Page 3 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

“We’ve wanted to tell you for a while now.

I swear, we didn’t mean for it to happen.

We ran into each other at a bar. We were drunk and, well…

” Molly’s voice trailed off as she waited for me to put the pieces together.

She had the tone of someone pretending to be apologetic, which I was well acquainted with from all the reality shows that we’d watched together.

I’m sorry if I made you feel that way, but I was being my authentic self.

“Noah doesn’t go to bars. He’s always at work.” I lost confidence in the words as they came out of my mouth. I was operating in a dream space, where I wasn’t sure what was real. It seemed strange that my arms were still connected to my body, that I was able to maintain my hold on the glass.

“There are things that he doesn’t tell you,” Molly said.

I looked at Noah, who was now the size of a mouse. I couldn’t figure out why I’d ever thought him tall.

“Did you forget how to speak?” I asked.

I’d never seen him like that before. He usually had the obnoxious confidence of a man with a degree in how bodies worked.

“Sorry, Lexie,” he whispered into his bourbon.

“That’s it? That’s all you have? Your job that involves telling patients that they’re dying, and you can’t look me in the eyes and tell me that you’ve been cheating on me?”

I stared him down. He refused to meet my gaze.

“This is a joke, right? One of those pranks? Well, you got me. I’m so sad, boo-hoo. You’re having an affair, are deeply in love, all that. Can we skip to the end, where you tell me that none of this is real, and then celebrate my birthday?”

Noah’s head shot up like someone had just stuck a needle in his side.

“It’s your birthday?”

His eyes were red. Had he been crying? I hadn’t noticed.

“Of course it’s my birthday. That’s why we’re here. This is my birthday dinner.”

Noah looked at Molly.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I guess I thought it was a little weird that you wanted to tell her on her birthday, but I went along with it because that was what you wanted,” she said.

Noah shook his head.

“No,” he insisted. “No, I didn’t know. You should’ve told me, Molly. I wanted to let her down gently; you knew that.”

The joke was going on too long, too seriously. I needed it to end. I looked around for hidden cameras, for the rest of the party to pop out and say, Surprise! It wasn’t the kind of thing that was ever supposed to happen with Noah. Above all else, he was supposed to be safe.

“It’s better that she knows,” Molly said. “Now she can get on with the rest of her life.”

“Noah is the rest of my life,” I said. I thought about the house we were going to buy, the children we were going to have.

The last time I’d seen Noah’s mother, she’d handed me the smallest onesie that I’d ever seen, stating that she’d found it in the store and couldn’t resist. It had been an act as meaningful as when Noah had slid the engagement ring onto my finger.

“We have a wedding date, a venue. I bought a dress. It’s being tailored.

What about the house ?” Noah and I had been casually house hunting for the past couple of months.

He’d moved into my town house shortly after we started dating, and we’d decided that it was time to move into something bigger and jointly owned.

Just the previous weekend we’d toured a suburban four-bedroom, five-bathroom house that he’d called his “dream home.” For some reason, I’d thought my presence was implied within that dream.

“Lexie, I’m sorry. It’s over,” he said sadly.

There was a rushing in my brain. The sound of a dam lifting, a waterfall set free.

They were serious, or at least Molly was.

She sat with her martini glass pinched between two fingers.

She looked so good. Had she lost weight?

I’d thought her dress was similar to mine, and now I realized that it was exactly the same, only hers was bright red instead of purple.

I thought back to our shopping trip. She’d known. She’d directed me to buy the dress and then purchased one of her own. The whole situation had been engineered to obliterate me. Why go for a gunshot wound when you could send a bomb?

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked.

“It’s not about doing anything to you,” she said. “It’s about Noah and me. We’re in love.”

“No, you’re not. I know all about love, and this isn’t it.”

I looked at Noah.

“You don’t really want this. I know you don’t.

I know everything about you, Noah. We’re meant to be together.

The perfect couple. You might be happy with her right now, but it won’t last. Trust me on that—I’m an expert.

There’s still time to fix this. You can leave with me, right now, the two of us.

We can go home and make things right. You don’t have to go with her. ”

He almost went with me. His body didn’t move, but I could sense that he wanted to go.

At his core, Noah was a rule follower. He did what people told him to do, because historically that had worked out in his favor.

He’d gotten into a good college and medical school, and had matched with a residency.

He wasn’t used to people delivering advice in anything less than good faith.

“Sorry, Lexie,” he said again.

I wanted to claim that what I did next was an original action; however, it was something that I’d seen a character do on one of my favorite reality television shows.

One of the cast members was in a fight with another cast member because she’d had a make-out session with a guy whom neither of them were dating but both had previously slept with.

“That was so shady of her,” Molly had said when we watched the episode. She then clapped and cheered when the wronged woman threw wine at her castmate’s face, staining her expensive outfit.

I didn’t have wine, but I did have a half-drunk martini.

I stood up, wrapping my fingers around the glass, and tossed the remaining liquid at Molly’s face.

Something that I knew, and Noah likely didn’t, was that Molly wore a lot of makeup.

She’d had bad acne as a teenager, and she’d carried insecurity about that with her into her adult life.

Whatever holding spray she might’ve applied was no match for the liquor from my glass, and lines began to streak through her foundation.

My only regret was that I hadn’t ordered red wine, which might’ve stained her cursed dress.

Molly gasped.

“Bitch!” she said.

I grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair and marched out of the restaurant.

When things were particularly bad, I liked to step outside myself.

I was no longer in my body, but was a woman I was watching on a reality television show.

Rather than a participant, I was a member of an audience to my own rippling pain.

I narrated my life through “confessionals,” in which cast members provided exposition on events depicted on-screen.

Yeah, I was definitely shocked when Noah and Molly told me they were in love.

They were the two people I trusted most, and they betrayed me.

You’d think it was something I’d be used to by now, but you never really adjust to being hurt by the people you love.

The distance made the pain manageable. Performing the motions of being a strong person was almost the same as actually being one.

I understood why reality television stars wore full faces of makeup while lounging around the house.

They needed to appear put together even when their lives were falling apart.