Page 19 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

“Here you go,” our server says. The table descends into awkward silence as she slides our plates in front of us. “Can I get you anything else, sweetie?” she asks, mostly to Chloe.

She shakes her head. “No thank you.”

“Thanks,” I say, but she walks away.

My stomach has turned on me again as I stare down at the hash browns, still steaming, and the hollandaise sauce, already congealed.

But maybe it’s this conversation that’s making me sick.

I pluck two roll-ups from the basket of cutlery in the middle of the table, handing one to Chloe.

“Whatever,” I say, setting the napkin on my lap and cutting into the poached egg with a butter knife. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You’re the one who brought it up,” she says.

I poke at the egg’s innards. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

I cut smaller and smaller slices of egg and ham, push the potatoes around until the plate looks eaten from, even though it’s not. After long moments of silence, I finally look over at her, expecting to see anger, frustration, defensiveness. But there’s none of that.

Chloe looks devastated, like I’ve declawed her cat.

Her eyes shine a bright blue, though no tears have fallen.

She turns to me, a deep flush on her cheeks.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” she says, the words strangled.

“I don’t date. I’ve had…hookups and casual flings.

Situationships,” she says, batting the word from the air as soon as she says it.

“But I don’t date.” She shakes her head.

“Because…it’s complicated. And I’m not going to talk about it here ,” she says. Then, quieter, “With you.”

If that addition was meant to hurt me, it was successful.

The sound of the diner dims, like someone turned the volume way down on an unseen remote control and replaced the noise with static. It’s kind of obvious now that I’ve taken the time to think about it.

How confused she was last night when I was trying to describe how I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with Caro.

Her chosen profession, a job she crafted specifically for herself, out of her particular set of skills.

Chloe is a matchmaker; she finds matches for other people because she can’t find them for herself.

“Wh— How…But,” I stutter, then stupidly conclude with, “But you’re, like, thirty-two.”

Her jaw is rigid, her eyes hard, and a shiver, like a thrill, zips down my spine at the look she gives me. “I. Know.”

I push my plate away to face her again. “But you’ve had…” I drop my voice. “Sex.”

She looks at me like duh .

“I don’t just mean with me. I mean…” I gesture between us, hoping the back-and-forth motion can somehow convey that Chloe clearly knows what she’s doing; she enjoys sex.

“People can have sex outside of relationships, Dean.”

“No, I know. I’m sorry. This is just kind of blowing my mind.”

She opens her mouth, closes it again. Licks her lips, blinks too fast, picks at her cuticles. I cover her hands with mine, keep them there until, finally, she stills.

Her hands are soft, the nails short and uneven in length. There’s a three-lined scratch along the fleshy part at the base of her thumb, and I rub the back of my fingers along the raised edges of the wound.

Finally, she finds whatever words were eluding her.

“It must seem to you that I am using you. Or even that I’ve…

used this as a means to an end. You said no to me hiring you, so I’ll just…

” She shrugs. “Do this. You’re right, though.

” I meet her eyes, my heart too high in my throat to ask what I was right about.

“It is easy to fall into old patterns. But I meant what I said last night. I like being with you again. That’s the pattern, for me, at least. Just the ease of being with you, near you again. ”

I nod slowly. Contemplative. I want to believe, am desperate to. But what if ?

In moments like these, I try to think of what I’d tell my own therapy patients, how I’d guide them through these feelings. But there are reasons why we therapists aren’t supposed to therapize ourselves.

We’re terrible patients.

“What do you need from me, Dean?” she asks. “How can I prove that to you?”

“Oh. My. God.”

Chloe and I turn toward the high, excited voice. The woman who owns it is standing at our table. She’s white, blond, lean in her athletic wear, her hand resting on her small, pregnant belly. “Chloe?”

Holy. Shit.

“Lau-Lauren?” Chloe blanches.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Lauren G.

says, her voice somehow overly loud in this already noisy restaurant.

“How are you? God, how long has it been?” She turns to the man standing a few feet behind her, a filled-out version of her high school boyfriend, Jeff. Because of course they got married.

Jeff has the decency to look uncomfortable, meeting my eyes for a moment before looking to the floor. “Ten years?” he mumbles.

“At least.” Lauren G. sounds aghast. “It’s like you disappeared after graduation,” she says, admonishing Chloe as if she is still the queen bee of our high school.

Lauren doesn’t wait for Chloe’s answer, not that Chloe seems prepared to give one.

Her mouth hangs open, her fists clenched on her lap.

The only sign that she’s not completely frozen is her quick blinks, like she’s trying to clear the image of Lauren from her mind.

“What are you doing back here?” Lauren asks. She glances at me for the most passing of moments, like she barely registers my presence at all, confirming what I already suspected.

Lauren doesn’t recognize me.

The knowledge sinks like a stone to the bottom of my stomach. This woman who directly contributed to years’ worth of my adolescent trauma can’t even bring herself to remember my face.

Not only was I not worthy of her compassion as a child, but as an adult, I am not even worthy of her memory.

I wait for the hurt to follow that sinking stone’s path, to let it pull me into myself, folding over and over again until I’m small again, as small as she once made me feel.

But it never comes. Instead of hurt, even shame, I feel…nothing.

No, not quite. I feel bad for her. For Lauren and Jeff, for that baby they’re going to have. We are not our past selves or defined by our actions. Humans are capable of change, worthy of forgiveness.

