Page 51 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

“It’s perfect,” Aidan said when he saw the wedding venue on a nature reserve overlooking a lake. Across the water, woods stretched for miles. I wondered how many bodies the trees hid.

“You’re not bothered that this was where I was supposed to marry Noah?” I asked.

“No. Noah’s part of our story. I think it’s good that he’s included in this,” Aidan said.

That was one of the things that I liked about him. He wasn’t threatened by other men, or anyone, really. His total faith in us made it easy for me to be faithful too.

It seemed like a miracle that, in the end, it was all going to work out for me.

Rebecca helped me put together the bits and pieces of the wedding that had been neglected after Noah left me for Molly.

I called on the connections that I’d made as a matchmaker to secure a last-minute cake, catering, photographer, and DJ.

I put Aidan in charge of the invitations, because he had more people to reach out to than I did.

I invited only Rebecca, Oliver, Serena, and a couple of acquaintances from college, who sent their regrets.

I met Aidan’s family at the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding. His father spent the evening talking about the Ironman competition that he’d recently completed, while his mother complained about the food. They were the type of people who didn’t know how to express positive emotions.

“I hope you’re ready for him,” his mother warned, gesturing to her youngest son. “I thought I knew how to raise children, and then he was born.”

I watched Aidan’s siblings—a brother and a sister, with kids of their own—move about the room. Physically, they resembled him, though their auras were different. Aidan had something that they didn’t, something intangible.

“At first, we thought he was the perfect baby. He was so calm and relaxed all the time. And then he learned to talk, and we knew we had something else on our hands,” his mother continued.

She said such things as if I might agree with her, or even feel bad for her. Either she didn’t realize that Aidan had told me about the padded cell his parents had kept him in, or she thought I’d understand. All choices seemed rational to the people who made them.

By the end of our conversation, it was clear that there would be no Christmas celebrations with matching pajamas.

While Noah’s mother had worshipped the ground Noah walked upon, Aidan’s mother didn’t even seem to like Aidan.

I mourned the relationship that I wouldn’t get to have with my mother-in-law, and then I let it go.

I didn’t need an extended family, not when I had Aidan. We would create our own little world.

“Are your parents going to be here? I would love to meet them,” Aidan’s mother asked when she’d finished complaining about her son.

“No, unfortunately they couldn’t make it,” I told her.

“That’s too bad. We’ll have to get together with them another time.”

“Yes, another time, for sure.”

After the rehearsal dinner was finished, the best man and the maid of honor gave their speeches.

I’d been to enough weddings to know the way that speeches could dominate the night, and thus I relegated them to the evening before.

Plus, I didn’t want anyone to notice how few people were present to say things about me.

Aidan had loads of friends, while I had almost none.

Even Serena had sent her apologies. She didn’t give a reason, but I could guess why she didn’t want to come.

The previous week, she’d announced that she’d decided to close Better Love for good.

I’d expected as much. The business had been shuttered for three months.

Most of the matchmakers had found other employment, the clients other dating prospects.

The investors, I assumed, had moved on to other projects.

People continued to fall in and out of love without us, though perhaps it was more difficult.

Serena claimed the closure was because of her age, her grandchild, but we all knew the decision was because of Nicole’s and Ethan’s deaths, which had been officially ruled a murder-suicide.

She felt that she somehow should’ve seen what was coming, been able to tell who Ethan was on the inside.

“Did Nicole say anything to you?” she asked when she called me. “I keep thinking back, wondering if there were signs that I missed.”

“No. She didn’t say anything to me at all,” I replied.

I wished I could tell her that Ethan was a man who’d loved his wife so much that it killed him. I couldn’t tell her anything though, so all I said was that I understood why she needed to close the business, and I wished her the best.

It stung that she didn’t want to attend the wedding. She was quiet for a long time when I’d told her that I was engaged to a former Better Love client so soon after my former best friend was charged with murdering my ex-fiancé.

“Are you sure this is what you want? Sometimes people rush into relationships when they’re in an emotionally vulnerable place. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time.”

“I’ve never been surer about anything,” I told her defensively.

It didn’t matter. Serena had no control over my life. She wasn’t my boss or my mother. I didn’t need her at the rehearsal dinner or the ceremony. Love existed before her, and it would continue to exist after her.

Aidan’s best friend gave the first speech. He’d been there the night we met.

“Does he know about you?” I asked Aidan.

He shook his head.

“Men don’t talk about things like that,” he said. “We get together and watch basketball, go to the gym, drink. It’s not complicated, like your friendships,” he said.

Men liked to present their relationships with one another as simple, easy things. Another way of looking at their lack of drama was that they kept a lot of secrets from one another.

“I wasn’t surprised when Aidan told me he was getting married to someone he’d just met,” his best friend said. The room tittered with laughter. “He’s a person who goes after exactly what he wants, without hesitation, and since the night that they met, what he’s wanted is Lexie.”

Our glasses clinked, and Rebecca stood up. She looked gorgeous in a pink floor-length dress. I saw the way that the people in the room eyed her— Who is she? —as she walked among them. I was proud to have such a friend, even if she was my only one.

“Lexie and I have a strange history. First she was my matchmaker. Then she became my best friend. The thing about Lexie is that it can take her a minute to open up, but once she does, she’ll do anything for the people she loves.”

She made eye contact with me as she spoke.

I thought of all the things that went unmentioned.

The COMP meetings during which I’d told near strangers more than nearly anyone else in my life.

The tragedies that marred both of our lives.

I’d known that Rebecca was going to be my maid of honor before I knew that Aidan was going to be the groom.

In some ways, our friendship was as much of a case of love at first sight as my relationship with Aidan.

While Rebecca talked about our shared love of messy reality television, I assured myself that she would never betray me the way that Molly had.

That was something about love of all kinds.

I could build up walls, and fortify them with concrete and metal, but at the end of the day I was lonely in a way that mere sex or acquaintanceships couldn’t fill.

If I wanted to love and be loved in return, I needed to allow myself to be vulnerable, to carve out a door in the fortress I’d built in my head, to allow others to come in.

I needed to trust them not to hurt me. I needed to trust them to kill for me if that’s what it came down to.

“Cheers,” Rebecca said.

There was a shattering as she and I clinked our flutes together. I realized that my glass had somehow broken in the process, and there were shards of it floating in the champagne.

“Oops,” she said. “I must’ve hit you too hard.”

We laughed about it as the restaurant staff cleaned up the mess. They assured us it was no problem, and promptly replaced my drink. The rest of the guests looked briefly startled, and then resumed conversation like nothing unusual had happened.

I looked around the room. The normalcy of the night overwhelmed me.

Finally, the party that I’d been waiting for, a night built for me.

I’d found my groom, my maid of honor, enough friends and family to fill a room.

People who had never experienced true loneliness couldn’t appreciate how good it was to be loved.

They took it for granted, the same way that people who’d never been hungry didn’t know what a privilege it was to eat.

I enjoyed every morsel of food, every drift of Aidan’s hand against my body.

Despite everything, I’d done it. I’d made it to the end of the film.