Page 33 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

CHLOE

D ean has to go home. He has no clothes here, nothing for an overnight stay.

But he bundles me up in my robe and attempts to wrap my hair in a towel turban that immediately falls off my head, and I let him.

He helps me change the sheets in nothing but a towel.

He sucks at towel turbans, but not at towel knots, because no matter what linen-closet gymnastics I put him through with a fitted sheet, it doesn’t fall off.

“So Saturday,” I prompt him as I stuff a pillow into a pillowcase.

“Right. Saturday.” He sounds not the least bit excited.

“You know, you don’t have to go.” Even though, inexplicably, I want him to. I want people to see what he’s made of himself as much as I want them to see I’m not the person they thought they knew. Maybe more.

“No. I’m going. I want to go. At least, I see the importance of going.” He flops onto the bed instead of helping me with the duvet cover. I let him, though. I have a particular method of doing it, and he’ll only get in my way.

“Do you want to arrive separately?” I ask.

Before he can answer, I take the two corners of the duvet and shove them and my head into the duvet cover’s opening so I don’t have to see his face.

“Like, people know we’re working together, but…

” I trail off as I stand in the middle of the room, flailing under the cover in search of the corners.

I don’t say what I want to say. That people know we’re together but not together together.

Because, I guess, we haven’t really discussed that we are.

Although if a man says he loves you, that probably means you’re together, right? Maybe if I’d ever had a boyfriend before, I’d know the answer to this.

Honestly, it makes sense that I was fired by so many matchmaking clients. I kind of deserved it.

“Uh…sure.” From outside the duvet cover, the direction of Dean’s voice changes, like he’s moving. “Can I help you with that?”

His shadow appears through the fabric. “ No . I have a system. Are you off the bed?” I ask, to be sure. This part requires an empty bed.

“Uh-huh.”

“Perfect.” With the corners of the duvet tucked into the corners of the cover and the cover tucked into my hands, I face the general direction of the bed and throw myself onto it. Then I start to wriggle my way out.

“ Chlo .” Dean sounds like he’s choking.

“What?” I lose my towel turban somewhere in the depths of feather down. “Are you okay?”

The last few inches of being trapped in there are always a little suffocating.

I take a deep breath as I slither out the way I came.

Dean is, in fact, fine. “Shut up,” I say without any heat.

He sits on the floor, tears on his face, laughing so hard he’s no longer making sound. “It gets the job done.”

I crawl into the freshly made bed, and he joins me as the skyline outside darkens. “So, we’ll go to the reunion. Stay a few hours. Easy-peasy.”

“Lemon squeezy,” he emphasizes, gently pulling me closer to him as he settles against the pillows and starts flipping through channels using the remote. The television has been on this whole time, and somehow, I didn’t notice. I don’t even know if we won.

“I’ll stay for a little longer,” he says, unprompted .

I snuggle in closer. Even under the scent of my body wash, he still smells like him, and that knowledge eases the nervous flutter inside my chest, my heart’s version of a rapid eye blink.

I tuck my head under his chin, and he laughs, the sound more of a vibration that moves through me as he watches some sit-com rerun.

With my ear to his collarbone like a glass to the wall, I eavesdrop on all of his inner workings.

This is the closeness I crave.

I could fall asleep like this— I am actively trying to keep myself awake— unbothered by my usual worries. Am I crushing him? Is he uncomfortable? When will I get tired of this, bored? When will his skin on mine, the tremor of his laughter, the whispering beats of his heart, become mundane?

I haven’t felt this before. Maybe I haven’t given myself the chance to feel it with anyone else, but that doesn’t really matter anymore.

Dean is right, easy. My lover and a friend. Someone I’ve always known and who I get to meet anew every day. Someone who, when the choice is between staying comfortable and the same, or getting uncomfortable but changing, well, the choice is very simple.

I choose him.

Easy.

“Could you ever picture a time, like probably far in the future, where you didn’t have to leave?” I ask.

He captures my fingers where I explore the hair on his chest and belly, just so I can watch his goose bumps follow the path.

“Yeah,” he says simply after only a moment’s thought. “I can picture that.”

I push up on my hands to see his face better in the blue light of the television and the eternal urban glow seeping through the windows. “You answered that pretty fast.”

