Page 12 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

I was taken aback by Rebecca’s physical presence.

Her first appointment was on Wednesday. I’d spent my time since the intake meeting on Monday morning strategizing how to win Noah back and how to convince Serena to give me the director position.

I’d made little progress on either front.

Neither Noah nor Molly had reached out since they’d revealed their infidelity on Saturday evening.

Also worrisome was that I hadn’t heard from Noah’s mother, who typically texted me every couple of days to comment on the weather or on recent television she’d watched, or to ask my opinion about a new piece of clothing.

Her silence made me think that Noah had already told her what happened.

It burned that she would so easily cut ties with someone she’d once thought would be a kind of daughter to her.

Mothers of all kinds were perpetually disappointing me.

I started typing texts to Noah, and then deleted them.

Bored of Molly yet?

Do your coworkers know what you did?

I can’t believe you turned out to be such a fuck boy.

Come back to me.

I love you.

Hey.

None of them seemed quite right, and as much as I wanted to cry and scream, bang my fists on Noah’s chest and ask him why , I knew that it was important to tread carefully if I wanted to convince him to come back.

For Serena, I reformatted my résumé and ordered pink paper to print it on, because I knew she liked little touches like that.

Connection, she’d once said, was as much about presentation as it was about the soul.

I couldn’t tell my mother where I worked—it was too risky—but as I purchased the paper, I thought about how impressed she’d be if I was named director of the entire Twin Cities branch.

It seemed like the beginning of something greater.

I would be Serena’s right-hand woman as she rose to the top.

A reality show about us could be made for Netflix, as with those real estate moguls in California.

If there was one thing that captivated people more than expensive housing, it was love.

Rebecca was better-looking in person than she was in her photograph, which was saying something, as I had already found her very attractive. What the picture hadn’t captured was her height, made possible by long legs, and her eyes, which had the sharpness of intelligence.

“Rebecca? I’m Alexandra. I’ll be your matchmaker through this process.”

I immediately noted how graceful she was. It would be impossible for her to catch a man the way that I had caught Noah, because she would never need to be helped off the ground.

“Nice to meet you,” she said as we shook hands. She had one of those low voices like she’d been a smoker, though her intake paperwork said she didn’t use tobacco products.

I led her to my office. Serena had eschewed the popular open office plan in favor of a building that provided discretion.

“Love requires privacy,” she’d said as an explanation.

My office had a pink and gold desk with matching accessories.

On the wall was a picture that I’d made during a paint-and-sip night that I’d attended with Molly.

The painting was a poor rendering of the intertwined hearts of the Better Love logo.

Next to my computer was a framed portrait of Noah and me, taken on the trip during which we’d gotten engaged.

I’d been fighting the urge to scribble out his face so it became a hole.

I took a seat in my office chair and gestured for Rebecca to do the same in one of the velvet-upholstered seats across from my desk. The whole room was designed to prime my clients to fall for someone.

“Tell me, what brings you to Better Love?” I asked.

The first meeting was my favorite part of the process.

It made me feel like a psychologist to have my clients seated across from me, spilling all the reasons why they were desperate for love.

For a long time in my life I thought that I was going to become a therapist, until I realized the amount of schooling that it took.

I liked to think of my job as counseling cosplay.

What is it about your mother that means you’re unable to sustain a long-term relationship? I never asked.

“I can’t do the dating apps anymore,” Rebecca started.

I nodded.

“That’s something we hear a lot,” I said.

“The thing that broke me was when I was talking to this guy. We’d been chatting for a couple of weeks.

There were no red flags, which maybe was a flag in itself, because who has nothing wrong with them?

Anyway, we started discussing meeting up, and I realized that I was totally uninterested.

I knew without even going out with him that we weren’t right for each other, and I was like, what’s the point?

I told him that and he got really dramatic about it, the way that men do.

It was ridiculous. We’d never even met each other and there he was, acting like I’d destroyed this long-term thing.

I might’ve put up with it a few years ago.

It might’ve even been flattering then, but I’m too old for that now.

I want to get married, buy a house. I don’t want to deal with all the bullshit.

Trying to date on apps is like having a second job where my coworkers want to have sex with me, and I already deal with enough of that in my paid position. ”

It was a monologue that I’d heard a million variations of, and I replied with a response that I’d uttered so many times that it felt like I was reading from a script.

“I’m sorry to hear about your bad experiences on dating apps. That’s actually the reason why our founder opened Better Love to begin with. Her son used dating apps and grew similarly frustrated. We can help you here.”

I smiled encouragingly. It was the expression of someone who was happily engaged, rather than someone who had been dumped by her fiancé for her best friend over the weekend. There was relief in zipping up my professional skin, in casting my personal problems to the side.

I continued. “You described, in your application, the kind of man you’re looking for, but I want to hear about who you’ve gone for in the past. Tell me about your previous relationships and why they didn’t work out.”

“I’ve only been in love once. Or at least I thought I was in love at the time. Have you ever seen the show Love on the Lake ? He was a lot like Pierce.”

I sat up straighter in my chair. Love on the Lake was a reality television series that tracked a cast of young people who returned to the same Midwestern lake house to vacation each summer.

It was less popular than many dating shows and the Real Housewives franchises, but it had all the romance and drama of both.

Molly and I had a standing weekly date to watch new episodes of Love on the Lake .

We were partway through the season, and I was despairing about the prospect of watching new episodes without her.

Pierce was in the midst of what looked like a mental health breakdown.

Against all odds, he’d maintained a relationship for a couple of seasons.

His girlfriend ended up breaking up with him because he was unwilling to commit fully.

He didn’t believe in marriage. He wanted children, but only as an abstract concept.

“I need to be strong and choose myself,” his girlfriend had said.

“I’m obsessed with Love on the Lake . Pierce is such a dick. I was so glad when Callie broke up with him,” I told her. The topic brought out a level of informality that I normally avoided while speaking with clients.

“Me too. She’s way too good for him. He’s also, like, what, fifteen years older than her?

That was me and my ex. He was older. While we were together I thought he was hot, and now I look at him and cringe.

When I broke up with him, he told me that he’d thought I would never do it.

He’d assumed that I would stay with him forever, even if he never proposed. He assumed wrong.”

“It’s good that you stood up for yourself. We won’t waste your time like that here. We’ll only set you up with people who are serious about getting matched,” I assured her.

Better Love didn’t see a lot of people like Pierce.

Men like that did everything possible to avoid any kind of commitment, until they got to their forties and woke up, single and alone, with a sudden desire for five children, and a wife in her early twenties.

They were transparent to everyone other than themselves.

I worked with psychopaths, but not psychopaths like that.

“Great.” She smiled. Her bottom teeth were slightly crooked, which was charming on her otherwise flawless face. I struggled to imagine the man who assumed that Rebecca would lie down and take his shit.

“Tell me more about what kind of man you’re looking for.

Do you want a Sean or a Joel?” I named other cast members on Love on the Lake .

Not everyone had enough star power to be asked back for multiple seasons.

Some of the cast members were relegated to “friend” status, which, in the reality television universe, was understood to be an insult.

“Honestly, just avoid anyone who reminds you of someone from that show,” she said. “All of those guys give me the ick .”

“Even Landon?”

“Even him! Everyone talks about how he’s reformed, but I can’t trust it. His whole relationship seems like a business decision. I don’t want intimacy that feels like a contract negotiation.”