Sweet Matchmaking

by Nicole Ellis

  “Nothing yet, but I’ll be looking for a new place to renovate soon. Give me a call and we can talk about lunch.”

  “Will do. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for new fixer-uppers on the market.” Parker gave him a half wave, then got back into his car and drove away.

  Patrick stayed outside for a while longer, then entered the house. He ran his hand over the carved wooden railing. It had taken him days to sand it down and get the stain just right, but it had been worth it. Someone, maybe Parker’s client, was going to love this house. Enough lollygagging though. He had work to do. He needed to finish the subway tiles in the main bathroom’s shower before he left on Sunday to see his friend near Seattle and then attend the Drama in the Classroom class he’d signed up for.

  He grabbed the box of tiles and carried it into the bathroom. The space hadn’t seemed so big to him before, but now he could see that tiling it would take him longer than he’d expected. However, something about working with his hands was soothing, and with the radio playing classic rock he found himself getting lost in the rhythm of his work. Soon, he’d need to set up his classroom and get back to the daily grind, but for today, he was just going to enjoy the last days of summer.

  3

  At seven o’clock on Monday morning, Sarah threw her suitcase into the back of her Honda Civic and slid onto the cloth seat of the driver’s side. She took a moment to compose herself and then turned the key in the ignition. Ever since she’d been in a bad car accident in her late teens, she’d hated to drive. As in hated with a passion. One of the big reasons she loved living in Candle Beach was that she didn’t have to drive all the time as she had done before returning to her hometown. She could get ready in the morning and, after a ten-minute walk, be entering the door of her classroom at Candle Beach Elementary.

  Driving to Seattle by herself wouldn’t be fun, but like she’d told Dahlia, a bright spot was that she’d have plenty of time to listen to audiobooks without a passenger critiquing her choice of reading material. With that in mind, she turned on the audiobook that she’d purchased from To Be Read and tried to relax as she pulled out of the driveway of the small house she’d been renting for the last few years.

  The distraction worked, and she soon found herself nearing Seattle. She turned off the book, so she could focus on her phone’s GPS as it read her directions to the university. Although she’d attended classes there for the last two years, she still had trouble locating the building on campus where the class would be held. Soon though, she was parking in front of a three-story stone building with a massive black iron door.

  Inside, two women sat behind a long table, checking people in. A few people that she didn’t recognize stood nearby, reviewing their paperwork.

  “Sarah Rigg,” Sarah said to the women as she approached the table.

  The woman in front of her consulted her list, then placed a check mark on it with a green highlighter. “Great. I’ve got you all checked in.” She motioned to the other woman at the table. “Susan will give you your lodging information and class schedule.”

  “Thank you.” Sarah turned to the other woman, who handed her a sheet of paper.

  “Here’s the address for the dormitory, and you’ll have classes in this building, of course. The schedule is on the back.” She flipped through a small file box with dividers until she reached the “R” section and plucked out a plastic key card. “Here you go. This is what you’ll use for your room and it will get you into the meal hall as well.”

  Sarah took it, examining the card. She ran her fingers along the smooth edge of the smart card with an embedded chip. Things had come a long way from the metal room keys she remembered from college.

  The woman pointed to the side where a man was fiddling with a camera and lighting. “Joseph will help you with your temporary ID. Once you get that, you’ll be all set.”

  “Thank you.” Sarah walked over to the photographer and gave him her information. After being blinded by the flash, she received a rather unattractive photo of herself printed on another hard-plastic card. Good thing it was only a temporary ID card. She wasn’t normally that concerned about her appearance, but the photographer had caught her blinking and she looked like an escapee from the state mental hospital.

  “Sarah,” someone called out. She whipped around to see who it was. Patrick. He grinned at her, displaying dimples in both of his cheeks. His dark hair flopped over his forehead, giving him a boyish look that seemed appropriate for the campus setting. He’d probably have half the female students who remained there for the summer falling all over him, but they’d be sorely disappointed to find out he had a fiancee.

  She flushed. She shouldn’t be thinking about Patrick in those terms either. Keep it together, Sarah. Remember, he’s engaged.

  She smiled at him. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Going great,” he said with an easy grin. “I hope the instructor this year is as good as last year.”

  “Me too.” She grimaced. “I took a class one time where the teacher spoke in a monotone voice and almost killed us with PowerPoint presentations. There wasn’t much class participation. Even with guzzling cups of coffee and downing sugar during breaks, I found myself nodding off at times.”

  He laughed, a pleasant sound that made her want to laugh along with him. “Well, I hope that doesn’t happen in this one.” He nodded to the plastic badge clutched in her right hand. “Are you all set to head off to the dorms?”

  “I am. My stuff is in the car though.” She wanted to kick herself. Of course her things were in the car if she hadn’t gone to the dorms yet.

  “How about we drop off our luggage in our dorm rooms and head on down to the cafeteria?” He winked at her. “We can pretend we’re carefree college students again.”

  That sounded pretty good to her. It seemed like ages ago that she’d allowed herself a moment away from her meticulous plans. Most of her time was dedicated to working, her family, and her classroom. Had she ever been a carefree college student?

