Page 10 of Most Likely to Match
There are almost no benefits. Mine, at least, aren’t charging me rent, and I get to work by the pool on hot summer days like this. Sunscreen and sweat are far preferable to sitting at the tiny desk in my cramped childhood bedroom or fighting summer school undergrads and bony-elbowed senior citizens for space at the library.
Cicadas drone in the late afternoon heat. In another backyard somewhere down the street, kids squeal and scream and an occasional dog barks. My parents’ neighbors, Gladys and Jim, an older couple who’ve lived next to us since before I was born, sit on their deck reading, napping, listening to talk radio under the cover of their big umbrella. Every once in a while, Gladys gets up for a “stretch” and ends up peering over our adjoining fence, asking different versions of the same questions: Am I looking forward to returning to university in the fall? No, I graduated almost a decade ago. What am I studying? I have a master’s degree in psychology and counseling, but again, I graduated a while ago. Am I still into photography? Yes.
I’m kind of worried about her memory.
With no sessions booked with my clients in London, I finally have a chance to edit the photos from the networking event last week. But editing is tedious, and the heat is starting to get to me. Plus I haven’t been able to muster the activation energy to keep going since I swiped to the photo I took of her.
I open the last few buttons of my linen t-shirt. A slip into the pool would wake me up, but the few feet it will take to stagger from the lounge chair under the umbrella to the edge feels insurmountably far in the thick Ontario humidity.
Back in the day, I hopelessly believed that this pool would be my ticket to social salvation. Like maybe the assholes I was meant to call peers would hear about my pool and want to come hang out. Then, once we were hanging out, maybe, just maybe, they’d see that I was actually kind of cool.
But that was never the case.
My friends Matty and Ricky took advantage of what the “cool kids” wouldn’t. Ages twelve to eighteen were spent practicing increasingly dangerous dives, jumps, and gainers from this pool deck.
Shewould come here, too. The April of grade eleven, when I started tutoring her in French, was warm. Not warm enough to open the pool but enough to lounge on the deck in our sweaters, reciting French conjugations back and forth.
Then, in the summer, she kept coming back. Usually in the evenings or Sunday mornings when my parents were on their weekly Costco-Canadian Tire-farmers’ market trip. The French we practiced then had less to do with the language and more to do with how far we could stick our tongues down each other’s throats.
“Sweetie,” Mom calls from the kitchen side door.
I sit up so fast the lounger almost folds itself in half with me still in it. My heart pounds for no real reason. It’s not like I was thinking about herthatway. I’d prefer not to think of her at all. Usually, I don’t, not anymore, but I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind since I saw her last week.
Her wide eyes stare up at me from the screen, her expression not quite a smile.
“Yeah?” I pretend to be engrossed in my computer screen, dropping my round tortoiseshell sunglasses over my eyes— like that might protect me from my mother’s ability to read too deeply into whatever I’m feeling.
“Your phone has been ringing.” She holds the electronic brick above her head. “Do you want it?”
I pat my pockets, despite being able to see my phone in her hand. “Sorry. Yeah, please.”
Mom’s approach is accompanied by the softthwupof her backyard flip-flops, the ones she’s left at the back kitchen door since I was in middle school. She smiles, shielding her eyes from the sun as she passes me my phone. The screen lights up, but I don’t recognize the number, other than it’s a Toronto area code.
“Who is it?” Mom asks.
I stare up at her. “I dunno.”
She nods, still standing there, watching me intently.
“Thanks?”
“You should call them back.”
“It’s probably spam,” I say, dropping the phone onto the low wicker table next to the lounger.
She shakes her head. “They left a message.”
I check my screen again. The red icon is indeed glaring at me. “Okay,” I say.
Still, she doesn’t leave.
“Mom.”
She throws up her hands. “Maybe it’s a new client,” she says defensively.
Which would be impossible, since I’ve done absolutely no networking and have made no inroads in the counseling community in the GTA. “Okay, I’ll check. Later,” I say pointedly.
She sighs but leans down to press a kiss to my sweaty crown. “I’ll bring you your hat,” she murmurs.
