Page 15 of Most Likely to Match
“We’re Samanthas,” he tells her.
Her nostrils flare delicately while she stomps behind the bar, taking our glasses from our shockingly weak grips. “Neither of you are Samanthas,” she says, like we are, in fact, just chucklebutts. Always only chucklebutts. “Samantha would eat you for breakfast.”
Nick looks at me, a grin on his face that makes me laugh before he’s even said a word. “You must be a Samantha, then.”
“I…” She raises her chin imperiously. “Am a Charlotte.”
“But you ate my ass for breakfast this morning.”
“Nicholas.”
If I had any cosmo left in my mouth, I’d spit it all over this bar.
3
CHLOE
It’s strange how you can live in one home your whole life, but one day, suddenly, it isn’t your home anymore. After high school, my commute to college was only forty-five minutes. I stayed in residence and then lived in hovel student apartments with too many roommates downtown, but I always came home to the suburbs. At least once a week for the first year or two, then, as I got situated and busier, less and less. But since starting Core Cupid, I’ve made a point to come home for Sunday dinner in the suburbs. Except the cookie cutter house on my cookie cutter cul-de-sac doesn’t feel like home.
At some point, I started walking in the front door and noticing a smell. Not a bad smell; just a scent. Thescent of the house. And I noticed it because it was different from my apartment, but I wondered if, for my whole life, that’s what friends smelled when they first walked in. Laundry detergent and glass cleaner and the lingering char from last night’s dinner, since Mom only knows how to cook meat one way: well and truly done.
The couch in the living room where we sit and watch a movie after dinner no longer feels like the one I stretched out on for hours on Saturday mornings. Even though it’s the exact same one my momhas always had. With the same shredded fabric on the arm from multiple cats’ claws and the same burn mark hidden on the underside of the middle cushion— a relic of the time I was really into scented candles and dropped a match, my mother’s lightning quick reflexes the only thing that saved our entire house from going up in smoke.
Now I sit it on it with my feet planted firmly on the ground, my hands folded in my lap, a guest.
“Are you sure you’re okay if I go?” Mom asks, buzzing up and down the short set of stairs from our kitchen to the sunken living room. Normally, we’d eat dinner at the table, with the TV on in the background— like a civilized family— but she’s set up the TV tray tonight instead.
“I can’t believe I forgot,” she says, mostly to herself. Then she stops, cups her forehead in her palm. “I can’tbelieveI forgot.”
“It’s okay, Mom. Go out. Have fun.” I make a shooing motion with my hand as she readjusts my dinner plate on the tray to also fit the remote control, even though she’s already turned the TV on and found a movie for me to watch— the next movie in theFast and Furiousfranchise that we’re rewatching as a family.
Except not tonight. A man— Mom has been vague about who— asked her on a date, and since she hasn’t had one of those since she and my dad divorced when I was eight, I’m not about to stand in her way.
“I would have signed you up for Core Cupid,” I say, “if I’d known you were dating again.”
Mom flushes, flapping her hands in front of her like she can’t find a hand towel. “Oh gosh, oh heavens, no. No one would want to date me.”
I arch my eyebrow at her. Clearly that is not true.
“I only mean I’m too old for your clients.”
“I have clients of all ages,” I say. Which is true, except for the woman, a few years younger than Mom, who dumpedmelast week. Though I am relieved. Matching “mature” clients is always difficult. The women are of an age— more a spirit— where they know whatthey want and they’re not taking any more shit. It’s empowering, except they hate the whole “don’t google your date” thing first because they all want to know if they’re bald. And if they are bald, they don’t want to date them. Even if the match was a true 100 percent.
The men, though. The men are never interested in dating women in their age group. My algo could find his true match, a soul mate, but if she’s not at least twenty-five years younger than him, he’s not interested.
The “mature” queers are where it’s at. God, I love matching a couple of elder lesbians.
“Honey, did you hear me?” Mom asks.
I blink away from the dry slice of roast beef on my plate. Its only chance to achieve tenderness lies in the once frozen broccoli’s ability to ooze green-tinted water into it. “Yes,” I say. “No. What?”
“How do I look?” she asks, smoothing her hands over her dark-wash jeans and simple white button-up blouse. I set the tray aside so I can stand up and hug her.
“You look beautiful, Mom.”
We squeeze each other. Once, for a long moment, then once more, but shorter. The way we’ve hugged since I was a kid. It was born out of the anxiety we share, neither of us knowing when to end it.
“And you didn’t have to go through the trouble of making me dinner.” Though, with her out of the house, it will be easier to hide themanyleftovers. “Do you want me to stick around until you get home?” I ask, but she waves me off. “At least turn on Find My Friend,” I say, already taking her phone from where it sticks out of her purse. “If he ends up being a serial killer, I need to be able to point the cops to your body.”
