Page 18 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

I want to ask her what’s wrong, the words piling up in my mouth like a fender bender on the 401 Highway at rush hour.

Then, when she’s finished telling me, I want her to ask me the same.

I want to lay all my questions, my confusion, my shame and embarrassment at her feet.

Not so she’ll do something with it, but because sometimes saying it out loud to someone who matters just feels better.

But if I do that, it would mean acknowledging the one thing I didn’t— don’t— want to talk about.

Admitting to the hurt her betrayal caused, acknowledging that yeah, she probably didn’t plan it with her friends, but that that’s not really the point.

It was the fact that she was friends with them at all.

That I was good enough for her to take pleasure from, to play act an adult relationship with, but not good enough for her to claim in public. When it really mattered.

But I don’t say any of that. Melinda, my therapist, would provide a reassuring, compassionate reason for why I stay silent.

She would explain the power trauma has to keep us quiet, the wound experience that informs my inner child.

She would tell me all this so that I would avoid using a word like coward to explain my inability to speak up and ask for what I want. But we’d both know I am one.

And that’s why, instead of saying any of that, I grab a random hat from where they hang along my closet wall, and say, “Sure. Brunch sounds great.”

We spend five minutes sitting in her car on the side of the road, looking up “brunch spots near you” since neither of us were big brunchers when we were teens and we don’t know which restaurants are even in existence anymore .

“We can choose between greasy diner and…” I squint at my phone screen. “It looks like the old exotic dance club is now a Japanese bakery,” I say, presenting my phone screen to her. “Cream cheese buns.”

Instead of showing any interest in the baked goods in 5G, she shuts her own phone screen down, shoving it quickly into the bag on her lap. She shakes her head no, but says, “Yeah, sure. Wherever you want.”

“What were you looking up?” I ask. The car is already warm from sitting in the morning sun, but a chill lifts the hairs on the back of my neck.

It’s not as if I think she’s an actual villain, texting my secrets to a group chat that has sustained itself on laughing at my misfortune for the last fifteen years.

I just, very simply, don’t trust her. The realization kills my appetite.

“How about the diner?” I say when she doesn’t bother to answer me.

We drive in silence. I roll down my window and rest my head against the door, fatigue from the long night and short sleep catching up to me in the warmth of the car and the gentle slow-stop of suburban driving.

About twelve hours ago, Chloe was riding my hand in this seat.

I wish I could rewind to that moment. Or even better, to sitting behind the booth with her or talking to her in the parking lot afterward.

The diner parking lot is already packed. It’s one of those strange suburban islands, flanked by a strip mall on one side and movie theater on the other. Evidence of how it stayed the same while the businesses, the buildings, even the infrastructure around it changed.

Chloe waits for a spot as a family of six piles into a minivan, and by the time we’re finally approaching the restaurant, my appetite begins to rear its head again. It helps that the smell of greasy diner bacon and sweet pancakes wafts out of the building.

I hold the door open for her. “Why did you need a boyfriend?”

“Where do you want to sit?” she asks at the same time.

The host, a young person with a lip ring and a shaved head and deep bronze skin, does not bother to straighten from their lean against the host stand.

“You can sit in that booth.” They point to the only available table, a large booth in the back corner; probably the one just vacated by the family if the numerous plates still piled on its surface are any indication.

The diner is overly lit, with an entire wall of windows and buzzing fluorescents, and overly loud, bursting at the seams with families and extended families, elderly couples and singles lining the old-fashioned bar.

Faintly, music plays over the din. Silver wall boxes line every booth and are evenly spaced along the bar, and a jukebox sits against the far wall.

All of it serves to add to my growing agitation. The feeling that something is off. Worse, unsafe. I can’t be safe until I figure out what it is.

Chloe walks rigidly ahead of me, pausing to allow a busser to collect the dishes, wipe down the table, and replace the menus.

The booth is the rounded kind so that no matter how far away we might choose to sit from each other, we’ll still technically be sharing a bench.

Chloe slides down the squeaky cushion, leaving enough room for me next to her at the center of the table.

I slide in next to her but leave at least a hand’s width between us.

She stares at the space between us instead of at her menu.

“Coffee?” The server doesn’t even wait for our replies before she starts to pour the steaming liquid into fresh cups. “Do you know what you want to eat?”

