Page 5 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

Noah insisted on taking me to urgent care because Molly was too drunk to drive.

We bonded in the waiting room of the clinic, where Noah told me why he wanted to become a doctor (“I wanted to help people; plus, the paycheck doesn’t hurt”) and I told him about my favorite romantic comedies (“ When Harry Met Sally . Also, it’s become cool to hate on Love Actually , but I think that it hits a lot of good notes”).

I almost resented it when the nurse called me back, because I wanted to spend more time talking.

As it turned out, I’d fractured my ankle in the fall, a break that would require surgery and a several-weeks-long recovery. Surgery was difficult for people without spouses or family members to act as caregivers, but Noah took up the role without needing to be asked.

“You know, you don’t have to do this,” I told him.

“I know,” he replied. “I’m doing it because I want to.”

He learned my favorite Starbucks order, and watched episodes of reality television next to me in bed.

When I started physical therapy, he helped me practice the motions.

We practiced other things too, hours spent between the sheets that had nothing to do with healing.

By the time I was walking without a cast, Noah and I were in a committed relationship.

It wasn’t lost on me that our meeting was like something out of one of my beloved romantic comedies—the clumsy woman falling into the arms of the handsome doctor. It seemed a side note that Molly was the one who had pushed me.

Sometimes I thought that Molly regretted setting the two of us up, because it took part of me away from her.

There were nights when she wanted to hang out after Noah was off work and I prioritized my time with him.

When we were together, I was distracted by his texts on my phone.

When I complained about him she seemed to relish it, happily bringing me pints of ice cream while I vented.

That was, she liked it until she took him away from me.

I was sitting at the bar, sipping my Long Island iced tea, when a man approached me.

He was handsome, the kind of guy I’d gone for before I met Noah.

He wore a black sweater that flattered his muscular chest. He had a scar that cut through one of his eyebrows; on a lesser man it might’ve been a flaw, but it served only to make him more appealing.

I smoothed out the wrinkles in my sparkling dress.

There was no situation so bad that it made me entirely vacate my vanity.

“Hi,” he said.

I knew that, logically, I should be wary of people who approached lonely women in bars. However, it was my birthday, and my best friend and fiancé had just announced that they were having an affair, both of which allowed for some socially acceptable recklessness.

“Hi,” I replied.

“My friends and I saw you standing over here all alone and thought you might like some company.”

He gestured toward a group of people at the dartboards.

The men were all almost as attractive as the one standing next to me, and the women were dressed in revealing outfits of a type that I was used to seeing primarily on reality dating shows.

It felt good that despite his company, the man was drawn to me.

“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “it’s my birthday.”

“Is it? Happy birthday. What’s a girl like you doing alone on her birthday?”

I wasn’t ordinarily a candid person. While I had a penchant for imagining myself as a reality show cast member who displayed her truths for all to see, my life contained no room for confession.

I told Molly things, and occasionally Noah, and everyone else received the filtered versions of events that I presented on social media.

However, there was something about the man in front of me that was like a camera in my face.

He made me want to spill all my secrets, with no regard for the future—or maybe that was the alcohol coursing through my veins.

“My fiancé invited me out to dinner and then told me that he’s leaving me for my best friend,” I said. The words tasted rancid. They made me want a shot.

“You’re joking,” he replied. He looked me up and down, trying to figure out what about me might inspire such an act. What he didn’t realize was that such things weren’t visible on the skin.

“Dead serious.”

“Wow. Oh wow. That’s a terrible thing to happen on your birthday.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “He’s going to come crawling back to me.”

The words surprised both of us, but as I said them, I recognized the truth embedded within.

I couldn’t erase from my brain the Noah I thought I knew.

The one who sent me flowers, who brought me breakfast in bed when I was hungover, who nursed me back to health when my bones broke.

People didn’t change so dramatically overnight, and neither did my emotions.

There was a character on one of my favorite reality shows whose boyfriend had cheated on her and she’d taken him back. They were engaged a year later, followed by marriage, and had a baby on the way. I hadn’t understood it at the time. Molly and I had yelled at the screen.

“I would never stay with someone who cheated on me,” Molly said.

I got it now. I’d first realized sitting in the waiting room on the night we met that Noah and I were going to get married.

No one had ever cared for me like that before.

When I was a child, my parents had once neglected to take me to the doctor for a UTI, and the infection had nearly spread to my other organs when I was finally seen.

Noah recognized my needs. He provided food when I was hungry and medicine when I was sick.

On top of that, we’d made the down payment on a wedding venue, my dress was being tailored, we had appointments to meet with caterers and bakers, and we’d even found our dream house.

Forgiveness would not come easily or quickly.

However, I would let him tend to the wounds he’d left on my heart the same way that he’d tended to my ankle.

Things with Molly and Noah wouldn’t last. They weren’t meant to be, not like Noah and I were. He would grow tired of her and then come crawling back to me, begging for forgiveness. It wasn’t ideal, but then, love never was, was it? It was the difficult times that made the story.

“You would take someone back after they did that to you?” the handsome man asked.

“I’ve lived through worse,” I told him.

He moved his eyes across my face, staring at me the way that I’d stared at spoons as a child, trying to bend them with brainpower alone. I wondered what my cheekbones were telling him, what truths he could glean from my eyelashes.

“Let me help you forget about it for a night,” he said.

He held out his hand, an invitation. I stood up from the stool and took it. It was as though he were asking me to the dance floor, his feet leading the moves.

“Okay,” I said. “A night.”

That was all it was supposed to be, a single night with a handsome man—a na?ve assumption. All my television viewing should’ve helped me realize that a chance encounter with a charming stranger was always the beginning of the story rather than the end.