Page 8 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

Our park.

When we were kids, our park was a lot like any other suburban park.

Unused for its actual purpose but still well-loved.

I can only remember playing in this park as a very small child, when all the play structures seemed impossibly high.

Then, as I grew up, I realized they weren’t too high; I had just been very, very small.

Dean and I came here sometimes in high school, when the weather was nice enough.

Even sometimes when it wasn’t. We’d wait for the preteens “hanging out” to leave, for the Catholic high school students to finish their prescription drug exchanges.

Then we’d make out until the streetlights came on.

The tube connecting the jungle gym to the play structure and the playhouse were two of our favorite spots.

Often there’d be evidence left behind of other like-minded paramours, new graffiti announcing so-and-so loves someone else, and, unfortunately, used condoms .

But we were teenagers with little access to privacy and an abundance of hormones, so it was good enough for us.

Tonight, I avoid cramming myself into one of those spaces and take a swing instead.

Two kids run up the slide, observed by their mother, in the waning light; this is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen this park used for its true purpose.

The mom glances at me a few times, and I smile in an attempt to calm any nerves my suspiciously childless presence brings.

But then Dean arrives, striding down the paved path from the street, and she deems playtime to be well and truly over.

He looks handsome, his hair falling in front of eyes that crinkle when he smiles at me.

A skateboard is tucked beneath his arm, his hands in his pockets and tattoos sprinkled across his skin.

My gaze hops along them like they are the stones along a footpath that travels up into the sleeves of his t-shirt.

Dean sets his skateboard on the grass outside the wood-plank bordered sandpit before he takes the swing next to me.

Without the family, the park is quiet and still and maybe a little sad.

The homes that back onto the green space are all separated with high privacy fences and tall green cedars, but the sounds of families and children, BBQs and splashing pools filter through.

“Do your parents still have the pool?” I ask.

The chains on the swings squeak under our weight. “Yeah.”

He says he doesn’t want to talk about it, our past, but spoken or not, it sits between us, sand in our shoes that we can’t get out no matter how hard we thump.

It’s here in the memories of his parents’ backyard landscaping, the taste of chlorine on his lips, the smell of it in his hair.

How there was a time that nothing was too astringent to stop me from kissing him.

“I’ll help you,” he says quietly. I need a moment to switch my brain over from Random Memory Recall to holy fuck, Dean is going to help me .

“You’re going to pay me,” he says. “But not to be your fake boyfriend. ”

A mosquito buzzes near my ear, but I don’t bother swatting it. “I don’t get it.”

The chains clink as he twists in the swing to face me. “Your clients don’t need you to have a boyfriend to work with you. They need to understand why they don’t have a partner. So you’re going to hire me as a dating coach. One complimentary session with clients, additional sessions as needed.”

Our knees bump when I turn toward him; he turns away again. “You’d do that?”

He turns his face to the darkening sky, his eyes closed. “Yes, Chloe.” He sounds resigned.

Why , I almost ask, but instead I say, “Thank you.”

He stands, the swing swaying at the loss of his weight, and steps out of the sandbox.

He picks up his skateboard. There’s a fresh wound on the back of his elbow, surrounded by a purple bruise.

I don’t have to wonder if he’s decided to take up skateboarding again.

Dean turns to me. “And fair is fair, so send me a list of times this week you’re available for new headshots. ”

He drops the board to the ground and steps onto it in one movement, rolling back up the path to the street. He’s a thirty-something-year-old man, and part of me thinks that I should think he’s too old for skateboarding.

Mostly, I wish I would have asked him to teach me how when I had the chance.

I check the text message again, but the information hasn’t changed since Dean first sent instructions.

Dean: Toronto Reference Library, Lobby

It’s a beautiful day, nearing golden hour. I thought he’d want to do headshots outside. There’s plenty of green space to be found in Toronto. But I’m not a photographer, so what do I know ?

Actually, what I know is my new client memberships have fallen this last quarter. Not by a lot. A few percentiles, negligible for a business in its first five years, really. Except it feels…whatever the opposite of negligible is.

If Dad knew, he would tell me to loosen my grip.

There were a few years as a teen that Dad and I couldn’t really connect.

