Page 11 of Most Likely to Match
“Mom. I’mfine.”
She huffs again. Most of my mother’s communication happens inher exhales. “Sorry for not wanting you to get skin cancer,” she shouts as she stomps back into the house.
I peer over my shoulder, a look of apology on my face, but Gladys and Jim haven’t seemed to even notice. It probablyisa spam caller, or a wrong number, but it’s better if I quit being such a millennial and listen to the message so when she inevitably asks again, I won’t have to come up with a lie.
I punch the code into my voicemail app and wait for the message to start.
There’s silence at first. More proof of spam. Then a voice, not a word, but a hesitant,ummfollowed by a whispered, unselfconsciousoh heavens. The sound immediately makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. That voice somehow imprinted onto the inner recesses of my brain matter.
“Hi,” the voice says. Soft, scared, sweet. “It’s Chloe.”
I shut my laptop. It’s bad enough I have to see her face staring back at me on my laptop screen. I can’t seeandhear her at the same time.
That’s too much.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me.”
I wonder how she got that idea. Probably because I left immediately after Nick announced her as the winner of my headshot giveaway.
“The BIA gave me your contact info,” she says. “After you left.”
She pauses again. Chloe has always taken comfort in long silences. I can picture her face in this one, the way she’d blink at one-one thousandth shutter speed, processing thoughts, feelings, but never expressing them.
“Iknowyou don’t want to talk to me,” she says again. “But I was hoping, maybe, we could?”
She must know how phones work, that I’ll be able to see her phone number in my call log, but she leaves her contact info anyway. Even the address of her offices, like she’s reading off a business card.
“Anyway,” she says. “It’s Chloe. I can’t remember if I said thatalready.” She laughs a little, a self-conscious sound. And then the message ends.
“Ah, fuck.” I rip off my sunglasses and pinch the bridge of my nose, as if that will somehow help the headache forming beneath my frown.
“Dean,” Mom admonishes, and I sit up, spluttering excuses in surprise. “Don’t swear,” she says, dropping my hat on my closed laptop and stomping away again.
Everything about Core Cupidfeels at odds with itself. On paper, Chloe’s business belongs in Palo Alto. The Toronto Business Journal— because yes, I have googled her— literally used the word “disrupt” to describe what Chloe’s algorithmic genius could do for the professional matchmaking industry. It has all the trappings of the binary sterility I’d expect from Big Tech.
Except it also has Chloe.
Chloe’s office has the entire upper floor of a gray stone ivy-covered heritage building adapted for retail and business use. It sits across from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Galleria Italia— one of the most recognizable buildings in Canada— and she shares her building’s first floor with none other than a photography gallery.
I stand outside, looking up at the building for too long. I purposely dressed down for this meeting: thrifted Dickies, socks pulled high, and a t-shirt I found in my bedroom closet that was baggy on me as a seventeen-year-old and now might give a flash of belly skin and hair if I lift my arms too high. It was designed to be afuck you. To this meeting, to Chloe. But now I just feel like an asshole.
The stairs up to her office are narrow and cramped, each creak like a ring of her doorbell, but the opaque glass door,Core Cupidetched into it, opens to a wide open white space. Bright, sparse, austere, even.
I am wholly out of place here, in scuffed Vans, tattoos left visible, and a five panel hat that readsYour nudes are safe with me. A dooracross from the entrance opens, and Chloe stands in it, backlit by floor-to-ceiling windows and bright spring sunshine. She wears a white silk blouse, plain but well-made, and a soft heather gray skirt. Clothing not made to be boring, but not the focal point.
“Hey,” I say, gruffer than I intended.
“Hi.” She lifts her hand in a fast aborted wave. Then steps forward, arms open like she might hug me. She quickly abandons that, too. She looks down at her eggshell carpet, an odd choice for flooring. “Come in.”
We settle into the seating area of her office. She sits on the edge of a couch that makes awkward sounds with every slight weight adjustment. I take the other side of the couch. She faces me. I stare straight ahead, focusing on the condos and glass buildings of the financial district in the distance.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah.” I knew that moving back home, working in Toronto, would open up the possibility of seeing Chloe again. I just didn’t think it would happen this fast. “So, I guess you want new headshots?”
The couch squeaks as Chloe leans closer. “I— actually, well.”
I came here to get it over with. The first meeting. The postmortem. I wanted to show her that, fifteen years later, I have barely thought about her at all. Except by putting this much thought into the whole thing, I’ve proven myself wrong.
