Page 7 of Love’s a Script (Hearts Collide #1)

Chapter Seven

RUBEN BYERS: Tell me about the major histocompatibility complex.

AMANDA PRESLEY: Simply, the major histocompatibility complex is a gene.

And in the context of our conversation, it’s a gene we suspect informs at least some of our sexual-romantic attraction to particular people.

More specifically, have you ever wanted to bury yourself in your lover’s neck?

Bathe in their natural scent? That impulse we believe comes from the MHC.

RB: Can you screen for it?

AP: I suppose you could, but that’s, one, a lot of money, and two, puts a lot of pressure on a gene which is but one element that could influence attraction. It’s probably more fun, anyway, to let your body do the talking.

* * *

Ruben met Gemma—a thirty-year-old ceramic artist—at a poetry club that would serve as the backdrop for their first date.

Seated across from her at a small round table with a single tea light candle, Ruben was unsure how much of their circumstance he could acknowledge.

He was concerned that bringing up their matchmaking would dampen potential romance, but after exchanging some pleasantries and commenting on their surroundings, Gemma asked, “How long have you been with the agency?”

“Not long at all. You’re my first match.”

“Lucky you,” she said with a wink, and he chuckled, relaxing in his seat.

The room soon reached capacity, and the lights were turned down as the host welcomed the audience and told them to prepare for an evening of “really beautiful, enriching vibes.” But as the first poet stepped to center stage, Ruben began to worry the opposite would be true.

Gemma’s syrupy perfume, which he’d noted earlier as strong but ignorable, had become potent in the absence of airflow from the once-open door.

Every breath Ruben took was saturated with that fragrance, and within minutes, he felt like barbed wire was twisting into his skull.

He tried tilting his head away from his date, but it didn’t do much beyond giving him a crick in his neck.

While a man with a goatee was reciting a sad poem with an extended bird metaphor, a cough began inching up Ruben’s throat.

He tried to pacify the cough with throat clearings, but somehow that made things worse.

By the time the audience was snapping their fingers at the end of the goatee man’s performance, Ruben feared anything deeper than a gasp would trigger a spectacle to rival an erupting volcano.

He turned to his date and mimed something he hoped she’d roughly translate as “I’ll be right back,” then left his seat.

In the relative quiet and privacy of the washroom, he hacked and coughed and sneezed until he could freely inhale the special mixture of piss and disinfectant that existed in public bathrooms. His reflection confirmed how he felt as his eyes had turned a milky red.

A middle-aged man in a slanted fedora entered the washroom and, upon meeting Ruben’s bloodshot eyes in the mirror, sagely said, “It’s okay to feel. No shame, my guy. No shame.”

With the abrasive paper towel and water from the sink, Ruben did his best to return to his regular form and mentally prepared to finish out the remainder of the evening.

* * *

Mary paused in the hallway in front of her office door to run a smoothing hand down her hair before entering the room for her first check-in meeting with Ruben.

Her smile faltered when she didn’t find him seated but rather standing in the corner of her office, inspecting the contents of her floating shelves.

“Do you like working here?” he asked in lieu of a greeting, turning to face her. He’d cut his hair. It was more tapered on the sides, drawing the eye to the shape of his square face, broad nose, and jaw.

“Do I like working at Hearts Collide?” she repeated slowly, trying to discern if there was a question behind the question. “Yeah, of course.”

“No, I mean, do you like working in here . In this office.” He followed her lead as she walked over to her desk and took her seat. “All this glass and chrome doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a laboratory?”

She didn’t have to look around to understand what he saw. “My boss has always said she wants people to feel like they’ve landed in the sky.”

“Hold on, is that why I’m sitting on a lumpy round chair? It’s supposed to be a cloud?”

“That’s the idea.”

“It feels like I’m sitting on a pile of Lego.”

Careful not to validate the disparaging remark, Mary offered to fetch him a different chair, but he declined on the grounds that it wouldn’t kill him. When she tried continuing with their meeting, he interrupted, saying, “You still haven’t said if you like working in here.”

“I do,” she replied.

Ruben leaned forward, and in a hushed voice, said, “This will remain between us, so no need to be diplomatic.”

That word again. It felt euphemistic. He might as well have called her spineless. She didn’t know why it bothered her. She could’ve moved on, but his one raised brow taunted her. “Fine. When I first started, I thought it was sterile looking.”

“There we go!”

“But I now think it’s beautiful and modern,” she added. “In fact, if it didn’t look this way, I might’ve never become a matchmaker.”

“What do you mean?”

“I applied for this job accidentally, thinking I was leaving my resume for the receptionist position at the orthodontics clinic down the hall. I realized my mistake when I got a message asking me to come in for an interview at Hearts Collide.”

She was a recent grad looking for a job, any job, as she tried to figure out what came next.

It was the first interview request she’d received after sending out dozens of applications.

She’d been determined to land the role, reading sex and relationship columns on Cosmopolitan.com until she could parrot the jargon.

“I started as my boss’s assistant and later transitioned into matchmaking,” she told him.

“So you’re sitting here today is a coincidence.”

“Technically,” Mary said. “But if I didn’t like the work, I wouldn’t be here nearly eight years later.”

Ruben cocked his head slightly. “What do you enjoy about it?”

The question surprised Mary, and she took a moment before answering. “This type of work suits me, I think. I like working with people, and I like when things are in harmony,” she said. “And that’s what matchmaking is all about.”

Ruben didn’t say anything. He regarded her with a soft but uninterpretable expression, and heat spread across Mary’s face as the seconds passed.

“Enough of that,” she said, averting her eyes to the tablet in front of her and pulling up Ruben’s profile. “We should get started. Tell me about your date.”

“We went to the Windmill Poetry Club. Have you been?”

Mary shook her head. “I’ve heard good things, though.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Nice ambiance and a fully stocked bar,” he said before talking about some of the poetry he’d heard and going on a tangent about the success of the city’s efforts to revitalize the art scene. But there was one notable element missing from his review of the night.

“And Gemma? What did you think of her?” Mary asked.

She had set the two of them up thinking Gemma’s artistic whimsy would pair well with the cultured Ruben.

When Ruben didn’t respond right away, Mary grew concerned. “Did something happen?” she asked.

“No. Gemma was great—is great, but I think I might be allergic to her. Well, allergic to the perfume she wears.”

“Like she applied too much of it?”

“Maybe. All I know for sure is that at the end of the night, I felt like I’d snorted lines of potpourri.”

With all the care Mary took to filter out incompatibilities, it was incredible how it was still possible for some unconsidered factor to push a match off course.

“I’m so sorry that was your experience,” she said.

“If you’re open to it, I can set up a do-over date.

I’ll explain the situation to Gemma, and she can wear a different fragrance or, to be safe, nothing at all. ”

“My only hesitation with that plan,” he said, “is I don’t feel great telling a woman to quit wearing a perfume she likes because I get the sniffles.”

Mary wondered if he was inspired by genuine gallantry or if he needed an excuse to label the match a failure. “Gemma’s not under court-ordered community service. If she doesn’t think you’re worth switching out her perfume for, she’s free to reject you.”

She had never uttered such harsh words in that office, but Ruben’s immediate laugh erased any regret she might’ve felt.

“All right, then,” he said. “Set it up.”