Page 4 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

Another thing that I’d learned from television was that in times of crisis the appropriate action to take was to get very, very drunk.

There was a bar down the street from Antonio’s, a place that earlier I’d imagined we’d drunkenly stumble to for an after-party.

I entered alone, a state that normally didn’t bother me, but that night I felt conspicuous.

I made a beeline for the bar and ordered a Long Island iced tea from the himbo bartender. I wanted to be obliterated.

I tried to think of someone I could call.

A friend who would make indignant declarations on my behalf, like How dare they!

She was your best friend! I thought of all my followers on social media, people who made comments like So cute!

or Send me the recipe! when I posted pictures from my day-to-day existence.

I labeled them “friends,” but none of them were people I could call on in times of crisis.

All they wanted from me were flattering photographs, shots of food that I’d eaten, and glimmers of my work life.

They didn’t want the real me. Molly was the only one who knew who I actually was and still loved me for it. Or at least I thought she’d loved me.

Before Molly and I became friends, at the age of twenty-four, I spent most of my time alone.

I went out, sure. Attended parties, slept with men, had relationships that never went beyond the surface level.

It was a condition that I’d adjusted to at a young age, as I was an only child and my parents weren’t interested in arranging playdates or engaging with me themselves.

Everything got worse after the arrest.

Seemingly everyone knew what had happened, and avoided me as though that kind of violence might be contagious.

I spent my time watching television and curating an online presence that allowed no one to know who I was or what had happened between my parents.

To my followers, it appeared I was living a cool and fun life full of friends who were just out of the frame.

In reality, I was nearly always by myself.

When I turned eighteen, I changed my name and went to college in a faraway state, where no one had ever heard of Peter and Lydia Schwartz.

I was good at making acquaintances, but I still didn’t have a best friend the way that the women I watched on television did.

While the other students longed for sex and romance, I was envious of the women who got ready for parties together, held back one another’s hair when they drank too much, and confided their deepest, darkest secrets to one another.

I tried joining clubs, going to exercise classes, and inserting myself into conversations with women I liked from afar, but I struggled to get past a surface-level relationship.

My peers told me stories about themselves, and when I opened my mouth to reciprocate, nothing emerged.

They were, I realized, unwilling to give themselves away to someone who couldn’t do the same in return.

That all changed when I met Molly.

Molly and I met in a group exercise class.

She was new to fitness, preferring to spend her free time on the couch in front of the TV, and struggled to keep up with the other women, who looked like screen-printed copies of one another, down to their matching outfits.

After class, everyone went to a café to drink green juice together.

Molly and I were never invited. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

I wore the same outfits as them, did my hair the same way.

A couple of them even watched some of the same television shows as me, but gave curt responses when I tried to engage them in discussion about them.

I thought of friendship as a code I needed to break.

If I tried enough combinations, then eventually they’d let me in.

“Do you want to go for coffee?” I asked Molly in the locker room one day when I noticed her staring longingly in the direction of the other women.

She turned toward me. The eagerness in her expression nearly broke me in two.

“Yes, I’d love to,” she said.

Based on what I’d previously witnessed, I’d expected Molly to be shy, but she started talking the moment we sat down.

“Can we talk about how snotty everyone in our class is?” Molly said. I was surprised by the force in her voice and reconsidered my earlier judgment of meekness. She was also cuter outside of the exercise class setting, with big blue eyes and fashionable clothing.

“Oh my gosh, I thought it was just me,” I told her. I’d put so much of my energy into trying to get the women to like me that I was excited by the opportunity to vent.

“They act like they’re superior to everyone because they’re in good shape,” Molly said.

“Don’t let them fool you. Those matching sets they like to wear cover up a lot of flaws,” I replied. “Why d’you think I bought them?”

“And what’s with the green juice? It tastes like grass, in my opinion.”

“Ugh, yes. They’re scared to eat food.”

“That’s because they don’t have a personality outside of their bodies. I don’t know what they’re going to do when they get old.”

As it turned out, a shared focus of dislike was a solid basis for a friendship.

The following week, the two of us got drunk at a tequila bar, where we discovered that we had a lot in common. Molly also had a penchant for romantic comedies and reality shows about women who were wealthy disasters.

“I love all the Real Housewives franchises, Love Island , Love Is Blind —you name it,” she told me.

“I used to be embarrassed about the things that I liked. Then I realized that all the things we’re supposed to hide, all the stuff we’re supposed to feel guilty about liking, are things that are geared toward women.

It’s so stupid. That’s why I get so mad about the women in our exercise class.

Society pressures us into being these perfect little things, and that’s just not who I am, you know? ”

Yes, yes. I did know. I’d spent so many years of my life trying to fit in that it was freeing to be around someone so open.

Suddenly, we were spending all our time together.

It was the friendship version of a whirlwind romance.

We cooked healthy meals, and then splurged on pints of ice cream while catching up on our favorite shows.

We quit our original exercise class and tried out gyms across the city, none of which could compete with the seductive draw of the couch.

We got second piercings in our earlobes, and I was Molly’s caretaker when she got her wisdom teeth removed.

I finally had the kind of friendship that I’d always longed for, the kind that I’d seen on TV.

I told her about what had happened with my parents, because telling secrets to each other was what friends did.

Unlike the kids in my youth, she didn’t judge me.

“That must’ve been so hard,” she said, then hugged me and insisted that we eat a pint of ice cream.

Our relationship changed after I met Noah.

By that point, Molly and I had been friends for three years.

She was with me when Noah and I met, because she was nearly always with me.

We were at a bar, drinking cocktails, something pink and girly, when Noah and his friends walked in.

Molly watched the way that my head swiveled to follow his form across the room.

“You like him,” she said.

I wasn’t usually shy, but something about Noah made me that way. He was so wholesome, like a loaf of bread, with his blond hair and preppy style, which I would later learn was out of apathy more than anything else.

“He’s cute, I guess,” I replied.

“Let’s get closer,” Molly said, grabbing my hand.

I could hear them talking.

“I had this one patient today who was so difficult. She kept interrupting me to tell me that I didn’t understand,” one woman said.

“I had one of those last week,” a man replied.

From their conversation, I pieced together that they worked in the medical field.

“I think he’s a doctor,” I whispered to Molly. I wanted him so badly that I began to feel physically ill. It made me uncomfortable to desire things that only other people could give me, because my childhood had taught me that it was best to stick to things that I could provide for myself.

“Talk to him,” Molly urged.

“No.”

Noah wasn’t like the other men I went for.

The muscular guys with their slicked-back hair who avoided committed relationships like they were a venereal disease.

Sex was easy. Sex meant that I didn’t have to think about my parents’ relationship, even though deep down I longed for that kind of romance.

Noah, I correctly identified, was a boyfriend guy.

I’d later learn that he hadn’t been single for longer than a month since he was thirteen.

Unlike me, he’d never been alone in his life.

Molly didn’t care about the psychoanalytic reasoning that held me back. She was my best friend, which meant that she was my wing-woman in dating, and she gave me no choice in the matter by shoving me in the back hard enough that I fell down right in front of Noah.

“Ow,” I cried out involuntarily.

It irked me when female protagonists in books described themselves as hopelessly clumsy and yet men were drawn to them like bees to honey. Men, I thought, wanted graceful women with legs that extended to the sky. That was until Molly pushed me in front of Noah and made him love me.

“Are you okay?” he asked, rushing to my side. “I’m a doctor. Does anything hurt?”

His opening line was technically a lie—he was a first-year resident rather than a full-fledged doctor. The difference didn’t matter to me in that moment, as my ankle really hurt.