He laughs, keeping half an eye on the sitcom. “Sorry, did you want me to think about it longer?”

I brush his hair out of his eyes, and the contact gives me his full attention. “No. I guess not.” He takes my hand again, kisses the knuckles in the same place I’d kiss his, over the ink. “When it feels right,” he says, like one might say when hungry, when tired. “Let’s do it,” he says.

Like feeling right is the simplest thing in the world and not something that people literally pay me to help them find. But I guess, for him, and for me, right really can be that simple.

Our senior prom was held at a golf course.

The most interesting thing that happened was when a student’s flask fell out of his pocket right in front of a teacher.

He was kicked out. That and none of the LKs ended up winning prom queen.

A tragedy they all blamed on a rigged system and teacher and admin interference.

Eileen Chu, the girl who won, was also our valedictorian.

She was nice. I think it may have been the first time in history that the highest crown in a prom court wasn’t won via popularity.

Otherwise, the thing I remember most about prom is the lights.

The golf course ballroom was covered in twinkle lights, the patio outside too.

Nary an overhead light to be seen. Despite being surrounded by covertly drunk teenagers and my high heels leaving a pressure rub so huge I can still see the scar, the lights made me feel like I was in a womb.

A womb of underaged debauchery, but a womb, nonetheless.

The organizers of our reunion have gone for that same effect.

Twinkle lights everywhere. Wound across rafters, pooled into vases, climbing pillars, taped to the underside of tables.

Warm and womblike, except for the underlying smell of fried food and the must of the curtain pulled across the stage.

All the twinkle lights in the world couldn’t hide the fact that this is a high school auditorium-slash-cafeteria.

“Hi there,” a woman calls to me from behind a table near the door. She waves me over. “What’s your name?” she asks.

“Um…” Early-aughts pop music layered overtop of shouted conversations filtering through the open doors of the caf make the hallway too loud for me to hear myself, and that somehow makes it ha rd for me to make noise at all; like my brain couldn’t possibly contribute to the cacophony. “Chlo—” I start to say.

“I knew it,” she yells. The music cuts out at that exact moment, and she’s much louder than I think she intended.

She’s too busy flipping through a list of names attached to a clipboard to care, though.

She checks off a box, then scribbles my name on a sheet of name tag stickers. “It’s me. Kayleigh…with a -gh.”

The music comes back on, perhaps louder than it was.

“Oh” is all I can manage, but Kayleigh was always great at this: talking, socializing, conversation. She was president of her sorority in university, and I’m pretty sure she’s getting into municipal politics now.

“I love your dress. You look amazing.” She reaches out her hand, squeezing mine. “It’s so lovely to see you.”

I look down at my dress. When I first got the invitation, I was so nervous about this reunion that I tried to hire my high school secret friends with benefits as a fake boyfriend so my business would be a success and I could honestly come here deserving of the Most Likely to Succeed honor they’d bestowed upon me.

I’m nervous still, but not about what any of these people think. So much so, I can’t remember what I’m wearing. I can’t remember putting much thought into my outfit at all. I’m as delighted as Kayleigh to see my black wrap dress and flat strappy sandals.

“It’s lovely to see you, too,” I say, and I mean it. I’m about to walk away, my name tag sticker still stuck to the end of my finger, when I hear the voice belonging to the real reason for my nerves.

“Dean,” he says. “Westlake.”

I spin to face him before I think any better of it. “Hi.”

“Hey.” He smiles.

We arrived separately, like we planned. Though I texted him when I was leaving my condo, when I was ten minutes away from the school, when I was sitting in the parking lot preparing to go inside.

I had a mental list of topics prepared in my head for the people we’d see tonight. Of course I can’t remember a single one of them now .

“Oh my gosh.” Kayleigh stands and runs around the table, throwing her arms around Dean. He meets my eyes over her shoulder, clearly as shocked as I am. Her voice is that squeaky kind of high, only a few octaves below being audible to dogs, but from what I can make out, she’s very happy to see him.

And she’s sorry.

She pulls back, clasping his shoulders. “I was a total bitch to you. And so was my boyfriend. I don’t even know if he’s coming tonight. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

Dean shakes his head slowly, catching my eye but looking away quickly. “Um…it’s okay, I guess.”