The Match Makers
Love Quiz #3
Maggie Dallen
Copyright © 2020 by Maggie Dallen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Images © DepositPhotos – dan.grytsku.gmail.com & PinkBadger
Cover Design © Designed with Grace
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
Prologue
The Junior High Valentine’s Day Dance
Edie
I wasn’t nervous.
I didn’t do nervous.
“Edie, are you okay?” My friend Beth stood beside me as we hovered next to the punch bowl. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I’m not going to be sick.” I didn’t mean to snap, but I’d been on edge all day and if one more well-meaning friend asked me if I was all right, I was going to lose it.
My other friend Cara stood on the other side of me but she leaned forward to talk to Beth. “Dane hasn’t asked her to dance yet.”
I turned to glare at Cara. I should never have opened my big mouth. I should never have told Cara about my crush on Dane.
I shifted, tugging at the black skirt my older sister had told me to wear.
I felt stupid in it. I didn’t have a butt to speak of and the blouse with the cutout shoulders she’d lent me made me feel like a wannabe stripper.
I should never have gone to Julia for advice on clothes.
I eyed the room for the millionth time, my gaze finally settling on the group of guys in the far corner who were standing in a circle and laughing at something. They were probably laughing at something Dane had said.
Dane was always making people laugh, and he was always at the center of every circle.
I shifted impatiently, ignoring my friends as they talked about me.
Wait for him to make the first move. That was what Julia had told me in a firm tone and with that glare she’d perfected when I was in kindergarten.
I shouldn’t have gone to Julia for clothes or advice.
Look where it had gotten me. Standing in a freakin’ corner while my friends discussed whether or not I’d been dissed.
“Did he ask her out yet?” Beth asked.
Apparently they’d stopped going to the source for news. They were more than content to keep the rumor mill flowing with or without hard facts.
I bit back a sigh. Beth and Cara might not have been close friends, but I was lucky to have them as allies. I couldn’t even imagine how awful it would be to be standing here alone right now. Or worse, be sitting at home because I hadn’t felt included, like poor Anna.
I made a mental note to seek Anna out on Monday and ask her about her weekend.
“He’s looking over here,” Cara hissed in my ear.
My head snapped up and I found myself looking straight into Dane’s gorgeous blue eyes. Granted, I couldn’t see the color of his irises from the other end of the room, but I knew what they looked like.
I’d known Dane forever. Like most of the Coleridge kids, we’d all been going to the same school since kindergarten. I wasn’t sure when Dane had gotten so cute, though. Maybe he always had been and I just hadn’t noticed.
His eyes narrowed a bit as they wrinkled at the corners and my heart tripped over itself as he gave me that squinty-eyed smile that I adored. His lips curved up a little more on the right side, revealing a dimple.
Le sigh.
“He’s smiling at you,” Beth said.
The moment she said it, his gaze shot back to his friends and he tipped his head back with a laugh at something Justin Lorentos said.
That fluttery sensation in my gut was replaced with disappointment.
I’d thought when he spotted me, he’d…
Well, maybe not run right over, but that he’d do something. I’d been standing here for an eternity and…nothing. He’d barely acknowledged my existence.
I huffed in irritation. Looked like Julia was wrong—again.
Like everything else in my life, if I just stood around and waited, it would never happen. I thrust Julia’s glittery, and totally impractical, clutch into Cara’s hands. “Hold my purse.”
There was a big group of seventh graders blocking my path on the dance floor so I had to veer around them, skirting the edges of the junior high’s gymnasium and smiling politely to the chaperones who looked like they’d rather be anywhere but here.
When I finally reached the far side, my heart did one last somersault. He looked good—even from behind. And now, tonight…I was finally going to make this happen.
Dane and I would have our first dance. Maybe even our first kiss. And hopefully, by the end of tonight, I would have my first boyfriend.
I swallowed down another wave of nerves.
I didn’t do nerves.
I was the girl who got things done. I hadn’t been elected eighth-grade class president for nothing. I was a go-getter, a leader, and now…?
A trembling smile tugged at my lips.
Well, now I was ready to be Dane Foster’s girlfriend.
I’d walk up to him and I would ask him to dance. How hard could that be?
I was three feet away when I heard Justin say my name. I stumbled a bit in the stupid heels Julia had lent me, and I slowed my pace as I drew near.
I wasn’t big on eavesdropping but I assumed there was a special exception to the rule when one heard one’s name being mentioned.
Particularly when one of the people talking was the boy one had been crushing on for a full year now. A large speaker stood between me and them, so if I just dawdled here for a little while…it wasn’t like I was trying to spy.
Right?
I mean, I wasn’t being outright creepy or anything, just—
“Everyone says you’re gonna make out with her tonight,” Justin said.
