Page 34 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

“You poor thing,” Rebecca said.

I scooped another spoonful of ice cream into my mouth.

“It’s been tough,” I admitted. “Tough” didn’t cover it.

Noah’s infidelity and death were like a cheese grater on the heart, but voicing such a feeling required a kind of vulnerability that I struggled with.

That was on the long list of things that I blamed my mother for.

She’d never listened to my feelings, had ridiculed me when I’d tried to go to her.

Now emotional expression felt like trying to dance The Nutcracker without any ballet training.

Rebecca and I were sprawled across her king-sized bed, surrounded by a pile of snacks. I wore a pair of her pajamas. My wet hair smelled like her shampoo.

After my confession, Rebecca had called a tow truck to rescue us from the field. We’d waited outside, shivering, staring at the night sky.

“It’s kind of beautiful out here,” I said. There was a whole swath of stars that weren’t obscured by the city’s light here. They gave the darkness a cheery glow that had been missing from my treks through the woods.

“The bright side of a car crash,” Rebecca joked.

“You didn’t mean to,” I said.

“The rode was icy,” she agreed.

I got the sense that we were both lying, as though we were coming up with a cover story for a crime that we had committed.

“I see it all the time,” the tow truck driver said when he arrived.

The two of us squeezed into the seat next to him. The cab reeked of marijuana.

“It’s a pleasure to be able to help you ladies,” he told us. I wondered what he was imagining we looked like beneath our jackets.

“Cars like that aren’t meant for our weather here.

Are you from somewhere else?” he quizzed, not pausing long enough to allow Rebecca to answer.

“Snow tires are the thing. Snow tires and all-wheel drive. You’d be shocked if I told you about some of the stuff that I’ve seen.

” He proceeded to describe vehicles wadded up in little balls.

I was relieved when we were safely in front of Rebecca’s apartment building.

“Do you want to come up?” she asked. “I would offer to give you a ride back to your car, but, you know, I don’t exactly have a car myself at the moment. We could have a sleepover.”

A giggle escaped from my throat, residual from our earlier laughing session. Where that had been the result of a near-death experience, this laughter was all joy.

This was only the second time that I’d been invited to a sleepover at a friend’s house.

The first time, I was twelve, and the new girl in town had innocently invited me to her birthday party before the mother of one of the other guests clued her parents in to my identity; she’d shamefully rescinded the invite the following day.

Later, she would become one of the girls who would torment me the most. I took her shift as proof that some people were born evil but others grew into it.

I’d always longed for a platonic sleepover.

As I understood them from books and movies, sleepovers were sacred events during which girls painted their nails and confided in one another.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t tell anyone what had occurred between Noah and me: I hadn’t grown up in the girlhood culture of confession.

“Sure,” I said, like it wasn’t everything to me.

Rebecca lived on the twentieth floor of one of those towering apartment buildings that I looked at and thought, I wonder who lives there .

The living room windows had a clear view of the city, and the walls were lined with colorful abstract prints.

Everything was polished and sophisticated like no man’s apartment ever was.

It was the kind of place that I’d previously seen only in content from social media influencers.

“You must sell a lot of cars,” I remarked as I looked around.

“I do okay,” she said in the tone of someone who knew they excelled in their field. “Do you mind if I shower? I still smell like the tow truck. I have two showers. You can take the nicer one if you want.”

I nodded. The tow truck reeked in a way that got stuck in my nose. There was something else there too—the scent of almost dying.

“Yeah, that would be great,” I said.

The primary bathroom was a modern space with a cell-like shower and a separate bathtub that was more of a decorative object than a pool in which to get clean. Rebecca supplied me with a towel and pajamas.

“They’re from a family Christmas,” she explained, gesturing at the snowman pattern on the pants.

I was familiar, from posts by influencers on social media, with the ritual of matching family pajamas.

I’d thought that the trend was stupid and the people who engaged in it looked silly.

Then Noah’s mother had given me an outfit of my own.

I posed for pictures with the family, and I liked how I blended in, my form indistinguishable from theirs.

Admittedly, I was jealous that Rebecca had a family like that in spite of her father’s murder.

Selfishly, I wanted her to have a past as fucked-up as mine.

I was slowly realizing that that was too much to ask of a friend—too much to ask of anyone at all.

My skin turned pink as the water returned the warmth to my limbs.

I hadn’t realized how cold it had been in the field, my body heated by adrenaline.

I squirted a copious amount of expensive-looking shampoo into my palm and massaged it into my scalp.

Though it was my first time in her condo, I felt at home in a way that I hadn’t in my town house since Noah left.

I stayed in the bathroom for too long, taking what Molly called a “sadness shower.” I wasn’t sad, not quite, but I was processing.

When I emerged, Rebecca was on the bed with a variety of chips, pizza bagels, and ice cream.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she said.

