“If we are building our dream man”—Kristen wiggles her eyebrows, and I know what she is going to say before she says it—“can he have Orlando Bloom’s—”
“Kristen Anne Carmichael!” Lexi cries. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
Kristen has been obsessed with Orlando’s bloom ever since the paparazzi released pictures of him paddleboarding stark-nekked. Orlando Bloom. Nekked as baby Jesus in the manger. I can’t unsee that. Ever.
“Don’t Kristen me. If Orlando Bloom walked into this courtyard right now and asked you to go paddleboarding with him, you know you would.”
“I am engaged. To be married.”
Kristen rolls her eyes.
Kristen doesn’t believe in matrimony. It’s my goal to match her with her forever mate after I have a few more successful matches under my belt.
“Daniel Craig and Tom Hardy disdain politics, but Orlando Bloom works with Global Cool to raise awareness about greenhouse gas emissions,” Savannah says, flipping her long, sandy-blond hair off her slender shoulder. “I will keep Orlando, and trade Daniel and Tom for Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Savannah Warren looks fragile, like one of the Olsen twins, but she’s sharp and scrappy. Her granddaddy was a senator and her daddy created the Warren Institute, one of the most influential think tanks in the country. Not surprisingly, Savannah is passionate about politics, especially equality, climate change, and LGBTQ+ rights. When she gets too preachy, I remind her of the time she got crazy drunk on Irish Car Bombs and created her alter ego, Sugar Bush, George W. Bush’s secret illegitimate daughter, who works as a stripper while she puts herself through college. Savannah couldn’t dance her way out of a wet paper sack . . . neither could Sugar.
“Enough about Orlando Bloom!” Maddie says, rolling her eyes. “Can we please talk about Cash’s brother? A little manscaping and he could join my BOMC.”
Madison Van Doren, Maddie, grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. She’s the sixth child of Winston Van Doren IV, heir to the Van Doren chemical and glass fortune. In college, she changed her major more times than her hairstyle. Eastern Asian Art History, Automotive Engineering, Economics, Anthropology. She dated a bunch of random guys and even flirted with lesbianism, which she confessed to me one Wine Wednesday, after Rosé and Real Housewives. Maddie’s living in New York City and working as a barista in a coffee shop/tattoo parlor while she studies international education at NYU.
“BOMC?” Lexi asks.
“Boff of the Month Club.” Maddie dips her chin, staring at Lexi through the thick black fringe of her blunt-cut bangs. “A new guy every month for twelve months. No obligations. Keep the ones I like, send the rest back.”
“Maddie!” I cry, fanning my flushed cheeks with my hand.
“Madison Rose Van Doren!” Lexi hisses. “You best hush your mouth before my momma hears. Boff of the Month Club!”
Maddie laughs, a wicked little laugh that has me mentally making the sign of the cross for her naughty soul. I swear, y’all, Maddie is not a ratchet girl. She’s just a little lost. Maddie’s mom was the second Mrs. Van Doren. Maddie’s story is tragically cliché: her billionaire father had been married to his first wife for twenty-five years when he met Maddie’s mom, a stunning, five-foot-ten Black Irish model nearly thirty years his junior. Mr. and Mrs. Van Doren (the first) battled it out in divorce court, spending millions in litigation and generating dozens of sensational tabloid headlines. The children from Mr. Van Doren’s first marriage, Maddie’s half siblings, are successful captains of industry and philanthropy, movers and shakers from Manhattan to Malibu, who look down on Maddie. They consider Maddie to be the unfortunate product of their father’s midlife crisis. Maddie’s dad is too old to notice. Her mom is too self-involved to care. I swear, it breaks my heart.
“How about it, Ems?” Maddie fixes her bright gaze on me. “Will you introduce me to Cash’s brother?”
I look from Maddie to Lexi. Lexi keeps her expression blank, a vacant, I’m-not-involved look in her eyes. What would Patti Stanger, Millionaire Matchmaker, do? Patti would advise Maddie to make a nonnegotiable list of the things she absolutely wants in a mate. I am not even sure Maddie knows what she wants in a man (or woman, just saying). How could she identify what she wants in a mate when she can’t even settle on an identity for herself? One week she’s the preppy WASP in summer-weight plaids and J.Crew twinsets; the next week she’s Malibu Barbie, saying things like, Yoga isn’t really yoga unless you’re wearing Lululemon Wunder Under Crop leggings. This week, she’s Beatnik Bettie writing slam poetry and musing about social injustice. God bless her heart.
