Page 27 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

She hands the camera back to me, the video still going.

I catch a glimpse of the round shape of her lips and full cheeks before I set it down.

Chloe shrugs, she looks out the window. The sun is firmly in the sky, the day fully started, and we aren’t even dressed yet. “Maybe you could ask first next time?”

She pokes me with her big toe when I don’t answer right away. I grab her, running my thumb down her arch. I nod. “I can do that.”

She pulls her foot from my grasp and throws her legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the ceiling, her head thrown back, her breasts on display for every maple, elm, and birch in the ravine, as she stretches.

She pads around my room, picking up pillows, finding my robe and pulling it back over her shoulders.

She picks up both full mugs of coffee and takes them with her as she leaves my room.

She pauses at the door and doesn’t even look at me when she says, “Ask first next time, but keep it.” Finally she catches my gaze over her shoulder. “Please.”

I fall back on the bed, my hands behind my head, a stupid smile on my face. “Sure thing.”

For the first time since I reconnected with Chloe a month and a half ago, I owe her something.

Since we saw each other again in Moonbar, I felt like she’d owed me: An explanation.

An apology. A pound of flesh. All of which she’s given freely.

So it’s weird now, to move around the office with her, to meet about clients, to go back to her apartment with her once, then twice this last week, and still not give her what I know she wants.

Forgiveness.

The thing is, I have forgiven her. I believe her when she says she had nothing to do with what happened.

I think part of me always believed that, at least. She has my forgiveness, but there’s a difference between giving it and telling her about it.

The former is easy, a foregone conclusion, a sure thing.

The latter? Terrifying. Because then, if she hurts me again, whose fault is that?

“You go to therapy, right?” Chloe asks me. She’s taken off her shoes, thrown her socks somewhere under her desk, and undone the button of a pair of linen pants that are so wide-legged that further loosening almost seems unnecessary— though I trust her to know her body best.

“Like therapists go to therapy?” She’s starfished on the cream carpet of her office, the couch cushions still warm from the full day interview with the GTA BJ, the unfortunate name of the Greater Toronto Area Business Journal.

She’s been “on” since ten this morning while I got to mostly chill in the background. “Right?”

“Yeah.” I flop my feet out wide, then touch my toes together. Chloe wouldn’t do the floor time I gently suggested for her until I did it first. Now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get her off it. “That’s SOP in the mental health community to avoid burnout.”

She nods, her stare locked on something I can’t see on the ceiling. “What does she think about me?” she asks, then turns her head to face me. “Sorry. That’s probably confidential.”

I lean back on my hands and take her place staring at the ceiling. “The confidentiality rule only goes one way. As a patient, I can talk about whatever I want with whoever I want.”

A nonanswer that she immediately clocks for what it is: avoidance and a gentle redirect.

Because she’s good at leading awkward conversations with clients, she leans into it. “I think it’s whomever,” she says, holding up her index finger like a point of correction.

“Is it? ”

She snorts. “I don’t know.”

The truth is, I haven’t told my therapist about her. Because I don’t want her to tell me that whatever this is, is a bad idea. Which is perhaps a sign, in itself, that this is a bad idea?

“Do you see a therapist?” I ask, meeting her blue eyes. The afternoon sunlight makes the whole office glowy and warm, but nothing is quite as warm as Chloe’s eyes when she smiles at me like this.

She opens her mouth, closes it. She reaches her arm across the carpet toward my hand. We’re too far from each other to reach, but she clutches at the carpet anyway, leaving track marks, until I lie flat on my back, too, and reach for her hand, clutching each other, wrist to wrist.

“I’ve got an appointment in a couple of weeks,” she says, like she got the strength to speak the words from me. “There’s a long waitlist, but they said they had some cancellations and fit me in.”

I squeeze her, her wrist bones delicate beneath me. “That’s great.”

She smiles, looking proud.

I want to ask, are you going to tell them about me? Even though that’s not fair either, but our phones’ tandem buzzing and notifications save me from myself.

She pulls her hand from mine to throw it over her eyes. “No,” she whines. “No more people. I can’t take it.”

I shimmy my phone from the back pocket of my jeans. My printed cotton tee rides up my stomach as I do it, and I leave it like that, when I catch Chloe’s gaze following the hair from my bellybutton to the button fly.

“Okay,” I say. Holding my phone over my face, I tap the email icon with a new email. “Let’s see what it— fuck .” The word slips out before I catch myself.

Subject: REMINDER: You’re Voted Most Likely to Reunite! RSVP Today!!!

“What?” Chloe sits up, patting the ground around her, her legs. “What is it? ”

“It’s nothing,” I say, closing the email. “Don’t worry. It was just some reminder email.”

“But we both got notifications at the same time, so it’s probably for me, too, right?

” She stands, finding her phone face down on her desk.

I can tell the moment she sees the email.

Her eyes get big and her teeth saw at her lower lip.

I look away before I have to see anything more.

I don’t want to do any more unnecessary interpretation of body language than I already have.

“Fuck indeed,” she says.

“Are you going?” I ask.

The carpet and her pant legs swish as she walks over, stopping above my head. “Are you?” she asks. “Are Rick and Matt going?”

I huff a silent laugh. “Hell no. Matt doesn’t care, and Rick said he’s already got a surprise baby-moon planned for that week, so…” I shrug.

“I…I was probably going to go,” she says, the hint of a question in her tone.

I sit up and turn to face her, but looking up at her from the floor isn’t helping this conversation. “Are you asking my permission?”

“No,” she says quickly.

“You can do whatever you want, Chloe.”

“I know.”

I can’t tell if the sharpness in her words is from defensiveness or anger. I stand, brushing carpet lint off my butt. “You should go,” I say. “You should,” I repeat when she raises a skeptical eyebrow.

Because even if— in some far-off universe— she did need my permission to go, the only reason I wouldn’t want her to is out of spite, out of some faux sense of ownership over her time and attention.

I would want her not to go because I would want everyone who did go to know she was with me instead.

And that’s not forgiveness or friendship or love. It’s toxicity.

“Okay.” She watches me for another moment, doing her own unnecessary body language interpretation. So I make sure to change nothing of my expression, to keep my hands firmly planted in my pockets. She taps at her phone. “Okay. I’m going. ”

And I am fine with it. I really, truly am. There’s no bastardized version of buyer’s remorse souring my stomach. Until her phone buzzes in her hand. She hides the screen from me, but not before I see the name gliding across the top.

Lauren G.

That’s when a seed of doubt, of hurt, plants itself under my ribcage, forgiveness too precious a gift to give freely.