Page 3 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

Rocco and Bernie, the other co-owners of Moonbar, along with Nick, check in with us periodically, but the place is so packed that they can never stay for long.

That’s good, at least. My business might be failing, but the business community in our area thrives, despite the continued encroachment of condo developers and American multinational organic supermarket chains.

Jasmine waits until the CEO and founder of the health and fitness coworking space— a woman who is both stunningly beautiful and can definitely bench press not only the equivalent of my bodyweight in barbells and plates, but literally me as a person— before she turns to me and says, “What’s going on with you?

You’ve had a…” She gestures to her forehead. “Since you walked in.”

I want to deny, deny, deny, because I am a businesswoman, and I don’t need help.

Because Jasmine has always had her life together.

She raised her sister and bought a bar and has an obnoxiously healthy relationship with Nick, considering they started out as a terrible case of mistaken identity.

But mostly because I’m embarrassed. Not only that I can’t hang on to my clients, but because it makes me a failure.

I wish I could explain to every client who has questioned my capability as a matchmaker why I don’t have a significant other.

How I watched the implosion of my parents’ marriage as a preteen and understand acutely how even well-matched people might not make it.

How I hurt a person I very much liked, and how the guilt and the shame of that made me realize that marriage was the last union in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to enter into.

“Chloe?” Jasmine asks, true concern in her voice, and I realize— oh my good god— that I am about three seconds away from crying.

“I’m bleeding clients,” I say in a strangled voice.

“Hey,” comes a deep, masculine voice next to us. “Smile.”

Because of course the photographer has chosen this exact moment to take our photo.

His camera obscures most of his face. All I can tell about him is that he is white and has dark hair and is a few inches taller than me.

The word A P E R - T U R E is spelled out across his fingers, and shadows of ink wrap around his wrists and forearms before they disappear beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his button-up shirt.

Their placement seems haphazard and irreverent, that style that can best be described as bitchy little masc tattoos .

Regardless of what “burb” he’s from, now is not the time to introduce myself; it’s bad enough my business is crumbling down around me. I can’t let this objectively hot man— a man I would normally have no trouble flirting with— know how very much I am losing it right now.

Jasmine and I lean into each other as we face the camera and smile, the kind of shared cultural behavior that comes from years of having photos taken by night club promo reps in our twenties.

Despite witnessing the burst of his camera flash since I arrived, it still startles me when he takes our picture.

I don’t know what kind of face he’s captured, but there’s no way we’ll use that for BIA social media promotion.

I turn back to Jasmine before he can ask for another photo or, worse, introduce himself to me. The last thing I need to do right now is try to figure out the six degrees of separation I have with Nick’s new friend.

“I’ve lost three clients this month. One literally fired me while I was on my way here.”

“What? Why? Your algorithm is perfect.”

A generous assessment, considering no algorithm is perfect and my algorithm matched her with the wrong Nick.

“It has nothing to do with the algorithm.” I look over my shoulder, like the sharks of the Toronto matchmaking industry are hovering nearby, salivating for all my secrets.

“They all say something similar in their exit survey. That they didn’t feel like they could take me seriously as a matchmaker because I don’t have my perfect match. ”

Jasmine stares into the silence between us for a long moment, then says, way too loudly, “That’s fucking bullshit.”

The manager of the bao shop and a rooftop garden landscaper pause mid-conversation to stare at us.

“I know,” I whisper. “But…” I shrug. Because what else is there to say?

“Couldn’t you just use the algorithm on yourself?” she asks.

“No.” I can’t unpack the ethical implications of that right now, but regardless, I don’t actually want to be in a relationship, and I tell her so.

Her mouth twists, like there’s something she wants to say and is physically keeping the words from escaping.

“What? Just say it.” I sigh.

“Without getting into a critical analysis of the logic behind firing you because you don’t have a boyfriend, because that is, in fact, bullshit…what if you just pretended you had a boyfriend?”

I roll my eyes. “Just because that worked for you does not mean it will for me. You guys are the exception, not the rule.” I stab my finger at Nick, who’s bobbing his head along to the barely audible music while he pours a beer from the tap.

Jasmine’s eyes go big, and for a split second, I want to run away because that is not a helpful face. That is a diabolical scheme face.