“Are you talking about the tall ginger with mutton chops in the gingham shirt and khakis?” Kristen nods her head at the bar. “The one over there, slamming back his fourth Old Fashioned?”
“That’s him,” Maddie says.
“You don’t want to go out with him,” Kristen says.
“I don’t?” Maddie frowns.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why not?” I ask, interested.
“I heard him talking to another guest about crabbing.”
“So?”
“He said he thought it should be an Olympic sport. Crabbing!” Kristen cries. “I don’t care if you’re wearing a snapback and your high school football jersey, lifting a crab trap out of the water isn’t an athletic competition.”
While my friends argue about the physicality required in crabbing, I search the courtyard for a more suitable addition to Maddie’s Boff of the Month Club: someone more suitable than Cash’s big brother, Chase. Chase Aiken is sweet, but he is dumb as a box of rocks. My daddy used to say, If that boy had an idea, it would die of loneliness. I watch him tip the contents of his old-fashioned glass into his mouth, crushed ice, maraschino cherry, orange slice, and all. He notices me watching and flashes a big, old smile, an orange rind where his teeth should be. Sweet baby Jesus and Forrest Gump, too! I can’t possibly encourage someone as bright as Maddie to hook up with a man who lives on the special bus. I am not being mean, y’all. Chase lives on a converted school bus parked out behind his granddaddy’s house on the Wadmalaw. It literally says Santee Special Education in big block letters on the sides.
I shift my gaze to B. Crav. Beauregard Cravath III—B. Crav to his friends—is a member of Charleston’s ancient elite. The Cravaths are an influential political family with roots going clear back to the seventeenth century. B. Crav is an enthusiastic polo player. His Whitney Turn Up is the social event of the polo season, a raucous, Moët-fueled party with a guest list comprised of blue bloods from all over the world. B. Crav has serious connections that stretch far beyond our magnolia-shaded borders. . . He’s also a philandering playboy who has tried to bed or wed every woman under thirty from the Mason– Dixon to the Florida–Georgia line. He would chew my friend up and spit her out.
Hmm. Maybe one of the Barton twins. Truman and Tavish Barton, known around Charleston as Those Barton Boys—usually said in an exasperated tone on account of their wild ways—are wealthy, worldly, and definitely eligible. I narrow my gaze and study their carefully coiffed chestnut curls and ubiquitous bow ties. I reckon they’re handsome-ish. They’re also two of my sister’s best friends, so . . .
The twins notice me staring and stroll over.
“Hey, dahlin’,” Tavish says, giving me a side hug.
“Emma Lee Maxwell, as I live and breathe.” Truman drawls out his vowels, letting them roll around on his mouth, savoring each one as if it were a drop of Old Fitzgerald Bourbon. “What’s this I hear about you leaving Charleston?”
“That’s right,” Tavish chimes in. “Tara said you’re moving to Hong Kong to write fortunes for a fortune cookie manufacturer.”
“Wrong, Brother,” Truman says. “Emma Lee is moving to Mars to be a space travel agent . . . or was it Japan to be a panda fluffer?”
“What’s a panda fluffer?” Tavish says. “Is that even a job?”
“Oh, it’s
a job!” Truman cries.
“Pandas are frigid, lazy animals,” Maddie deadpans. “Often, pandas in captivity must be induced to mate. The captivity center in Chengdu employs panda handlers who are tasked with introducing virile male pandas to sexually responsive females.”
“That’s right!” Truman grins at Maddie. “Who are you, dahlin’, and why haven’t we been introduced?” Truman looks at me through narrowed eyes. “I fear your future as a panda fluffer, Emma Lee Maxwell. What are you waiting for, girl? Introduce this virile panda to your friend.”
“Eww.” I wrinkle my nose up and shudder like I just caught whiff of something foul. “There are so many things wrong with that vulgar statement, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Begin by introducing me to your friend.”
