Page 21 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

While Better Love couldn’t fully control what clients did, we highly recommended that people wait until the third date before they saw each other’s living spaces or engaged in sexual intimacy.

The suggestion wasn’t related to any kind of moral purity but because sex complicated things.

One of the reasons why people struggled to find someone compatible out in the world was because they confused lust and love, and our guidelines were set in place to help them avoid such confusion.

Knowing that it’s against the rules makes me want to do it more, Rebecca texted.

I knew what I should say as a matchmaker, and I knew what I should say as a friend. Maybe Serena hadn’t been totally off the mark in trying to establish separation between those roles.

You do you , I said. I wasn’t about to cockblock my new friend.

I cut big slices of apple pie and scooped vanilla ice cream on top—the fancy kind, embedded with dark spots of vanilla bean.

I decided that when we got back together, I’d make sure to do nice things for him more often.

A lack of pie wasn’t the reason why Noah left, but maybe pie would be enough to make him stay.

When I walked into the living room and saw Noah sitting there, it was as though he’d never left.

I’d always wondered how people could forgive their cheating partners, but I got it now.

It was like he’d spent a weekend in Aruba or Hawaii, had his little adventures, and come back home.

Once again, I longed for a rope to tie him to the couch.

It didn’t have to be unpleasant. There were a lot of people who got off on being bound.

“Wow, that looks amazing,” Noah said.

I put on the detective show. Compared with reality television, this show’s colors were muted, the sound dulled. Oftentimes, things that were labeled “prestige” were simply difficult to comprehend.

I took a bite of pie, then another. I looked down and realized that the whole piece was gone.

Noah and I were mere inches apart. I wanted to devour him.

One of the questions on the Better Love intake form asked clients to give three adjectives to describe themselves.

Sometimes I considered what I would write, and the only thing that I could think of was “hungry.”

Noah leaned forward to set his empty plate on the table. Our fingers brushed as I put my plate on top of his.

On television, the detective raced after a suspect.

“Don’t let him get away!” the detective screamed.

The uniformed police officers were ineffectual, as usual.

That was part of the premise of the show.

The detective could depend only on himself to solve crimes.

Luckily, he’d run cross-country in high school.

The suspect was fast, but the detective was faster.

After all that effort, the cops let the suspect go a mere three hours later.

“Goddamn it!” the detective yelled.

My hand crept closer to Noah’s leg. Ironically, I wanted him more now than I ever had when we were together. I liked having sex with him, but sometimes it was perfunctory. I was accustomed to putting on a show for men, making them want me by being who they wanted me to be.

Jump my bones, I mentally hissed at him.

Strangely, he’d never been able to read my mind.

It was the detective who guided Noah into my arms. He had a female acolyte, young and attractive.

There had been hints that they were going to get together since the first episode of the show.

They’d almost done it in a prior episode, when someone had shot at the acolyte and the detective had tackled her to the ground to protect her from the bullets that flew through the air.

Once the gunfire had ceased, the two became aware of the closeness of their bodies, how the detective rested between the acolyte’s hips.

They didn’t kiss then, but only because an officer interrupted them to ask if they were okay.

The audience lamented the interruption. Inherently, they understood the connection between sex and danger.

In the episode we were watching, the acolyte went to the detective’s house to comfort him after the suspect was released.

People frequently went to one another’s houses on television shows.

In real life, I rarely had guests. Only Molly and Noah had routinely breached the border of my front door, and of the two, one had been permanently banned.

Like Noah and me, the detective and the acolyte started drinking. Like Noah and me, they grew closer and closer. The acolyte made the first move. She had to. He was her superior, old and experienced. If he pursued her, he would be accused of taking advantage of his position.

She climbed on top of him. I climbed on top of Noah.

He continued watching television, over my shoulder, while I kissed his neck.

It was an immersive experience. He became the detective and I the acolyte, the same way that earlier he’d been the son and I’d been the mother, feeding him casserole.

It was only when I pulled my dress over my head, revealing my bare body, that he dragged his eyes from the screen. I wanted him to worship me.

Noah didn’t bother taking his clothes off; he merely unzipped his pants.

“Lexie,” he murmured, “you feel so good.”

I was surprised to feel a spark of anger within my chest at the sound of his pleasure.

The hysterical woman never would’ve allowed Noah to feel good again.

She would’ve taken the opportunity to castrate her former lover or, worse, end him completely.

I shut out the thought. I let him fill me.

I wished that I wasn’t on birth control, so that there was potential for a pregnancy.

The episode ended. I climbed off of Noah, wrapping around my naked body the blanket I kept on the couch.

My phone buzzed, causing an outsized tremor in the couch cushions. I picked it up. I had a text message from Rebecca.

His dick is disappointing , she wrote.

The movement disrupted the spell. Noah’s expression returned to the blank doctor’s gaze.

“I should go,” he said, looking back down at his watch. “You have plans.”

