Page 62 of Most Likely to Match
She blushes. “Not as pretty as you,” she says. I splash her. “It’s true.” She shakes her head in mock frustration. “Even in high school, those pouty lips, those sad, fuck-me eyes.”
I splash her again. “My eyes were not begging you to fuck me.” I laugh.
She shrugs. “No, but still. You’re beautiful, Dean. You’ve always been beautiful.” Her fingers follow the stepping stones of tattoos up my leg. “I’m glad I found my way back to you,” she says quietly, staring intently at the dark hair on my shin. “I…I saw a therapist this week.”
“Oh.” I scrunch my toes into a foot fist and release them. She takes over, wiggling first my big toe, then the next, soapy water sloshing between our skin. “How was that?”
“We talked about how I don’t really have a hard time speaking up for myself, unless it’s in the moments that really seem to matter most. And then I just can’t.”
I nod, afraid to say anything, to scare her away from this conversation, to deter her from telling me her secrets. “Not always.” Apparently I can’t help myself. “You told that cop off.”
She grins at me. “Mostly, I meant, with you.”
Again, I nod, more out of encouragement than understanding, until the words sink in. “With me?” I ask. “I matter most to you?”
“Le plus.” Her voice is high and sweet and nervous.
The most.
I let my body, my muscles, sink into the water, because I matter most to the girl voted most likely to succeed.
13
CHLOE
Dean has to go home. He has no clothes here, nothing for an overnight stay. But he bundles me up in my robe and attempts to wrap my hair in a towel turban that immediately falls off my head, and I let him. He helps me change the sheets in nothing but a towel. He sucks at towel turbans, but not at towel knots, because no matter what linen-closet gymnastics I put him through with a fitted sheet, it doesn’t fall off. “So Saturday,” I prompt him as I stuff a pillow into a pillowcase.
“Right. Saturday.” He sounds not the least bit excited.
“You know, you don’t have to go.” Even though, inexplicably, I want him to. I want people to see what he’s made of himself as much as I want them to see I’m not the person they thought they knew. Maybe more.
“No. I’m going. I want to go. At least, I see the importance of going.” He flops onto the bed instead of helping me with the duvet cover. I let him, though. I have a particular method of doing it, and he’ll only get in my way.
“Do you want to arrive separately?” I ask. Before he can answer, I take the two corners of the duvet and shove them and my head into the duvet cover’s opening so I don’t have to see his face. “Like, peopleknow we’re working together, but…” I trail off as I stand in the middle of the room, flailing under the cover in search of the corners. I don’t say what I want to say. That people know we’re together but nottogethertogether. Because, I guess, we haven’t really discussed that we are.
Although if a man says he loves you, that probably means you’re together, right? Maybe if I’d ever had a boyfriend before, I’d know the answer to this.
Honestly, it makes sense that I was fired by so many matchmaking clients. I kind of deserved it.
“Uh…sure.” From outside the duvet cover, the direction of Dean’s voice changes, like he’s moving. “Can I help you with that?”
His shadow appears through the fabric. “No. I have a system. Are you off the bed?” I ask, to be sure. This part requires an empty bed.
“Uh-huh.”
“Perfect.” With the corners of the duvet tucked into the corners of the cover and the cover tucked into my hands, I face the general direction of the bed and throw myself onto it. Then I start to wriggle my way out.
“Chlo.” Dean sounds like he’s choking.
“What?” I lose my towel turban somewhere in the depths of feather down. “Are you okay?”
The last few inches of being trapped in there are always a little suffocating. I take a deep breath as I slither out the way I came. Dean is, in fact, fine. “Shut up,” I say without any heat. He sits on the floor, tears on his face, laughing so hard he’s no longer making sound. “It gets the job done.”
I crawl into the freshly made bed, and he joins me as the skyline outside darkens. “So, we’ll go to the reunion. Stay a few hours. Easy-peasy.”
“Lemon squeezy,” he emphasizes, gently pulling me closer to him as he settles against the pillows and starts flipping through channels using the remote. The television has been on this whole time, and somehow, I didn’t notice. I don’t even know if we won.
“I’ll stay for a little longer,” he says, unprompted.