Chapter Two
Emma Lee Maxwell’s Facebook Update:
According to Bride Magazine, December is the most popular month for getting engaged. If you are reading this post Jackson Harper you have six months to find a ring and pluck up your courage, boy!
I know what my sister and her friends think: poor, vapid Emma Lee Maxwell. She’s Life of the Party Barbie, fashionably dressed in designer heels and Lily Pulitzer dress, swirling from cotillion to Clemson, perpetually surrounded by her sparkly, perky squad. Life of the Party Barbie with an IQ as minuscule as her shoe size, clutching her BA in communications and public relations in one plastic hand and her daddy’s credit card in the other. How will she survive without her father’s cushy fortune? Is she capable of fashioning an independent life?
My sisters have always loved and supported me, but they thought I was one pink plastic door short of a Dreamhouse when I told them I wanted to move to the Cotswolds to start a matchmaking business. What else can I do?
I don’t have a cushy trust fund to fall back on. Before she died, Momma established generous trust funds for both my sisters. Manderley and Tara might not be able to throw down with Paris Hilton, but they’ll never know the shame of watching their Lexus be towed away.
Daddy was my trust fund. Daddy provided me with luxuries—luxuries I took for granted, like shopping trips to New York and a shiny convertible Lexus. Daddy provided me with the security that comes from having an encouraging, generous parent.
Was. Provided.
It’s difficult to think of Daddy in past-tense terms. I reckon it will always be difficult. When you’re not ready to say good-bye to someone, your mind fools you into believing the parting didn’t happen. You hear them calling your name, smell the scent of their pipe, catch their reflection in a store window, even though they’re gone.
Two months ago, Daddy was sailing off the coast of Sullivan’s Island with Aunt Patricia, Momma’s sister, when a wave created by a boat passing too close at too high a speed knocked them overboard. I was hosting a pool party to celebrate graduating from Clemson and moving into the guesthouse when the sheriff arrived to inform me of their deaths. Life of the Party Barbie, in her Vitamin A bikini, sipping a blueberry margarita, got a brutal lesson in what life is like in the real world. I would have collapsed right then and there if not for Lexi wrapping her arm around my waist.
A few days later, Daddy’s lawyer phoned to tell us Daddy owed a whole mess of back taxes and the IRS was seizing his property. All of it. Black Ash Plantation, the home built by my six times great-granddaddy, the home where I was born and my momma took her last breath. Daddy’s beloved sailboat. My momma’s antique writing desk and all her books. Even my Lexus.
Gone. With the wind.
Like Daddy and Aunt Patricia.
I miss my comforts but not nearly as much as I miss my kin.
I’m not gonna lie, y’all. Grief looked mighty ugly on me. I am not a pretty griever, nothing like Demi Moore in Ghost. I was not sitting around making pottery and shedding Swarovski crystal tears. I spent a few weeks on Tara’s sofa, bingeing on Raising Cane’s chicken-and-crap television, missing my daddy something fierce, and fretting about all the time I had wasted letting him baby me when I should have been learning how to Adult.
That’s when I had my epiphany. I was eating a three-finger chicken combo meal and watching a documentary about dating. The narrator said 80 percent of singletons polled admit they frequently visit bars in hopes of finding a date, even though their chance of meeting their forever mate in a bar is less than 5 percent. A pretty brunette named Bree admitted she has been clubbing three times a week for the last two years but hasn’t found a decent guy.
I thought, What the hell? Doesn’t she know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
The interviewer must have thought the same thing because he asked her why she kept going to clubs in search of love, and do you know what Bree said? She was comfortable in the clubs, surrounded by her friends. So, then it cut to a cute hipster guy named Evan, who said all his friends were into online dating, but he wasn’t down with meeting a girl in such an impersonal way. Which, I thought, was smart of Evan because I read a statistic on PopSugar’s Twitter feed that said online dating site users have a .03 percent chance of finding lasting love (Evan must follow @popsugar, too).
Point zero three percent! That’s insane, right?
I felt bad for all those misguided online daters, eagerly clicking Yes and swiping right. And poor Bree, wearing out her Louboutins, dancing with sweaty strangers, hoping for love. She just wants to feel comfortable and connected.