But this human? As she stands here, ignorant of my identity, if not my existence, I don’t feel a need to forgive Lauren, or Jeff, for the things they did when we were kids.

I do want to forgive myself, though. For ever yearning for the approval of people like them.

Again, since conversations move at Lauren’s pace, she doesn’t wait for Chloe’s response; she launches into her next thought. “We haven’t received your RSVP for the reunion,” she chides. “You’re coming, right? We want to make sure our Girl Voted Most Likely to Succeed is actually successful.”

Lauren leans in when she says this, her voice teasing. Like she hopes Chloe is the success they all assumed she’d be years ago, but in case she’s not, there’s still time for her to right that listing ship.

“I…uh…” Chloe looks at me, panic clear on her face. We haven’t discussed the reunion, though I received the invite and decided to ignore it. I hadn’t considered whether she’d be going. All I knew was that I was not.

“Yeah,” I say for her. “She’s going.” Normally, I’m not a fan of men speaking for women, but Chloe’s prolonged silence was beginning to border on concerning. “Right?” I squeeze one of her clenched fists, hoping to get something out of her.

Chloe turns to me, a look of relief on her face, but so does Lauren.

“Oh.” She smiles thinly. “That’s great. Are you going to be her plus-one?

” she asks. She narrows her eyes, like she’s trying her best to place me.

Jeff shifts his weight from foot to foot behind her. He clears his throat once, twice.

I turn to Chloe. I say nothing, but my eyes— I hope — implore her to answer for me.

Please don’t make me say it . But Chloe, beautiful, warm, sweet, and funny Chloe, in this moment, is none of those things.

In this moment, Chloe is nothing more than what she was when we were teens, or what I am now: a coward.

“Uh…” she says again.

Suddenly, I know what I need Chloe to do to prove to me that she is not a slave to our old patterns.

She could claim me. Right here, right now, she could say my name, hold my hand in her lap. But after another confused blink, she still says nothing.

I let go of her hand, fish my wallet out of my back pocket, and leave some cash on the table next to my plate of uneaten food. “Just email me the list,” I say. Then I start the long, awkward process of scooting out of this booth. “I’d say it was nice to see you again, Lauren.”

Lauren’s brown eyes have grown wide. Jeff still avoids all eye contact.

“But I think we both know that would be a lie.”

My therapist, Melinda, smiles placidly at me through my computer screen.

I started seeing her a few years ago, after my previous therapist retired.

We met in person when I lived in London, but now we meet online.

Melinda is good at waiting, a required skill for most therapists.

I used it a few hours ago, on a coaching call with a Core Cupid client, but I don’t appreciate it being used on me now.

There’s a feeling of emotional whiplash that comes with going from the therapist to the therapied.

“Dean,” Melinda prompts. She has light brown skin and thick-framed, cream-coloured glasses, they give her a wide-eyed look that is surprisingly disarming. It gives her an open look, making it easier to confide in her.

“Yeah.” The thumbnail sized reflection of me in our video chat flushes. Therapy really only works when there’s buy-in from the patient, and I am not bought in.

“Do you think your feeling, your need, to be claimed by Chloe could be stemming from a place of— or perhaps, an attempt at— healing?”

I shrug. “I mean, yeah.”

The blue sky outside my window acts as a ticker tape of distraction, always catching my eye. My brain is still half-focused on the Core Cupid client I spoke to today. The man had never been on a second date. He’d admitted, tearfully, to never having had sex.

Chloe has said that men like him aren’t common for matchmakers, but not uncommon, either. When I told him that fact didn’t make him any less worthy of finding love, he didn’t look like he believed me, but maybe that he wanted to.

There’s another Downtown Toronto District BIA event tonight. One that Chloe and Nick have texted me about. I’m too embarrassed to commit to an appearance yet, not after storming out of the diner this weekend.

“Would it heal you?” Melinda asks. “To have Chloe announce to the world that you are in, for all intents and purposes, a relationship?”

I frown. First at the question, then at the emotional churn in my gut, bubbling up into my chest, a resounding, effervescent no .

Melinda, the professional that she is, already knows my answer. “Why do you need her to claim you?” she asks gently.

I scrub my hands over my face, groan into my palms. God, I hate it when she’s right. “Because,” I say, tired, with myself, with therapy, with fucking feelings. “It would make me feel like I was— I am— good enough.”

She nods. “Is that something that Chloe can bestow upon you?” she asks again, like it’s a question she does not already know the answer to.

“No,” I say finally. “And it’s probably not fair of me to put that responsibility on her, either.”

Melinda nods. She lets me take a few breaths, my gaze on my bedroom window, the blue sky, the tops of the trees nearby. “Chloe was voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school. Something, you said, she seems to take very seriously. ”

I nod slowly. She has a point, and I am merely at her whim until we get to it.

“What were you voted as?”

I laugh without humour. “I wasn’t.”

“Do you think she wants this to succeed? This thing between the two of you?”

I sigh. As mad as I let myself be with her, I can’t deny that Chloe is doing her best to make up for our past. “Yes,” I say. “Probably.”

“Maybe,” she says quietly, “instead of focusing on how she can claim you, you can focus on whether you also want it to succeed. And then,” she continues before I can argue that, of course, I want it to succeed.

“Maybe that’s where we find the answer to whether or not you are good enough.

That answer almost always lies within us, Dean. Not in other people’s opinions.”