Page 34 of The Match Faker

I hunch my shoulders and move faster. Rule number one of walking in Toronto: never acknowledge street harassers.

“Jasmine, wait,” the man says, closer, huffing and out of breath.

I turn, my bags swinging, and suck in a sharp breath. “Nick?”

His cheeks are pink from the cold or maybe exertion. The snap buttons of his jacket—hip length, fleece-lined, plaid flannel, because of course he only wears plaid flannel—are open and his chest and stomach heave against the white T-shirt underneath.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my stomach twisting. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at your boss’s house. Am I late?” I can’t possibly be late. I set three reminders.

He reaches for me and on instinct I take a step back.

He smirks. “You want to carry all those?”

Oh. I pass him a bag. “Thanks,” I say quietly.

“You’re not late.” He takes another off my shoulder, then nods in the direction I was heading. As we walk to the station side by side, he says, “I assumed you were going to overpack and figured you’d need help carrying your bags.” His tone is teasing and his eyes dance. Before I have time to scoff—even though he is clearly correct—he adds, “Plus, I felt bad for not picking you up.”

An altercation between two cab drivers catches his attention as we wait at the intersection, so he doesn’t notice how I can’t look away from him. Even when I psychically beg him to look at me, he doesn’t turn his chin. It’s probably for the best. In this moment, I think he might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and that thought is probably written all over my face. His throat bobs as he swallows, the move so sexy I try to shove my bare hands into my pockets, bag straps and all, to ensure I will not act on the urge to trace the skin there, close my eyes as the stubble he can never seem to keep off his face roughens the pads of my fingers.

He pulls his gloves off and hands them to me. He must assume my hands are cold. The stairs to the subway station are across the street, but I let him assume and take the gloves, body-warm, leather-soft.

“Thanks.”

“What?” he asks as we descend the stairs, the screech of the train already audible.

“Huh?” Wow. Eloquent.

“You’re staring.”

Shit. I panic. “Don’t you think the subway smells like mothballs?”

Nick shoots me a funny look over his shoulder as he scans his pass and the gate swings open. I do the same, carefully sliding the card back into its easily accessible place in my bag. Hopefully, he’ll forget I said that.

“Generally, it smells like piss and garbage,” he says as we descend another set of stairs, baggage banging against our legs.

We pick up the pace halfway down when we see the train is already in the station, the doors open.

“Yeah. It does.”

He makes it to the door first and stands in it, holding it for me.

“Thank you,” I say, then frown. How many times have I expressed gratitude in the last five minutes? “That’s what I thought as a kid. That it smelled like mothball,” I explain. “The trains especially. I really liked the smell.”

I flush when I’m finished. I’m not sure I’ve ever told a man I was attracted to that before. Why would I? It’s silly and ridiculous and inconsequential. I take a seat on one of the red upholstered benches and Nick stands in front of me, his arm stretched overhead as he holds the railing above us. The hem of his T-shirt lifts, revealing a sliver of skin and dark hair on his stomach. For the rest of the ride, I forget to be nervous, forget to be mad at Mitchell. I even forget about my gloves. We sway and rock with the rhythm of the subway, and I pretend that we could be as real as Nick is.

10

NICK

Jasmine winces as I throw her slightly worn brown leather overnight bag into the trunk of my rust bucket Buick.

“You know we’re not moving there, right?” I stuffed everything I needed for the weekend into the same canvas backpack I used in high school.

Jasmine has four bags.

“It’s not all clothes,” she mutters.

I take off my coat and shove it in the trunk along with the luggage. I motion to her outerwear. “You’re going to want to take that off. This old beauty has one heat setting once she gets going and it’s tropical.”

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