My moral conundrum came to an abrupt halt, because…Her. He meant me. My stomach went into a free fall. Everyone was saying that? I didn’t know whether I felt giddy or embarrassed but I knew that my whole body was frozen, like my next breath depended on Dane’s response.
Dane laughed. “Oh yeah? Who’s everyone?”
“Are you saying they’re wrong?” Justin asked.
No. They’re not wrong. I almost answered for him, frustrated by Dane’s silence as much as the fact that I couldn’t see his expression.
“Beth keeps texting me asking when you’re going to ask her to dance.” That came from Billy, one of our friends.
I was friends with all these guys…sort of. Well, as much as I was friends with anyone in our class.
Dane was the only one I’d ever really bonded with or felt any connection to. He was the only one who seemed to really get me. The only one who liked me just the way I was and who—
“I won’t need to ask her to dance,” he said with a laugh, his tone unbearably smug. “She’ll come to me.”
The guys around him laughed but my chest went ice cold. What did that mean?
What did that laugh mean?
Was he…laughing at me?
“The girl is so bossy she’ll probably storm over here and demand you dance with her.” Justin laughed at his own joke and I…
I tried not to cry.
I didn’t do crying.
I was so not the girl who cried at the Valentine’s Day dance.
I waited for Dane to defend me. To come to my rescue like a freakin’ gentleman.
He laughed, instead. “Of course she will. She’s Edie.”
I stumbled back a step, his words landing like a punch to the gut.
He was laughing at me. He was laughing at who I was. All this time I’d thought he liked me. He didn’t seem to mind the fact that I knew my own mind or that I liked to lead. Everyone else called me bossy or other names that were even worse, but he never seemed to mind.
But all this time…all this time he’d been laughing at me.
I spun around, heading toward the door. I was almost there before I remembered that Cara had my stupid clutch, which had my phone, which I’d need to text my mom to tell her to come pick me up.
Crap.
I stopped just shy of the door and turned to face my friends, but first I had to collect myself. I took a deep breath. I would not cry in front of Beth and Cara. That would be a surefire way to have my humiliation spread like wildfire. They might have been my friends but they lived to gossip. Everyone would be laughing at me come Monday morning.
No, thank you.
I wouldn’t be the butt of Dane’s little joke and I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by falling all over him and asking him to dance.
“Edie! There you are.”
Dane.
“Hey, you going somewhere?” he asked as he reached me where I stood by the exit.
I paused before turning to face him, taking one crucial heartbeat to calm myself and cool my anger. He didn’t know I’d overheard him, and he never would.
I might be a control freak like everyone says, but I wasn’t an idiot and I wasn’t about to let myself be the butt of some jerk’s joke…no matter how cute his smile.
I faced him slowly. “I’m heading home.”
His brows arched up in surprise. “Oh, um…are you… I mean, is everything okay?”
I had to work hard to paste a smile on my face. “Fine. Just bored.” I looked around to avoid meeting his gaze. “This dance is lame, right?”
The words were forced and I didn’t mean them. I’d worked hard to organize this dance. The decorations, the refreshments. I’d planned all of it, and I’d been proud of it. A few minutes ago I would have told Dane all about it. Maybe even bragged a little at my success. But now… Now I knew he would have been laughing at me.
He didn’t answer right away, but then he cleared his throat and found his voice. “Oh, uh…yeah. Totally lame.”
I met his gaze then and mentally challenged him to do it.
Just try and make a fool of me, Dane Foster.
He gave me the lopsided grin I used to love and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was just wondering if, um…do you want to dance with me?”
Pain slashed through me so harsh it took my breath away. This was the moment I’d been daydreaming about for months now. The moment I’d fantasized about and waited for…
And it was ruined because I’d been wrong.
He didn’t like me.
Not really.
Not like I’d hoped.
I shook my head, already turning away. “No, thanks.”
Chapter 1
Edie
This was a disaster.
I hit refresh on the Love Quiz app and tried again.
Dane Foster.
Again.
I bounced my foot, tapping it against the bottom of Mr. Portman’s desk as I glared down at my phone. This app was ridiculous. Everybody knew it was a joke. I mean, an app that could predict your love match? So dumb.
But the fact that it kept matching me up with Dane Foster, of all people?
This app wasn’t just wrong, it was insane. Nuts. The thing had lost its virtual mind.
“Ah, Miss Zindell, here early, I see.” Mr. Portman, our psych teacher, was smiling at me when I looked up and saw him heading into his classroom for our meeting. I smiled automatically in response, but that smile faded fast at the sight of Dane Foster walking in behind him.
“Edie,” Dane said with a nod.