  She regarded him. He may not be her Mr. Right, but he might be a good friend. They’d hung out together the year before in a larger group setting, but she hadn’t spent much time alone with him. “Sure. I’d like that.”

  They walked out to the parking lot together, chatting about their drives into the city.

  He stopped in front of a vehicle a few cars down from hers and gestured to her Civic. “I thought that might be your car.”

  “How’d you know?” She scanned her car. Nothing on it screamed Candle Beach.

  He pointed at the College of the Pacific bumper sticker on her back window. “I remembered you’d gone to college there. You don’t see it mentioned much up here in Washington and you said you’d be here again this year.”

  “Ah.” She hadn’t even remembered telling him about where she’d attended college. He must have a good memory. “Yeah, I really don’t meet many other alumni around here. Where did you go to college?”

  “University of Puget Sound,” he said, naming a college in Tacoma, a town south of Seattle.

  She nodded. “I had a few friends that went there. Since we both went to smaller schools, this campus probably seems huge to you too.” She spread her arms wide in two directions. As far as she could see, there were buildings associated with the University of Washington.

  “No kidding. The grounds are massive.” He opened his car door. “I’ll meet you in the dorm lobby in thirty minutes for lunch, okay? We can get lost on campus together, just like we were freshmen again.”

  She got into her car, thinking about how fun it was to hang out with Patrick again. He was just so easy to be around and talk to, probably because he was attached to someone else and she didn’t need to worry about there being any chance of a romantic relationship in their future. He was a good person to have as a friend. But if she was going to choose the perfect match for herself, he’d be a lot like Patrick – sweet, funny, handsome and witty. If only he had a twin brother.

>   They arrived at the dormitory at the same time.

  “We meet again,” he quipped as they entered the building together, dragging their wheeled suitcases behind them. The wheels slid smoothly on the vinyl faux hardwood flooring.

  “Which floor are you on?” Sarah consulted the sheet of paper the woman had given her at registration. “I’m on fifth.”

  “Uh,” he said, running his index finger over the lines on the paper. “Looks like I’m on floor six.” He punched the up button on the wall to call the elevator to the first floor and they waited patiently as one came down from the twentieth floor.

  “Even the dorms are huge here,” Sarah whispered. “The whole student population from my college could have fit into one of these dorms.”

  The elevator pinged, and they rolled their suitcases in. She leaned against the wall of the elevator as they watched the floor numbers go up.

  “Floor five,” he announced like an elevator operator. “Enjoy your stay, miss.” He tipped a fake hat at her and she giggled like a little girl before covering her mouth.

  “I will, thank you so much, kind sir.” She moved out of the elevator and broke character. “I’ll see you downstairs after I get settled.”

  He barely had time to nod before the elevator doors closed, cutting her off from him and leaving her alone. After their friendly banter, the hallway was eerily quiet. She quickly found her room and tapped the plastic key card against the rectangular black reader affixed to the wall. The indicator turned green and she turned the door handle.

  Whereas last year they’d been housed in an older dorm with individual rooms and bathrooms down the hall, this year she’d been assigned a room in a pod-style dorm apartment, with four single bedrooms off of a small kitchen and living room. Between the two bedrooms on each side was a full bathroom with a shower and tub combo. If she had roommates for the next few days, none of them had arrived yet. She set her luggage in one of the rooms and walked over to the living room window.

  From the fifth floor, she had a bird’s-eye view of much of the campus. She could only imagine what it would look like from the twentieth floor. From there, she could probably see halfway to Candle Beach, or to Canada. At the thought of Candle Beach, she felt instantly homesick, which was ridiculous considering she’d only been away from home for a few hours. She’d tried life away from the beach for a few years, but the only thing that felt right to her was to move back to her hometown. She’d never regretted that decision, although it definitely hadn’t done anything good for her love life.

  Sarah glanced at her watch. She’d been checking out the view for so long that she was due to meet Patrick in the lobby in five minutes. After fixing her travel-mussed hair in the bathroom mirror, she hurried downstairs, but he wasn’t there yet.

  Patrick came up behind her while she was reading some of the posters on a bulletin board and tapped her on the shoulder.

  She whirled around. “Hey,” she said, then realized he wasn’t alone. A tall man with thinning hair smiled down at her.

  “This is my roomie, Andrew,” Patrick said. “Andrew, this is my friend, Sarah.”

  Andrew nodded, and she smiled back at him, but Patrick’s introduction of her as his friend stabbed into her. Not that she was anything but a friend to him, but it was becoming clearer every day that she was tired of always being the friend. Her college friends were all married already, and some were having kids. She was still stuck in a rental house in her hometown, alone.

  At least she’d made friends in the last few months. She’d accepted the job at To Be Read because she wanted to earn more money to pad her nest egg, but it had given her so much more. Now, she considered Dahlia, the bookstore owner, and Charlotte, who lived in the apartment above the store, to be two of her closest friends. But even they were both in serious relationships.

  “Hey, are you there?” Patrick waved his hand in front of her face.

