Page 20 of The Match Faker

“Have you reached a new level of nervous where you’re just going to smile like that the whole time?”

She skips the step between us and flattens my lapel, then tugs on my cuffs. When she reaches for my hair, I suppress my natural instinct to needle her and let her run her fingers through it. Ido notclose my eyes. But I want to.

“That’s how I’ll repay you,” she says, her tone bright.

Confusion clouds my thoughts. “Huh?” What were we even talking about?

“I need you to…” She steps closer, looking for eavesdroppers even though there’s no one around. “Be my boyfriend,” she whispers. “And you need me to be your girlfriend.”

Oh. My heart rate picks up at the thought. “You’d do that for me?” Where did this girl come from?

She opens her clutch and rummages through it. Though she never actually pulls anything out of it, she smiles the whole time like she has a dirty little secret. “Of course. You’re doing it for me. It’s the least I can do.”

“Let’s wait and see how I perform before you commit to a road trip to the Muskokas with me.”

She snaps her clutch closed, then pulls at the belt on her coat, revealing a crushed velvet jumpsuit, the emerald green color making her matching eyes sparkle and complementing her red hair and the pink blush in her skin.

“Just as long as you don’t completely embarrass me”—she slips her coat from her shoulders andgood fucking godthere’s no back on this thing; the straps tie around her neck and dangle down the soft curve of her spine—“or mention that we met through a matchmaker, I think we’ll be good.”

“Uh-huh.” I tear my eyes from her body. Clearly, I can’t listen and look at her at the same time. “What matchmaker?”

She points her finger gun at me and winks. “Exactly.”

My stomach lurches. “Wait. No. What?”

She spins on her heels and heads into the ballroom. I have no choice but to follow. I reach for her, my fingertips brushing a strap gently bouncing along the base of her spine. She giggles as I make contact with her skin. Fucking giggles, sweet and soft and terribly cute.

She’s on fire tonight. I wouldn’t mind getting burned.

Jasmine was lying.She had to be. Before we arrived, I was expecting…well, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. After what she told me at the bar and the information she sent in her pre-date package entitled “Org Chart”—I wish I was making this up—I thought we’d be walking into a pit of vipers.

Instead, everyone isnice.

Her co-workers are friendly and welcoming and seem genuinely happy to see her. Even her bosses, who the Org Chartidentified as “nice to your face but would not hesitate to stab you in the back,” were polite. Anaïs double kissed my cheeks and Butch shook my hand like I was his own personal Shake Weight. Jasmine hasn’t exactly ditched me, but I’m not really sure why I’m here. I’m basically arm candy, which is a compliment, I guess.

When a new band set up on stage and launched into a set that included danceable music, she eyed me tentatively. Then and there I told her, with much conviction, that I don’t dance. Now, she and a few co-workers sway and bounce to the beat but mostly chat with each other.

“You’re Nick, right?” A petite woman with light brown skin, a tentative smile, and a pink and tan turban-style hijab slides next to me against the bar. “I’m Zara.”

“Yeah. Hi. Nice to meet you.”

She nods toward Jasmine, making her gold hoop earrings glinting in the ballroom lights. “She told me how you met.”

I pause, stomach twisting. Is this a trap? Or maybe it’s a test. Was the matchmaker thing some sort of inside joke?

I stall. “Interesting.”

“The matchmaker? I think that’s really cool.”

Okay. What the hell is going on? A nervous laugh escapes me. “Yeah. So, what matchmaker are you talking about?”

She laughs, but the sound is drowned out by a group at the other end of the bar, the center of which is Jasmine’s ex, Mitchell. Around him, his bros raise shot glasses and toast him with a series of intricate gestures and call-and-response phrases fitting of his douchebag culture. I’ve served enough guys like him over the last decade to instantly recognize the type.

Am I being unfair to him? Probably. I don’t know the guy, other than shaking his hand when he approached Jasmine and me and thanked us for coming, then introduced us—Jasmine, really—to his fiancée, Catherine.

“It’s okay.” Zara leans in closer, dropping her voice to almost a whisper. “She told me about it in the bathroom. And about how you guys are keeping it on the DL.”

I survey Jasmine on the glossy wood dance floor, then eye Zara next to me again before scanning the space, searching for the hidden cameras. Maybe Carrie will pop out and tell me that she signed me up for Core Cupid behind my back, because with every mention of this matchmaker I have to remind myself that I did in fact saynowhen Carrie suggested I join.

---