I bit back a growl. Instead, I gave him a smile that was more of a sneer. I couldn’t help it. I really couldn’t. Dane was my Achilles heel. My kryptonite. I’d normally say he was my arch nemesis except that for once we were working on the same team, and that was precisely why we were both here.
Dane slipped into the seat beside me and we both turned expectant looks in Mr. Portman’s direction.
Mr. Portman had been the one to call this meeting and I was anxious to get it over with. Not just because I had no desire to spend any more time than necessary with Dane Foster, although that was a big part of it.
It was bad enough that I had to be a group leader with the pompous, annoying, egotistical—
“You two came up with quite the group project idea,” Mr. Portman said.
I clasped my hands together in my lap and straightened in my seat, all thoughts of Dane’s irritating personality long gone. Something in Mr. Portman’s tone had me on high alert.
There was a ‘but’ hanging there in the air between us, unspoken and potentially brutal.
I felt Dane shoot a look in my direction but I ignored him, all my concentration on our psychology teacher. A notoriously hard grader, he’d decided to try something new this semester and have the class split into two groups for an assignment that would make up a large part of our grade.
It all revolved around the Love Quiz app that had been taking our school by storm this year, along with most of the high schools in this country, from what I gathered.
Mr. Portman had thought the app and the philosophy behind it posed an interesting conundrum. Could love be quantified? Could human emotions be predicted using data science?
No. Obviously. Which was what our group was going to prove.
“I’ve read the hypothesis and the summary of the experiment the two of you are planning,” he said.
His gaze was hard to read. I fought the urge to shoot Dane a questioning look to see if he had some idea where this was going.
Mr. Portman folded his hands on top of the desk. “I’ll admit I’m impressed by your ingenuity,” he said. “The other group did as I’d expected. They’re researching various aspects of the topic and preparing a written and oral presentation to reveal their results.”
“Sounds boring,” Dane said with a cheerful smile that took the sting out of his words.
That was one of Dane’s specialties. He was straightforward and stubborn, a strong personality who always thought he should have his own way—but he somehow charmed everyone into believing he was all laid back and cool.
He wasn’t.
He was every bit a control freak as I was, he just hid it better.
The jerk.
As expected, our teacher chuckled at Dane’s statement, neither affirming that their plan was boring but not denying it either. I straightened again, this time with pride that we’d had the better idea. In our group of six, we’d decided to prove that the app was inherently flawed and easy to trick since it used predictable data like locations and online interactions. Sure it took into play a person’s likes and hobbies, interests and pastimes, but my hunch was—it was a simplistic formula that could easily be manipulated.
That was what we planned to prove by pairing nerdy Anna—I mean that in the nicest possible way—with our very own rebel without a cause, Zach. There was no way those two would ever get together for real since they were like night and day. But once they pretended to date for a few weeks, the app would declare them a match.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there was Rex and Jessica. Best friends since fifth grade, they were pretty much joined at the hip. It surprised no one that they’d been matched, even though they both swore they were only friends. For those two, Dane and I had found people for them to date who they might actually hit it off with romantically. At the end of the day, we’d prove that the app had gotten it wrong and misread their friendship to be a romantic connection.
&n
bsp; “I read your ideas for the other four in your group,” Mr. Portman said slowly, his gaze moving back and forth between us. “But what about you two?”
I looked over and caught Dane shooting me a similar look of confusion. “What do you mean, what about us?” Dane said. “We’ll be monitoring the results, coming up with the strategy to trick the app, and writing up the final results and conclusions.”
“We believe the app should be treated like horoscopes or fortune cookies,” I added. “Simple entertainment. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Definitely not something to base real life decisions on,” Dane added.
I gave a decisive nod of agreement. Dane, like me, had watched too many of our friends base their romantic lives around this stupid, fallible app. Everyone was treating it like it was some all-knowing predictor of the future and not a silly game that ought to be used as entertainment.
I wrapped my hands around my phone in my lap guiltily. I shouldn’t have even downloaded the app onto my phone. I knew better.
“While I find it admirable that the two of you are taking on the leadership roles within the group, I’m not entirely sure it’s fair that your classmates are using their lives as part of the experiment.”
I stared at Mr. Portman in confusion. “We’re not asking them to do anything…bad.”
“All they have to do is go on a few dates. No big deal,” Dane said.
I glanced over at Dane because…maybe Mr. Portman didn’t understand? “We’re not having them actually, you know…act on it.”
Mr. Portman’s brows hitched up. “Act on it?”
I looked over at Dane for help and he stepped in. “We’re not suggesting they take things to a physical level of intimacy if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I pressed my lips together in annoyance that Dane found the right words to explain while I had not. But then again, Dane was used to talking about these kinds of things. He’d dated enough girls that I was sure he never grew flustered about talk of intimacy.
The Match Makers: Love Quiz #3 Page 1