My parents had been divorced since I was eight, so I wasn’t angry at either of them anymore.

I liked his partner— now my stepdad— Charles, and the revelation that he was bi had already settled into the DNA of our family.

The disconnect was probably the result of me being a teenage girl, but at the time, it felt like an impassable rift.

The only thing that didn’t really change between us was baseball.

The data, the beauty of a game played on green grass, under blue skies, distilled into numbers, communicated in signs.

When we couldn’t speak to each other about the important things, we could speak to each other about ball.

There’s something that happens to a ballplayer, a whole team, when they’re in a hitting slump. They grip their bats tighter; they lose their read on the ball. The longer a team goes in a game without a base hit, the harder they swing at soft contact and the wider the strike zone gets.

“They need to loosen their grip,” Dad would say, mimicking the swing of a bat. That one movement would bleed into the next, into their stance in the batter’s box, the speed of the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand.

If I bothered to tell Dad about any of this now, I think that’s what he’d say, that I need to loosen up, but I haven’t told him. It’s too embarrassing to tell a successful businessman, an entrepreneur himself, that I am failing and because of something so… stupid.

“Ready?”

I jump back, yelp. Dean stands in front of me, his thumb hooked into the strap of his messenger bag and a camera already hanging around his neck.

“Sorry.” He frowns, holding his hand out like he wants to steady me, but I step away .

“Sorry,” I say back.

He holds his camera up, half a smile on his face. “Ready?” he asks again.

And I nod.

Apparently, the main space of the Toronto Reference Library has “cool” light and “interesting” colors and textures, which is why he wanted to do the headshots here. And, apparently, he knows someone— a librarian, I assume— who works here and said it was okay for us to take photos today.

But also, and perhaps most importantly, he says I look “too tense”. He keeps taking a photo and then looking at the digital screen and frowning; keeps posing me— “chin up…no, not that high”— and then telling me to forget it.

“Do you want to try again later?” he asks.

“Am I that ugly?” I ask, mostly joking.

“You’re not ugly,” he says, seeming angry for the first time since we got here. “You just don’t seem into this.”

I look at my phone, which has been in my hand more than necessary for a photoshoot. Every time the screen lights up, I’m terrified I’ll see another email notification informing me of a cancellation.

“Listen, I know you don’t want to do the whole boyfriend-for-hire thing,” I say.

In response, Dean’s face goes blank.

“What if we took one photo? One I could use for the social media account?”

“No,” he says flatly.

“It doesn’t even need to have a caption,” I say. Maybe it could be enough to convince the clients who’ve left to come back. “It could be a soft launch.”

“No,” he says again, firmer this time.

“At this rate, there’s not going to be anyone left for you to coach,” I mutter.

Dean tutored me in French in high school. Languages have never been my strength. I’m nowhere close to proficient in French now, and I’m lucky I don’t have to use it at all living in Toronto, but I still remember some of it. “S’il vous pla?t.”

“Don’t,” he practically growls.

Shit . “Sorry,” I say quickly. “I forgot.” Then flush, because that probably makes it worse. S’il vous pla?t was what I’d say to him when I wanted to stop studying and make out but he didn’t. I almost always got what I wanted after that.

“ Fuck .” I think if he could right now, he’d spit. His shoulders slump and he turns away from the second-floor landing, stomping to the stairs. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I trail after him.

“Making us official, I guess.”

“Oh.” I run after him.

“Here,” he says, pointing down a quiet aisle on the fifth floor, in the general arts section. “This is fine, I guess.” His tone is annoyed, but his palm has been pressed to my lower back the entire trip up, a steadying presence.

“Wouldn’t it be better outside?” I ask. “In a park or something?”

He scoffs. “What, like engagement photos or something?”

“No.” I huff. “I just thought…” I look around. “Never mind.” I know it’s all fake anyway, but doing it here, in a quiet corner of the stacks, adds an extra layer that makes it really fake.

Dean steps past me, pushing books aside and setting the camera up on a shelf at about chest height. “Here.” He gestures for me absently.

“Dean.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Seriously. Never mind. This is stupid.”

He levels a glare at me. “You’re the one using French,” he says. “I need clients, too.”