Perfect Match

by Lila Monroe

  None of this makes sense. If it is some kind of elaborate publicity stunt, the Jack I thought I knew would have warned me ahead of time. There were plenty of moments when he could have. He was barely even friendly when he talked to me before the presentation.

  Is this because I dared talk back over our office move?

  It can’t be. But what else is there? One moment of conflict, and he’s thrown in the towel. And not only thrown in the towel, but gone running to hook up with the nearest available woman in five seconds flat. Where is the guy who promised me we’d talk more and kissed me goodbye last week?

  It’s hard to believe I could have been that wrong about someone. But I’m not sure what else to think. Maybe he’s been a playboy all along. After all, we never had the talk. About who we are to each other, if this thing we were doing was exclusive.

  I just assumed he felt the same as me. But I guess I was wrong.

  I take a glass of champagne, but my one sip just makes me more queasy.

  “McKenna!” a voice calls. I glance up to see the tech bro who wouldn’t take no for an answer at the awards gala pushing through the crowd toward me. His face is flushed and his eyes glazed with alcohol. I’m going to bet he doesn’t remember grabbing me at the bar.

  “Hi,” I say warily.

  “Chip Harking. Manager at E-Dimension.” He waves his badge and then offers his hand. “That app of yours sounds amazing. Had to let you know. Really fantastic work. If you’re ever looking to partner up on a project, give us a shout.”

  I guess I should be glad he’s not still trying to “partner” with me in other ways. But it’s hard to enjoy the offer when a month ago he couldn’t see me as anything except a piece of meat.

  “Thank you,” I say with all the fake graciousness I can produce.

  That seems to be enough for Chip, because he wanders off into the crowd again. But he’s hardly the only guy here who’s changed his tune since the last time I saw them. I shake hands with at least five possible investors I pitched to, who are suddenly completely sold on the merits of Perfect Match. The exact same merits I told them about months ago. But, you know, this time they heard a man saying it was great, so now it must be true.

  It’d be easier not to be bitter if I hadn’t just gotten an eyeful of that man shoving his tongue down someone else’s throat.

  I clutch my glass and nod and smile some more. My cheeks are about ready to fall right off. A guy who two months ago told me the dating industry was too crowded already raves about how Perfect Match is exactly what the market needs right now. Where the hell is Riley now?

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I just saw someone I really need to talk to.”

  I hightail it out of that room, past the dangling circus performers, and into the bar room near the stern of the boat. Beyond the tall windows, the evening sky is clouded, the river water frothy. A gloomy setting to fit my gloomy mood. Which immediately becomes twice as gloomy, because two seconds later Jack and lady friend stroll in after me. I want to turn and run, but I know I can’t hide forever.

  Time to bite the damn bullet.

  Squaring my shoulders, I make my way over to the bar. Jack is just accepting a couple of glasses. He turns to hand one to his date, and his gaze catches on me. He pauses, leaning his elbow casually on the bar counter. Nothing in his posture or his smile suggests he’s uncomfortable. But his eyes still look strangely cold.

  “Ms. Delaney,” he says. “Quite the reception we got, wasn’t it? You must be very pleased.”

  I’m Ms. Delaney again now? My throat tightens, but I keep my own voice even. “Yes. It’s been great.”

  He slings his arm around Claudia, who beams at me. She has no idea that just days ago I was in her shoes, obviously. “I don’t think I properly introduced you to Claudia,” he says. “Although in all fairness, it was your app who introduced her to me. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  “I’m a fan,” Claudia grins.

  “Uhhuh,” I manage to murmur. If he’s trying to drive a knife in, he’s doing a great job. “You’re very welcome. Listen, I need to talk to you for a few minutes. Alone. It’s important.”

  He glances at Claudia. As if he needs her permission before he’ll hear me out. She gives him a playful push. “Go on. There’s a buffet table with my name on it.”

