Page 3 of The Match Faker

“Thank you,” I say, voice shaky. Before I hand over the donuts, I pull two out. A vanilla sprinkle and a s’more. Anaïs won’t eat it if it’s not gluten-free, dairy-free, and locally sourced, but Butch is a trash can for baked goods.

As I climb the stairs to their joint office, I am almost certainly rocking a terrible case of toque-head, and I have to pee. This isn’t how I wanted to be fired: a laughingstock with my control top nylons squeezing my bladder. A chill runs down my spine while, somehow simultaneously and inexplicably, my armpits sweat.

Oh, how far the perfect fall.

The tap of my heels on the stairs echoes in the stark space. As I ascend, I tell myself I won’t, but it’s no use. Holding my breath, I glance at Mitchell’s office. The members of the sales team have offices rather than cubicles, and his is one of the first behind the reception desk. He’s not there. Probably at a client lunch or a job site.

My calves scream as I reach the top of the stairs. Curse these booties and workplaces where everyone is “family” yet aren’t treated like family unless their blood runs as blue as those in power. Because I’m balancing the donuts in napkins in both hands, knocking on their office door with my forehead may be my only option. But then Anaïs opens the door from the inside, her smile glowing, her hair glowing, her skin glowing.

Anaïs is aglow.

“Jasmine, darling.Viens,” she purrs. My name slips off her tongue,Jasmeen, in her impeccable French accent. It curls around all her English words, her lips pursing, her eyes casting upward when she whispers a quiethow do you say. But Anaïs isn’t French or even Quebecois. She grew up an hour north of Toronto in a very anglophone suburb and went to French immersion high school.

At least dating Mitchell had one perk: access to his parents’ secrets.

Butch rises from behind his desk as Anaïs shuts the door behind me. He cups my elbows, air kissing both cheeks. “Hey, doll.” When he pulls back, he only has eyes for my donuts. “Are those…?”

“I picked them up at lunch.”

“You’re an angel.” He grabs two plates off the bar cart set up with a vintage coffee grinder and a French press and places them on the low coffee table in the seating area between their desks.

As Anaïs’s assistant, I’m typically busy running errands to the garment district for fabrics, organizing her schedule, ormanaging her Instagram account. I spend a surprisingly small amount of time in their office and now my eyes can’t help but snag on the details. Her side of the office is what I imagine Le Petit Trianon looks like. Delicate and elegant with gold leaf accents. Instead of a computer chair she sits in a hand-carved armchair upholstered in blue silk. Her laptop is set up on a traditional ladies writing desk. Each piece is beautiful, but they must be murder on her back.

Butch’s side has a more masculine, modern edge, though Anaïs’s touch can be found in the details. Dark woods and blacks and grays, a glass desk instead of a heavy wood monstrosity, and rather than animal heads mounted on the walls, great white trillium flowers and eastern white pine branches are pressed into hand-carved frames.

Maybe it’s the knowledge that her accent is fake. Or that Butch hasn’t spoken to his elderly parents in years, but the entire room feels fake. Like I could pull down the curtain and I’d find a sad girl from Richmond Hill pulling the strings, accompanied by her insecure Texan husband and a buttload of money.

The money, at the very least, is real.

At first glance, they ooze perfection, the kind I strive for. Maybe I don’t want a fake accent, but I do want the love they have for each other. Though, as I sit across from where Anaïs has settled and smooth my hair, my back straight, clasping my hands to keep them from trembling, I question. I doubt. Is their love even real?

Butch pours coffee into short espresso cups with matching gold-accented saucers and sets them in front of us. He settles on the couch beside his wife, his arm thrown across the back of the gray leather. A king secure in his throne. Anaïs settles a perfectly manicured hand on his thigh and turns her gaze to me.

“How have you been?” she asks with the kind of emphasis that makes it clear this is not a casual hi-how-are-you; it’s aboutthe breakup. It’s about the silence that fell over my colleagues when I entered the building, cheeks flushed, and cupcake icing smudged against the translucent walls of their carrier.

Maybe they’re not firing me?

Even so, my stomach twists painfully. “Is this about Mitchell?”

Butch shifts, avoiding eye contact, and Anaïs purses her lips in a way her dermatologist would encourage her to avoid.

Great, now they think I’m a resentful ex.

I gaze into the depths of my espresso. “Sorry, I thought you were…firing me?”

Butch slaps his thigh and throws his head back, laughing. “Of course not.” He can’t speak, he can only boom.

I work hard not to wince at the volume.

“Darling, never. No.” Anaïs shakes her head, but the way she’s looking at me—like she’s secondhand embarrassed—makes me itch. She’s remembering the week I took off after he dumped me. I never wanted to bethatwoman, but it was just so mortifying. “We love you, and your relationship with Mitchell will never change that.”

“Plus, that’s illegal, sweetheart,” Butch says. I think he’s going for fatherly, but he comes off mansplainy instead.

That doesn’t assuage my fears the way it should. I know it’s illegal to fire me without cause, just like they know I don’t have the funds or the time to take legal action against them.

“I was worried, I guess,” I say. “That it had something to do with him.”

An expression that looks an awful lot like pity flickers over Anaïs’s face. My sweat glands renew their efforts.

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