Page 4 of The Match Faker

I pick up my espresso to give myself something to do with my hands and bring it to my lips.

“Speaking of Mitchell…” she starts.

“He’s engaged,” Butch booms, too loud and too fast, as if he believes this news is the kind best delivered like a swift punch to the gut.

I choke on the espresso, instantly flipping through a mental calendar to figure out exactly how many days it’s been since he dumped me. Because at this point, days are still a reasonable metric of measurement.Days.

“How is that possible?” I wheeze.

This is why all those advice columns warn against dating co-workers. Because, inevitably, you will be locked in a mortifying tableau with your bosses whom you’d once hoped would also be your in-laws.

Our history sits between the three of us, an awkward, sore pimple. Is it possible to simply curl into myself continually until I implode? Ceasing to exist would be lovely right now.

Butch picks up a donut,mydonut, and sticks his finger in the gooey melted marshmallow on top.

“It was a whirlwind.” Anaïs laughs, throwing her hands in the air likewhat can you do?

“Thirty days is pretty fast, even for a whirlwind.” My shrill tone echoes back at me in the sudden quiet of their office.

Her smile fades and she looks to Butch for help, but Butch has lost himself completely to the second donut. I wish I were lost in a donut right now.

Mitchell was cheating on me. If the news that he’s engaged felt like a punch to the gut, this is like being trampled by a horse. He replaced me. Like I was nothing. Like he’d been waiting for the better version to come along. I was exemplary, the exact kind of woman he should want; ambitious, talented, poised. I made myself perfect. Yet not even that was good enough.

“Why…” My voice cracks and I take a deep breath before I start again. “Why are you telling me this?”

“We’re hosting his engagement party in a couple weeks,” Butch says.

Wearing an apologetic smile, Anaïs slides a four by six piece of thick, textured paper across the coffee table.

“We’re inviting the whole office, but we wanted to let you know first because…” Butch trails off, staring wistfully at the donut crumbs on his plate.

My already trampled-on heart crumbles further as I scowl at the engagement party invitation, the high-quality cotton blend paper, the looping calligraphy, their names,Mitchell and Catherine.

Of course, her name is Catherine. A woman with a name like that is poised and gracious, smart and successful. Catherine has a master’s degree and her PhD. Catherine never had to drop out of school. Catherine can afford designer clothes and to send her sister to school. Scratch that—Catherine doesn’t need to pay for her sister’s education because Catherine’s father isn’t an asshole who started a newer, better family without her.

“We didn’t want you to feel like you had to come,” Anaïs says.

“I’m invited?” My stomach sinks like waterlogged trash to the bottom of Lake Ontario. Nothing could make me go to that party.

“You know Mitchell. He wants everyone to be friends and get along,” she says, which is a laughably charitable view of him, even for his mother. Mitchell is insensitive, sometimes by accident but also on purpose.

This is bordering on cruel. Would he really be this unkind? When I walk out of this office, will I find him watching me, wearing a smug look?

“But you don’t have to come,” she says again, more firmly this time.

Turns out there is one thing that could make me go to this party.

“But Iaminvited, right?”

They look at each other again, brows furrowed, another silent conversation between married people.

“Yes,” Butch says slowly.

I swallow the taste of bile, straighten my already straight back, and clasp my hands tighter, the pale pink of my at-home manicure an unintentional color match to my mid-length charcoal gray skirt.

“Then I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m so excited to meet Mitchell’s new partner.”

My smile—saccharine and innocent—is one I’ve practiced so many times, it feels real. It feels like a trophy compared to the shock that crosses over Anaïs’s face.

---