Page 6 of Matchmaking for Psychopaths

The handsome man and I took a shot before he brought me to meet his friends. The lick of salt, the sting of tequila, the lime squeezed between my teeth…Everything was so much more physical when I couldn’t tolerate being inside my own head.

His friends were the kind of beautiful people who were friendly because they’d had no reason ever to be mean.

They accepted me like I’d always been one of them.

I met the women, whose names I quickly forgot, and the other men, who gently vied for my attention with the knowledge that I already knew who I wanted.

At some point the handsome man gave me his name, but it seemed unimportant.

I had no intention of going home with him, even as something so simple as a brush of his hands across my waist made me feel electrified.

I didn’t want to write about him in my diary.

I wanted to make Noah feel like shit for cheating on me.

Besides, it’d been so long since a man other than Noah had touched me that probably any good-looking man would’ve elicited such a reaction.

I liked the feeling of being one of the gang, even if it was for only a night.

I won a game of darts, or they let me win.

Someone bought a round of shots, and included me within their ranks without needing to be asked to.

When he wasn’t directly next to me, I caught the handsome man staring in my direction as though he was captivated by my beauty.

I stared back. I wasn’t scared of a little eye contact.

The gathering at the first bar was a pregame. They hadn’t even had dinner yet, which was good, because I’d marched out of my birthday dinner before my entrée arrived. I lamented missing out on the seafood linguine that I’d spent the day anticipating.

No matter. I followed the handsome man and his friends down the street to a steak house.

“It’s on me,” he said as I perused the menu. The two of us were like prom dates, except I hadn’t attended my prom.

I ordered a bloody steak the size of my head, and a baked potato.

I didn’t even like steak, but I liked the feeling of sawing into the meat with the knife, the pink juices melding with the butter from the potato.

There were cocktails too, of course, an endless stream that appeared without my asking.

“It’s my birthday,” I said as I shoved meat into my mouth.

“It’s my birthday,” I told the server who brought out their coworkers to sing “Happy Birthday” over molten chocolate cake.

“It’s my birthday,” I said to the bouncer when I handed him my ID at our next stop.

“It’s my birthday,” I repeated to the handsome man before he gave me a kiss.

Somehow, I found myself standing on a table and dancing.

There were a lot of factors that worked against me as a dancer.

I was gangly, with long limbs and a flat ass.

I’d never had a good sense of rhythm, and I’d been unable to convince my mother to sign me up for ballet classes.

However, dancing was a lot like being hot, in that confidence was the majority of the battle.

“It’s her birthday!” the handsome man shouted.

“Woo!” everyone cheered.

When thoughts of Noah and Molly entered my brain, I shoved them inside that little box I kept in my chest for my darkest memories, the same place within me where my mother resided.

No one watching would’ve suspected what had happened earlier in the night.

All anyone would see was a woman having the time of her life.

The handsome man easily lifted me off the table, as if he carried bodies around as a job, and set me on my feet. I ground my butt into his crotch as his hands ran their way over my hips. I almost felt bad that I wasn’t going to fuck him. I almost reconsidered.

Somehow, I found myself in the back of an Uber. There weren’t enough seats, so I sprawled across several men, none of whom seemed to mind. My head was in the handsome man’s lap. He gazed down at me like I was a gift.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“His house,” the handsome man said. He gestured to the man whose legs held my feet. I was positive that I’d never seen him before. He must’ve joined the group later in the evening.

“Cool,” I said.

It didn’t occur to me that I might be in danger. I’d always been good at reading people, and I didn’t get the sense that any of these people might want to cause me harm.

Somehow, I found myself in a bathroom, snorting cocaine with one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. She was so gorgeous that she transcended any jealousy I might’ve had. I wanted to touch her face.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“Oh, Lexie.” She laughed. “You’re so funny.”

“Is it still my birthday?”

“It’s your birthday for as long as you want it to be,” she said.