Chloe is still staring at the space between us.

“Uh, could we get a bit more time?” I ask, pulling a menu toward me and flipping it open; there are eight pages, front and back, with all-day breakfast and lunch options available. “Maybe a lot more time,” I mutter.

“Can I have the eggs Benedict?” Chloe asks.

I glare at her. “You don’t even know if they have that.”

She scowls back. “It’s a breakfast place. Of course they have it,” she whisper-hisses .

“Of course you can, sweetie.” The server tops up Chloe’s coffee after she takes one sip but turns to me with a scowl. “Are you ready?”

I flip the menu closed. “I guess I’m having the eggs Benedict, too.”

The server collects the menus and barely cracks a smile at me as she leaves.

Chloe hovers her hand over my thigh. “What’s wrong?” She pulls her hand back, resting it on her own lap.

“Nothing,” I say, but hear the lie in my own mouth.

The word barely makes it through my clenched teeth.

My hands are curled into fists on the tabletop.

“Nothing,” I say again, shaking my hands out, settling against the back of the booth.

I even spread my legs wider, but I can’t ignore the tension that’s crept up my shoulders.

I turn in the booth to face her. “You didn’t answer my question,” I prompt her. “You never explained why you needed a boyfriend.” I don’t know why the thought occurred to me now, other than because I want, need, her to share something with me. Something that makes me feel a little less exposed.

I lean in closer to her so I don’t have to yell over the noise.

“When we met in your office, you said you weren’t going to find a boyfriend.”

“Yeah,” she says slowly.

“Well, why not?” The more I think about it, the more angry I am for not asking her about it earlier. I was so goddamn ready to jump back into some fucked-up arrangement with her that I didn’t think once about preserving my own sanity, my own heart.

I pull off my cap, use the bill to scratch my head, and drop it onto the table.

With time and exposure, the royal blue fabric has worn to a duller, grayish cobalt.

Caro hand embroidered a peach emoji onto it for me a couple years ago to “make it pop again.” I wonder if she was using it as an opportunity to call me an asshat.

“Look at you,” I say flatly. “You could find a boyfriend if you wanted to. Why wouldn’t you date instead of trying to hire me as your boyfriend?”

The answer is obvious. To me, at least. But I need to hear her say it .

Chloe fidgets. The vinyl upholstery is patched with duct tape in some places. In others, jagged tears stick up, stuffing spilling from the wound. She mumbles something as she presses her finger over one of those jagged pieces.

“What?” I lean closer still. To the outside observer, we probably look like a couple trying to share an intimate moment in the most unintimate of places.

She meets my eyes, not backing down from my proximity. This close, her eyes are a deeper blue, shot through with bolts of silver lightning. “I said, I don’t date.”

I roll my eyes and lean back. Take a deep breath, now that it’s easier to do so. Now that I’m not close enough to kiss her.

“I don’t.” She crosses her arms over her chest, indignant.

The Raptors t-shirt— my t-shirt— is one I’ve had since the Vince Carter years.

Faded purple, a red cartoon velociraptor raptor dribbling a basketball across the front, it looks strange on her in this light.

She’s pale, the tired color beneath her eyes matching the t-shirt.

I shouldn’t pick on her now, but the need for an explanation is too strong.

And something I deserve, I think, at the very least.

I hold my coffee mug with both hands, trying to find the warmth that leaked from the ceramic long ago.

“Do you think it’s possible,” I say quietly, not bothering to project my voice.

If she can hear me or not doesn’t really matter.

I have to get this out. “That you found me back in your life a few weeks ago and you…” I lift my shoulder in a casual shrug. “Fell back into an old pattern?”

“What kind of pattern is that?” she asks stiffly.

I look across the restaurant, at families, kids, young couples holding hands; people we once were or at least could have been.

“Using me,” I say.

“What?” This time she plants her hand directly on my thigh as she leans in.

“You heard me.” I try my best to keep the harsh growl from my voice, but I hear it, nevertheless.

“I’m not using you,” she says. “Dean.” She covers my clenched fist with her palm .

“But you did,” I say. “Once.”

She sighs, slumping in the booth. “I…I did.” She nods. “I treated you horribly.”