clients in certain tiers, but it’s not?—”

“Fine, okay. Whatever. Then do some internet and social media sleuthing. Because I swear if he gets fleeced of all his earthly possessions, he’s not moving in with me.”