Oh yes. My fictitious plans. I’d nearly forgotten.

“Okay.”

I held up my phone, pretended that I was texting, and snapped a picture of Noah on the couch before he stood up.

It wasn’t a flattering shot. His face was a postcoital red, and angled in such a way that it gave him a double chin.

His underwear was wrapped around his knees and his penis was deflated.

Noah would’ve hated it if he’d seen it. He wanted to view himself only in the most flattering of lights.

He struggled when he received criticism at work, and on numerous occasions I’d consoled him about the critiques, regardless of how valid they seemed.

It didn’t matter. The picture wasn’t for him.

Noah restored his pants to their rightful position before making his way to the door. He looked at me. He leaned forward as though to give me a kiss, and then backed away. He was uncomfortable in all situations in which there wasn’t a prescribed script.

“Bye, Lexie.”

I fought off the impulse to beg him to stay.

This could all be over right now. Neither of us brought up his belongings.

I viewed that as a purposeful omission. The longer his things were in my closet, the more of a reason he had to come back.

The sound of the door closing was painful.

I almost immediately regretted letting him leave.

I wanted the universe to deliver me an award for my ability to act like a normal, stable woman.

I gave myself a minute to breathe. I put on my comfiest pair of pajamas.

I opened a second bottle of wine. Then I set the next part of my plan into motion.

I wasn’t so na?ve as to think a single plunge into my vagina was enough to get Noah to reverse course.

He wasn’t alone in what he’d done. Molly was the true ringleader of their affair, something that I doubted Noah recognized.

He was good at memorization, at regurgitating bits of information he’d been told, but he wasn’t a great critical thinker.

Often I’d mention current events to him and he’d reply, “Oh, yeah, I haven’t really been paying attention.

” It felt a little like he’d sleepwalked his way into an affair.

I knew that if I prodded Molly enough, she would become the hysterical woman. She was, after all, quite an emotional person—much more so than me. I’d even seen her cry while watching episodes of reality television.

“I really thought they would end up together,” she said, her eyes wet and red, about two people who worked on a superyacht who’d split up after a three-week fling.

Feelings like that were not Noah’s forte.

He was used to caring for the tangible—bones, blood, and skin.

Emotions were trickier. Despite attempts from the pharmaceutical companies, there was no prescription he could write that rid a person of their tears.

His inability to provide a fix made him uncomfortable.

“I like you because you don’t get upset about stupid things,” he’d told me once. “I always know how to make you happy.”

It was one of the highest compliments that a man could give. You’re not like those other women, who scream and cry and whine. If I revealed that side of Molly to him—the crying woman—then maybe he’d leave her. If I showed her what he’d done, then maybe she would be the one to kick him out.

I opened up my text thread with Molly, which extended back for years and years.

All those stupid little intimacies. There were times when we’d even texted each other about pooping.

In some ways, it was easier to tell her things than to tell Noah.

I wasn’t worried about embarrassing myself in front of her.

I didn’t need her to find me sexy. I wasn’t trying to be promoted to the next step in the relationship hierarchy, because we’d already reached the pinnacle of friendship.

Everyone needed a place where they weren’t trying to prove themselves, and they could just be.

It stung to think of how mistaken I’d been about the nature of our bond.

The last message she’d sent said Happy Birthday Queen!!! The words were recontextualized by the fact that they were sent mere hours before she told me that she was sleeping with my fiancé.

I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow her to have the final say in our friendship.

At the conclusion of each season of Love on the Lake , there was a reunion episode in which, after viewing the season, all the cast members got together to air their grievances.

They wore ball gowns that were suitable for the Met Gala and screamed in one another’s faces.

“I wish there were reunion episodes in real life,” I told Molly once—a kind of fantasy to be able to tell everyone exactly what you thought of them after viewing all their bad behavior.

I didn’t have a soundstage on which to share my grievances with the world.

I was sitting in my pajamas on the couch, drinking my second bottle of wine, my underwear wet from Noah’s semen leaking out of me.

I had no microphone through which to convey my anger, no platform for revenge.

All I had was a picture, which I uploaded into the thread.

Do you know where your boyfriend is tonight? I wrote beneath it.

I imagined all the ways it would make her crazy, which wasn’t particularly difficult, as I’d inhabited my own forms of crazy in the week since Molly and Noah had told me about the affair.

I hoped that she would scream and cry, pound her fists against Noah’s chest until he realized the error of his ways and came running back to me.

You were right. You were right all along, he would say.

I was so certain of the outcome that I felt smug as I poured myself another glass of wine. It felt like everything was back in my grasp. I was a matchmaker. I was in control of love.

Things got fuzzy after that. More wine. Somewhere, I found a bottle of vodka. I remembered eating cold casserole with my hands. Rebecca texting I cannot WAIT to tell you about my night. At some point I went outside. My fingers got so cold that they ached.