  She focused her attention on him, heat rising up her neck from being caught daydreaming. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “I told Andrew we were going to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria and he asked to join us.”

  “Sure, that’s great. The more the merrier.” She cast a glance at Andrew’s hand but didn’t see a wedding band. Was he single? As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she felt as though she were in someone else’s body. She’d never gone through life worrying about finding a boyfriend. She’d always had too much to do and goals to accomplish.

  But this was what happened to a person when almost everyone they knew was happily coupled up. Or maybe, as she entered her early thirties, her biological clock was ticking. “Do you remember where it’s at?”

  Patrick nodded. “It’s a few blocks away. I hope they’re serving something good today because I’m starving.”

  As they walked, she asked Andrew, “So where are you from?”

  “Dunley Hills. It’s a small town outside of Portland. And you?”

  “I’m from Candle Beach on the Washington Coast.”

  Not surprisingly, he gave her a quizzical look.

  “It’s about half an hour north of Haven Shores,” she explained.

  Recognition dawned on his face. “Ah. I’ve never been to that part of the coast, but I hear it’s beautiful.”

  A warmth flooded over her. “It is.” She smiled at him. “What grade do you teach?”

  “Fourth,” he said. “It’s a fun age. They’re not so little anymore, but they don’t think they know everything yet like middle schoolers.”

  She laughed. “I teach fourth too and I know what you mean.”

  Beside her, Patrick was rather quiet. He’d been so talkative earlier, but she couldn’t tell if something was wrong now.

  “Here we are,” he said. “The union building.”

  The cafeteria offered a buffet-style serving during the summer, so they swiped their meal cards and went through the lines in search of edible food.

  When the three of them sat down at a long rectangular table together, Sarah burst out laughing.

  “What?” Patrick asked.

  “This is so much like when I was back in college.” She pointed at their trays, which were full of cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches. “No wonder I gained the famous freshman fifteen.”

  Andrew chuckled. “I see what you mean.” He gave them a sheepish grin. “When I’m at home, my wife always makes me eat healthy, so when I’m away, I indulge a little.”

  Sarah’s gut twisted. Of course he was married. The good ones always were.

  “I usually eat fairly healthy too, but when you’re on vacation…” She smiled and took a bite of creamy macaroni and cheese.

  The three of them spent the next twenty minutes talking about their classrooms and their plans for the upcoming school year. Patrick’s demeanor had brightened, and he was acting much more interested in the conversation. They were in the midst of a lively discussion about the funniest things kids had ever done in their classes when Andrew’s phone rang.

  He glanced at it. With a guilty look, he said, “It’s my wife. I completely forgot that I was supposed to call her when I got here.” He stood from the table. “It was nice meeting you both. I’ll see you tomorrow in class, Sarah.” He turned to Patrick. “And I’ll see you back in the apartment.”

  “See you later,” Patrick said.

  “Nice meeting you too.” Sarah smiled at him. Andrew left, talking on his phone as he walked.

  “I hope he’s not in too much trouble with his wife.” Patrick took a bite of the last chocolate chip cookie on his plate, then set it down and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “I’m sure he’s fine.” Sarah pushed her plate away before she was tempted to eat more macaroni and cheese than her stomach could handle. “That is, as long as we don’t tell her about the junk food.”

  He laughed. “So, what’s going on with you?” He picked up the cookie again and finished it in a few bites. “You’re still teaching in Candle Beach, right?”

  She
nodded. “Yeah, still teaching at the same school, in the same classroom.” Her life sounded even more boring when she uttered it out loud than it did when she thought about it. “I’m thinking about buying a house there though.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “That’s great. Doesn’t most of your family live there?”

  He really had remembered a lot about her from last summer.

  “Yes, my older brother Adam, and my older sister Jenny and her family, as well as my parents, all live in Candle Beach. We Riggs don’t stray far from the beach.”

  “It must be nice to have so much family around. Mine is all in the Midwest.”

  “Really? How did you end up in the Northwest?” With a start, she realized that although she’d known him for a year, she actually knew very little about him – much less than he knew about her.

  He laughed. “Well, after I graduated from college there weren’t a lot of teaching jobs around, so I applied for every position I could find on the West Coast. Haven Shores was the first one on the list that called me back and offered me a job.” His eyes took on a far-off look. “It’s funny though, I’ve really come to love the place. I think small-town life suits me.”

  “Oh yeah, weren’t you remodeling a house in Haven Shores?” The idea of taking an old house and making it beautiful again appealed to her, but she didn’t have the technical skills to pull it off.

  “I am still in the process of renovations.” His eyes twinkled. “But I’m on my third house in Haven Shores since I moved there. I think I’d just bought this one last year when I met you.”

  Her eyes stretched wide. “Oh, so you’re flipping houses.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that I’m flipping them.” He laughed self-consciously. “The concept of flipping a house always has such negative connotations. I’m not purely in it for the money, although that’s a nice side benefit. I’ve found that renovating houses is something I’m good at and that I enjoy immensely. Seeing a house go from run-down to beautifully restored and knowing that I’m the one that made it happen is a wonderful feeling.”