  He sneaks in one last kiss before pointing me to the doors to the deck. We step outside. It’s quiet out here, the chatter of the party faded to a dull hum, but it’s also freezing. I restrain a shiver, crossing my arms over my chest. Jack leans against the railing.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. By some miracle my voice stays steady.

  Jack gives me that same blank gaze. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. We’re both where we wanted to be, aren’t we? I got the soulmate you promised, you got your funding. All’s well in the world.”

  “But—” I am so confused. How can he not get that? “What about us?”

  “Us?” he repeats. His tone turns incredulous. I see a spark in his eyes then, but it looks more like anger than anything else. “There was never really an us, was there? We had a little fun, that’s all. Now that the app is public, it wouldn’t help you for us to be seen together. Isn’t that how you felt?”

  “That’s not— I just wanted to be careful how people saw us.” I shake my head. “But together … I thought we had something.”

  “Not enough for you to turn down dates with somebody else.”

  His voice is clipped, and I finally connect the dots. “You mean that article?” I stare at him. “That was just something Nelle put together, for her story. I didn’t … I mean, I wouldn’t … I never saw him again! We took some photos, then I told him it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

  I only wanted you.

  But Jack stays cool. “It’s none of my concern who you date.”

  My eyes have started to itch with tears. “Why are you being like this?”

  “Like what?” Jack replies.

  “Like I’m just one of your employees!” I exclaim. “I thought we had something real together. I thought you felt it too!”

  My voice breaks.

  Jack blinks at me. For a second, I think I see his expression soften. Then he jerks his gaze away.

  “You thought wrong,” he says. “You should be happy, we’re on the same page. You got everything you wanted from me, and now I have a piece of the next billion-dollar company. It really was the perfect match.”

  He straightens up and stalks across the deck without another word. The door bangs shut behind him with a heave of wind. I turn away from the bright windows, clapping my hand over my mouth to muffle a sob. Nothing can stop my tears from finally overflowing. They sting on my cheeks as they streak down. But that pain doesn’t hurt half as much as the ache inside me.

  He’s gone.

  29

  McKenna

  Two weeks later, and I’ve given up trying to hide the heartache. Why try to put on a brave face when I could wallow in despair instead?

  “McKenna, pick up!” Maggie’s voice comes through my speakerphone. “I know you’re there. Come on, you’re probably watching bad holiday movies and eating your body weight in pad thai.”

  I raise my head amid the blankets and takeout boxes littering my sofa. She knows me too well.

  “McKenna …” She urges.

  I waver, and then sink back into the sofa. I don’t feel like talking to anyone. Okay, I haven’t felt like talking to anyone since the party, but I have the weekend off. I’m allowed to engage in maximum wallowing.

  My stomach grumbles. I check the boxes within reach, but they’re all empty now except for smears of sauce. There’s a box with some pizza still in the fridge, I think. But how long ago did I order that pizza? How old is too old?

  Hmmm.

  A banging comes from my door.

  “Open up, Mac!” Jill’s voice calls. “We know you’re in there, and we know you need to get out.”

  “Please, McKen
na,” Tessa follows up. “We just want to know you’re okay.”

  The worry in her voice makes me feel guilty enough to get me onto my feet. I trudge over to the door and unlock it.

  “I’m fine,” I say as I open it. “I’m just … relaxing.”

  They both march in. Jill looks me up and down. I’m suddenly hyperaware of my rumpled bathrobe and all the crumbs sticking to it. My hair that I haven’t combed, let alone washed, in about five days. Uh, maybe I have let things slide a little too far.

  “All right,” Tessa says briskly. “Consider this a broken heart intervention. You need some air and some company.”

  I start to mumble a protest, but Jill claps her hands. “No excuses! Get yourself into the shower and into some clothes, and then you’re coming with us. You’ve got more holiday shopping to finish anyway, don’t you?”

  I do. So I trudge into the bathroom and emerge a little while later in jeans and a slouchy sweatshirt. Jill doesn’t look much more impressed by that choice of outfit, but she and Tessa bundle me into my winter coat and out the door.