“Did you just have all of this?” I asked. She didn’t look like a person who routinely ate things like pizza bagels.

“It’s my emergency stash. You know, for when I really need it.”

I settled awkwardly next to her on the bed.

Platonic cuddling was foreign to me. Through observation I was familiar with how women touched one another, but casual touch had never come naturally to me.

My parents hadn’t been the kind of people to show affection.

When I got in bed with someone, it was nearly always to have sex.

Rebecca pressed a button on a remote control, and the electric fireplace on the wall across from us burst into flame. A large television was mounted above it, and Rebecca clicked on the latest episode of Love on the Lake .

“Have you seen this yet?” she asked.

“No.” I lied because I wanted to watch it again, with her.

I peeled the seal off a carton of ice cream. There was a particular way that women indulged together when there was no one else to watch, an implicit understanding of eating without judgment. As Rebecca had said, we needed it.

She paused the episode during a lull in the action and turned to look at me. From the way that she studied my face, it almost seemed as if she might be about to kiss me.

“I’m sorry I crashed the car,” she started. “You weren’t talking to me. Sometimes people need a little something to help them open up.”

The popping sound when the lid of a jar of pickles finally released. It struck me then that the accident hadn’t been entirely accidental. Rebecca had been trying to pry open something that was stuck.

“Tell me what happened with your fiancé,” she continued.

I described the events of my birthday, how I’d anticipated a surprise party and arrived to find Molly and Noah together.

“He didn’t even remember that it was my birthday. Molly, though—she knew. It’s like she set up the whole night to hurt me as much as possible.”

“Oh wow. What assholes.”

“This is going to sound so stupid, but I was certain that things weren’t over between us. I thought…well, I thought he was going to come crawling back to me.”

The admission was humiliating and ludicrous.

I recalled how Molly and I had judged the woman on reality television who’d taken her cheating ex back.

I told myself that I’d been keeping the situation to myself as a strategy, but really I was trying to avoid the embarrassment of being cheated on.

I worried that Rebecca would look at me with disgust or pity, but instead she let out a righteous “Of course you thought he would come back! Who wouldn’t want to be with you? ”

It was the exact thing that I needed to hear. I wasn’t delusional or pathetic. I was normal. I was human.

“What happened next?” Rebecca asked.

“I tried to give him space. Men like that.”

Rebecca laughed.

“It’s the main thing they like. They like the shape of space more than a woman. Nothing is as sweet as the thing that you don’t have.”

“Exactly. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I texted him and he came over, ostensibly to pick up his stuff, but we ended sleeping together.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. Things were weird when he left.” I didn’t tell her the part about sending the picture to Molly. If social media had taught me anything, it was that people always edited out the least palatable aspects of themselves.

Rebecca looked at me expectantly, and I realized she wanted me to tell her about the other part, the part where Noah was dead.

“I guess my former best friend found out what happened,” I continued. “They had a fight when he got back to her place. He said he was going to stay with a friend. No one has seen him since.”

“What the fuck? That’s so messed up. What do you think happened?”

I took a bite of ice cream, a piece of chocolate crunching between my teeth.

Someone killed him. They’re delivering him to me in pieces wrapped up like gifts of love. I can’t tell anyone, because I’m afraid that someone’s trying to frame me. I don’t know what’s more painful, that I had to dispose of parts of his body or that I have to keep it a secret.

“I have no idea,” I told her.

“He could still be okay. Maybe he just needed a break,” she suggested.

“Yeah, maybe.”

I was so mad at him for what he did with Molly, but I would’ve forgiven him, because that’s how much we were meant to be together.

I still have a deposit on a wedding venue.

I keep picturing him sewn together like a doll at the altar—you know, like those viral videos where people who are paralyzed learn to walk to surprise their bride.

Rebecca reached her hand out and grabbed mine.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “I’m here now. You can lean on me. Whatever happens, it will be all right.”

There was a strange twinge in my chest. At first, I worried that there was something wrong with me.

I’d read online that the most commonly referenced heart attack symptoms were the ones that were most likely to occur in men, while women might have a completely different experience.

Was I dying? I was so used to the worst possible outcomes.

No, whatever I was experiencing was positive.

It was the ache that came with feeling warm and safe after years of loneliness and struggle.

“I’m so glad I met you,” I told Rebecca. “I think I’ve been lonely for a very long time without realizing it. It’s nice to make friends with someone new.”

You showed up right when I needed you most.

“Same,” she agreed. “I’ve been looking for someone like you for years.”

Rebecca picked up the remote control and pressed play. The women on the show were getting dressed for a cops-and-robbers-themed party. Some of them dressed as police officers and others wore black-and-white-striped prison garb.

I fell asleep as two cast members argued about whether one was being supportive enough of the other’s business. The bed was comfortable, my stomach full, and I felt safe in Rebecca’s condo, with the knowledge that no one was going to leave body parts outside the door.