She paused in the bathroom doorway. Maybe, I thought, she could become my new best friend. I already missed Molly. I wanted to tell her about my night.

“Are you going to hook up with him?” she asked.

It was implied that she was talking about the handsome man.

“No,” I said. “I have to get married.”

A look of confusion crossed her face. I offered no clarification.

“He likes you. I can tell,” she told me, and disappeared into the night.

Somehow, I found myself in a hot tub. I was wearing a bikini that didn’t belong to me. I was sitting in the handsome man’s lap. I was pleased to be there. Glamorous reality TV stars were frequently getting into hot tubs after a night out.

“What do you do for work?” the handsome man asked me.

“I’m a matchmaker,” I replied.

“Like on those Netflix shows?” he asked.

It was a common reaction when I told people what I did.

Matchmaking was becoming a lost art, with everyone dependent on dating apps or, worse, alone forever.

We could conceive of love only as something mediated through a screen.

What I did was real and important. There were so many lonely people in the world.

That was the other reason why I was so confident that Noah and I would eventually end up together. Not only was I confident in the strength of our bond; I had professional qualifications that meant I knew when two people were right for each other and when they weren’t.

“It’s kind of like those shows,” I told him, though I thought they failed to capture the nuances of the field.

Matching people was about more than pairing people who looked good for each other on paper.

Most people, in actuality, were unable to voice the traits that they desired in a partner.

Matching was about careful cultivation, more like growing a garden than like making a sandwich.

“You wouldn’t necessarily see my clients on TV,” I continued.

“Why?” he asked. “Are they ugly?”

I smiled.

“No, they’re not ugly. They’re…well, they’re special.”

“What does that mean? ‘Special’?”

“I’m a matchmaker for psychopaths.”

“Psychopaths?” The handsome man raised his eyebrows.

Everyone in the hot tub leaned in closer.

I liked the way that they were looking at me, the same way that Molly and I perched on the edge of the couch, careful not to rustle our bags of food, when a particularly heated scene was playing out on one of our favorite shows.

The cast members were so used to being on camera that they didn’t acknowledge its presence, but surely they knew when it was their time in the spotlight, just as I knew I was the center of attention in that hot tub when I invoked that word: “psychopath.”

Technically, I wasn’t supposed to use that term.

First and foremost, it wasn’t listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , the manual used by mental health professionals.

“Psychopath” was what people called their exes, their shitty bosses, or their estranged parents.

Secondly, my boss, Serena, insisted that we weren’t in the field of diagnosing people.

Just because we knew intimate details about our clients’ lives—including those revealed by an intensive intake questionnaire that was capable of detecting a variety of mental health issues—didn’t mean we were allowed to label them in that way.

Finally, it would be catastrophic if clients knew how they were being sorted.

Yes, your matchmaker is Lexie, who works with all the psychopaths who come to us looking for love.

When I interviewed for the position, I didn’t know who my clients would be.

I’d applied to Better Love after burning out in a series of corporate jobs that paid well but were intellectually and emotionally unsatisfying.

I was bored in the office, spending most of my time shopping online rather than doing work.

Worse, most of my coworkers were bros who loved wearing name-brand fleeces with the company’s logo on the front.

They talked incessantly about the women they’d fucked, while simultaneously being hugely uncomfortable around women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and especially people who weren’t white.

On occasion, they unsuccessfully tried to proposition me for sex.

When I saw the job ad that called for someone “devoted to helping others find love,” with “experience in psychology,” I knew that I was meant for the position, the same way that I knew Noah and I were meant to be together.

Moments spent watching romantic comedies with my mother were some of the only cherished moments of my childhood, and I figured that becoming a matchmaker would be the equivalent of immersing myself in one of those films.

“We have clients with all sorts of backgrounds,” Serena explained during the interview.

I was taken by her immediately. She was one of those older women who didn’t let age stop them from looking hot and glamorous. Even in the wintertime she favored shoes with heels so sharp that they could pierce the skin.