  Normally I hate the holiday bustle in the last week before Christmas. But wandering through the department store crowd with my friends on either side of me, I actually start to feel a little normal. There are sparkly Christmas trees and big red bows and carols playing. The world doesn’t stop just because some guy was an asshole.

  “I’m really sorry,” Tessa says, putting an arm around me.

  “What for?”

  She grimaces. “I encouraged you to go for it with Jack. I had no idea he’d jerk you around like that.”

  “He’s a jerk, plain and simple,” Jill cuts in. “It’s a shame looks like that get wasted on guys like that so often.”

  “How has it been at work?” Tessa asks.

  I shrug. “The good news is, everything’s moving ahead at full speed with launching Perfect Match. Even with our new goal of recruiting a hundred thousand users for the new year. It’s really going as well as I could have hoped.”

  “That’s great!” Jill squeezes my arm, but I know they’re waiting for a different sort of commentary.

  “I hardly see Jack around the office anyway. He’s been traveling a lot. And I’ve been working from home. Honestly, I know more about what he’s been doing recently from the gossip columns than firsthand.”

  The gossip columns, which have been all full of remarks about the various events he’s been showing off his perfect match at. By all appearances, he’s now been hooking up with Claudia longer than he was officially hooking up with me. Which I guess goes to show how not-real that “relationship” was.

  “At least the most important things are on track,” Tessa comforts me. “You can’t blame yourself for how he acted. That’s obviously all on him.”

  “Yeah,” I say. But her comment gnaws at me as we stop at the bakery counter to grab a snack. We sit down at one of the cramped tables, nibbling cupcakes that aren’t half as good as Maggie’s. It’s better to let the truth come out, isn’t it?

  “The worst part is, I don’t know what this says about my whole approach with the app,” I admit. “If you go by my algorithm, Jack was the worst possible match for me. But I totally fell for him. And I’m furious at him. I’m telling people I know all the answers, but I don’t really have a clue.”

  “No,” Jill says firmly. “No way. You can’t think that. It was a fluke. These things happen. And it happened because he was putting on an act, pretending he was the kind of guy you’d want to get with. Just forget him.”

  “You still haven’t really tried Perfect Match for yourself, have you?” Tessa asks. “Except for that date for the magazine article—what was his name? Peter? Have you talked to him at all since then?”

  I pick at the cake. “Not really. He texted me last week just to say what a great time he had, and that he’d be up for a second date if I decided I was, but I didn’t answer.”

  “Why not?” Jill demands. “You don’t have any reason to turn him down now.”

  “Yeah.” Tessa nods. “You told him you weren’t interested because you were all wrapped up in Jack, right? But Jack’s out of the picture now. You never gave Peter a real chance.”

  I pause. Maybe they’re right. I was so busy thinking about Jack that I couldn’t give Peter my full attention. But … “I still feel so awful. I’m not exactly in a dating mood.”

  “Mood, schmood,” Jill says. “Text that guy right now and ask him to dinner. You’ve got to get back on the horse, girl. See all those other fish in the sea.”

  “Any more mixed metaphors for me?”

  She grins. “I’m just saying. There’s a whole world of guys out there who will appreciate you more than Jack Callahan.”

  “I don’t know …” I’m still reluctant.

  Tessa grabs my purse. She fishes out my phone. “Hey!” I protest, but she’s already skimming through my messages.

  “Here he is! Let’s see. Hey, Peter. Sorry for the late response. Free tonight?”

  “Tessa!”

  She grins and hands the phone back to me, with the message already sent. I groan. An answer pops up a moment later.

  Great timing, my plans just fell through, Peter has written. Did you have something in mind? And my spirits lift, just a little.

  He wants to see me again. And, God, he was so nice, and smart, and pretty damn good-looking too. I bite my lip.

  “Come on, Mac,” Jill says. “I know you’ve got it in you.”

  “All right, all right.” I take a deep breath.