“The photographer,” she says, like eureka .

“I don’t want to relive my high school glory days with a guy who may or may not have been on a rival lacrosse team right now, Jasmine.” I take a sip of my water for something to do that isn’t frowning.

She shakes her head and holds me by my shoulders as if preparing to shake me. “The photographer can be your boyfriend,” she says.

“Were you paying attention to anything I just said?”

“Just listen.” She leans in close, facing the wall covered in thrifted album covers and, inexplicably, license plates from across Canada. “He told Nick that he ran this boyfriend-for-hire business when he was at Western,” she whispers as I stare out at the crowd.

“That’s ridiculous.”

She ignores me. “He’d take girls out on dates where they knew their ex-boyfriends or crushes would be, in the hopes of making the dudes jealous.

” I feel her shrug. “According to what he told Nick, they usually paid him in an exchange of services. Like they’d write his essays for him,” she says quickly when she feels me recoil.

“Apparently it’s how he decided to get his psych degree and a master’s in counseling.

He spent most of his time counseling both parties on how to be together or how to move on instead of actually making people jealous.

Now he’s a couple’s therapist or dating coach or something. ”

She pulls back as Nick, who has left his spot behind the bar for the center of the karaoke stage, taps on the mic.

“So you want me to hire a strange man to be my fake boyfriend?” I ask as Nick welcomes everyone over the sound system.

After a moment of consideration, Jasmine nods.

“We’re going to announce the raffle winners now,” Nick says .

“If he’s a couple’s therapist, why is he moonlighting as a photographer at a BIA event?” I ask.

I’m not trying to be mean; I’m a skeptical person. This all sounds suspicious. I find it hard to believe he was providing “boyfriend-for-hire” services and not taking a little skin action on the side.

It’s not the sex work I have a problem with, either. It’s more an issue with power dynamics.

Jasmine huffs. “It’s a gig economy, Chloe.”

Nick calls the name of the first raffle winner, a handcrafted knife maker.

My skin feels too tight, like I haven’t moisturized for months and any sudden movements might cause deep cracks.

The noise in the bar is somehow louder than before, even though everyone should be quietly listening to Nick make his raffle announcements.

The sound makes it harder for me to focus on Jasmine right in front of me.

I have the distinct feeling that she is mad at me or at least frustrated.

“Dean’s a nice guy,” she insists. “You should at least say hi later.” Her tone softens as she keeps talking. “And we can figure out how to save Core Cupid. We saved Moonbar. We can do it again,” she says, as if I had anything to do with that. As if the two businesses are alike in any way.

“Wait.”

The skin tightness, the sound overwhelm, all of it disappears as I finally register what she said.

Nick announces the next raffle winner, the owner-operators of a romance bookstore who now have three hundred dollars’ worth of printing from Hot Copy Graphics and Printing.

“Dean?” I whisper. “You said his name is Dean?”

“Yeah,” she whispers as Nick details the features of the headshot raffle prize. “Dean Weston or Westbrook or something?”

A weight drops in my stomach. “Dean Westlake?” My mouth is dry. “And he went to Western?”

She gets diabolical eyes again. “You do know him.”

“And the winner of the new headshots from Dean Westlake Photography is…” Nick sticks his hand into the Blue Jays ball cap he’s be en using as a raffle bucket. “Come on up here, Dean,” he says as he pulls a name out of the hat.

Dean— the photographer— steps onto the stage with Nick.

And the weight in my stomach drops all the way to my feet, then through the floor.

The next few seconds stretch out in front of me, time yawning, an ever-widening gap between me and Dean and the past.

Time has done nothing to Dean Westlake. Except, maybe, somehow, make him even more beautiful than he was when we were eighteen years old.

His hair is still dark, and now that his camera isn’t obstructing my view, I can tell it’s that same little bit messy it always was.

There are the same thick brows and lashes over his perpetually squinting eyes. Then there are the poutiest lips.

Lips that could kiss me for hours. Days.

The only changes are his sharper jaw line, his chin with a more pronounced dip, and the subtle inference of facial hair around his mouth and cheeks.

“Chloe Morris of Core Cupid Matchmaking. Congratulations Chloe,” Nick says, finding me in the crowd.