Single people want to feel comfortable and connected.
That thought kept playing in my head, like a YouTube video on loop. I don’t know why, but suddenly I started humming the matchmaker song from Mulan. Ohmygod, I thought, I should be a professional matchmaker. I’m good at making people feel comfortable and connected.
If I learned anything from my daddy and my Aunt Patricia, it was to fill my life with passion and purpose. Daddy was passionate about so many things: parenting, sailing, eating biscuits and peach jam, smoking pipes. If Daddy didn’t feel passionately about it, he didn’t do it. Aunt Patricia was the same way about her travels and the friends she collected along the way, like souvenirs to be treasured. So, right then and there, I opened my MacBook and composed a list of my passions.
Emma Lee Maxwell’s Passions:
• Reese Witherspoon (Queen)
• Eating Raising Cane’s Chicken
• Clemson (go Tigers!)
• The color red
• My sisters
• My friends
• Making people happy
• Bringing people together
And there it was, my passion and my purpose: bringing people together. Staring at the flickering cursor on my MacBook screen, I suddenly realized what I wanted to do with my new Adult life. I wanted to bring people together. I wanted to help give couples their happy endings—don’t be dirty, y’all. I wanted to be a professional matchmaker.
A few days later, I met Isabella Nickerson at B. Crav’s Whitney Turn Up, an annual event that allows a mess of blue bloods to sip Moët and pretend to watch Charleston’s finest polo players ride around knocking a small wooden ball with a long wooden mallet. It turns out, Miss Isabella went to boarding school with Momma and Aunt Patricia. We got to talking. I told her about my idea to become a professional matchmaker, and she told me about her intention to see her three unwed sons happily married.
If only you lived in England . . .
It turns out, Isabella (and her bachelor sons) live a few kilometers from Wood House, the cottage Aunt Patricia bequeathed to me in her will. Some might look at it as a happy coincidence, but I think it is divine intervention, like Momma and Aunt Patricia are looking out for me, taking over where Daddy left off. I could almost hear their celestial voices whispering, Go to the Cotswolds, Emma Lee. Live in Wood House and start your career as a matchmaker by finding wives for Isabella’s sons.
* * *
Someone touches my arm and I startle.
“Emma Lee?”
Lexi
’s momma is standing beside me, staring at my untouched bowl of she-crab soup. I got so tangled up and turned about in a labyrinth of memories, I completely missed the first course of my best friend’s engagement dinner.
“Is there something wrong with the soup?” Mrs. Armistead frowns. “It’s too heavy, isn’t it? I told Alexandria nothing good could come from serving a cream-based soup on a warm spring night, but . . .”
“Are you kidding?” I grab my spoon, dip it into the bowl, and lift the tepid crab soup into my mouth. “Serving she-crab soup at an engagement dinner is positively inspired.”
“It is?”
“Sure it is.” I rest my spoon on my soup plate, cross my hands neatly on my lap, and smile at my best friend’s anxious momma. “Did you know she-crab soup, at least the version we eat here in Charleston, was created by a butler working at the Rutledge House?” She shakes her head and the worry lines marring her otherwise blemish-free face start to fade. “I reckon you already know John Rutledge served in the Continental Congress and was the governor of South Carolina, but I’ll bet you didn’t know he built Rutledge House as a wedding gift for his bride.”
“You don’t say?”
“True story!” I shift my gaze across the courtyard to Lexi and Cash and a shiny, buoyant bubble of pride forms inside me. I introduced my best friend to her soul mate. “She-crab soup was invented in a house built by love. Knowing that, why wouldn’t a bride serve it at her engagement party?”
“Emma Lee Maxwell, you are a veritable treasure!” She laughs and shakes her head. “Honestly, how do you come up with this stuff?”
“My sister, Tara, is a chef. She’s got a whole mess of food trivia rattling around in her brain. Don’t get her started or she will go on and on about the history of bisques and biscuits and”—I shrug—“I guess some of it must have stuck in my brain, too.”
Mrs. Armistead fans her face with her hand. Her upper lip and brow are glistening with dew.
Badly Done, Emma Lee Page 2