  How does dinner and a movie sound?

  “So then on the very last day, my sister goes up to the front of the bus and says, ‘I know this might sound really bizarre, but I’d really like to get to know you better. Can we get a coffee sometime?’ And the driver says, ‘I was hoping you were going to say something like that.’ And I was Man of Honor in their wedding three years ago.” Peter grins. “So true love on the public transit can actually happen outside the movies too.”

  “They should make that story into a rom com,” I say, waving my fork at him. “It’s got all the elements.”

  “Hmm.” Peter leans back in his chair. We’ve both just polished off some excellent pasta in the little bistro he recommended near the movie theater. “I wonder who they’d get to star in it. I don’t think my sister would be happy unless she’s played by Keira Knightley or Emily Blunt. She’s always wished she was born British.”

  “The magic of movies can arrange anything,” I say with a smile. I am not going to think about a certain British person whose voice was charming me over dinner just a few weeks ago. Nope, no way, goodbye. Especially not when Peter is being quite charming himself.

  “Should we get dessert?” he asks as the waiter heads our way.

  I pat my stomach. “I don’t know how much more deliciousness I can fit in there.”

  His grin turns sly. “What if we split something? I’ll pick up your slack if I need to. The chocolate fudge cake here is amazing.”

  “You make a compelling argument. All right, let’s do it.”

  The cake is as amazing as promised. Our forks clink against each other as we steal bites. And I try very, very hard not to remember sharing food with another guy in the dark. In a cozy ocean-side bistro. In silky bathrobes in his kitchen after—

  Yeah. I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about that.

  When my stomach is achingly full, we pull on our coats and amble down the street outside. The night is crisp but not painfully chilly. The city lights glow around us. A perfect romantic evening. A lot like the one when Jack playfully got down on bended knee and—

  No. Shut up, brain. I wish I could scrub all those memories of Jack right out of it. They clearly didn’t mean anything to him.

  “So what is it that you like about romantic comedies?” Peter says. “I’d have thought that when you study real relationships, it might be hard to get into the fictional version. Kind of like how history majors get peeved by all the inaccurac
ies in period dramas.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, and then realize that’s not true. “I guess I like the sense of order to it. The people who belong together end up together in the end. There’s always a way to overcome any misunderstanding. And they’re all about compatibility. Showing how some matches don’t work and others do. Maybe it’s romanticized, but I think that’s still a good message for people to remember.”

  “That makes sense. Although they do seem to focus on ‘opposites attract’ more than any other principle.”

  “Well, there’s some truth to that. And it makes for more entertaining conflicts.” I smile at him. “They’ve still got to be a good story. No one wants to watch two people being blissfully happy at each other for two hours.”

  “Point.” He smiles back and reaches to take my hand. His fingers close around mine, warm and gentle—and my mind is slipping back to other hands, other smiles, yet again. I close my eyes for a second when we hit a red light.

  “Is everything all right, McKenna?” Peter asks. “I mean, I’m having a great time, don’t get me wrong, but I get the impression your mind is somewhere else.”

  “I—” I start, and my throat closes up. I have to swallow before I can keep going. This isn’t fair to him. It really isn’t. I’ve got to get over Jack, absolutely, but this isn’t the way to do it. “I’m really sorry. I thought this would be a good idea. And I have really enjoyed going out with you! You’re great. Maybe if it’d been another time …”

  I trail off. Peter waits patiently. God, he is too sweet. If there’s any justice in the universe, he’ll find his real perfect match tomorrow. “I’m getting over someone who hurt me a lot,” I admit. “I thought I was ready to get out and date again, but it looks like I was wrong. Again, I’m really sorry.”

  He looks rueful. “That’s OK. Some things aren’t meant to be. Whoever that guy was, he should be kicking himself.”

  That does make a satisfying image. I manage to smile again. “Thank you. Um, I can say that we’ve got a whole bunch of new people signing up for the app every day, so if you want to take another look for someone who might really be meant to be …”