Page 17 of Most Likely to Match
Somehow that makes this all the stranger, all the morehigh school.
“My parents are traveling this summer,” he offers when I say nothing. “I’m house sitting.”
I shrug, then remember he can’t see me. “That’s cool. Gonna have a house party?” I ask as a joke.
Dean huffs. “Don’t know who I’d invite.” His voice has an edge to it, one that I feel responsible for.
“Maybe we could meet somewhere close by?” I suggest, to change the subject. “To talk?”
“The park?” he asks after a moment. He doesn’t have to say anymore. There’s only one park he could be referring to, despite there being at least three within walking distance.
Our park.
When we were kids,our park was a lot like any other suburban park. Unused for its actual purpose but still well-loved. I can only remember playing in this park as a very small child, when all the play structures seemed impossibly high. Then, as I grew up, I realized they weren’t too high; I had just been very, very small. Dean and I came here sometimes in high school, when the weather was nice enough. Even sometimes when it wasn’t. We’d wait for the preteens “hanging out” to leave, for the Catholic high school students to finish their prescription drug exchanges. Then we’d make out until the streetlights came on. The tube connecting the jungle gym to the play structure and the playhouse were two of our favorite spots. Often there’d be evidence left behind of other like-minded paramours, new graffiti announcing so-and-so loves someone else, and, unfortunately, used condoms.
But we were teenagers with little access to privacy and an abundance of hormones, so it was good enough for us.
Tonight, I avoid cramming myself into one of those spaces and take a swing instead. Two kids run up the slide, observed by their mother, in the waning light; this is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen this park used for its true purpose. The mom glances at me a few times, and I smile in an attempt to calm any nerves my suspiciously childless presence brings. But then Dean arrives, striding down the paved path from the street, and she deems playtime to be well and truly over.
He looks handsome, his hair falling in front of eyes that crinkle when he smiles at me. A skateboard is tucked beneath his arm, his hands in his pockets and tattoos sprinkled across his skin. My gaze hops along them like they are the stones along a footpath that travels up into the sleeves of his t-shirt.
Dean sets his skateboard on the grass outside the wood-plank bordered sandpit before he takes the swing next to me. Without the family, the park is quiet and still and maybe a little sad. The homes that back onto the green space are all separated with high privacy fences and tall green cedars, but the sounds of families and children, BBQs and splashing pools filter through.
“Do your parents still have the pool?” I ask.
The chains on the swings squeak under our weight. “Yeah.”
He says he doesn’t want to talk about it, our past, but spoken or not, it sits between us, sand in our shoes that we can’t get out no matter how hard we thump. It’s here in the memories of his parents’ backyard landscaping, the taste of chlorine on his lips, the smell of it in his hair. How there was a time that nothing was too astringent to stop me from kissing him.
“I’ll help you,” he says quietly. I need a moment to switch my brain over from Random Memory Recall toholy fuck, Dean is going to help me.
“You’re going to pay me,” he says. “But not to be your fake boyfriend.”
A mosquito buzzes near my ear, but I don’t bother swatting it. “I don’t get it.”
The chains clink as he twists in the swing to face me. “Your clients don’t need you to have a boyfriend to work with you. They need to understand whytheydon’t have a partner. So you’re going to hire me as a dating coach. One complimentary session with clients, additional sessions as needed.”
Our knees bump when I turn toward him; he turns away again. “You’d do that?”
He turns his face to the darkening sky, his eyes closed. “Yes, Chloe.” He sounds resigned.
Why, I almost ask, but instead I say, “Thank you.”
He stands, the swing swaying at the loss of his weight, and steps out of the sandbox. He picks up his skateboard. There’s a fresh wound on the back of his elbow, surrounded by a purple bruise. I don’t have to wonder if he’s decided to take up skateboarding again. Dean turns to me. “And fair is fair, so send me a list of times this week you’re available for new headshots.”
He drops the board to the ground and steps onto it in one movement, rolling back up the path to the street. He’s a thirty-something-year-old man, and part of me thinks that Ishouldthink he’s too old for skateboarding.
Mostly, I wish I would have asked him to teach me how when I had the chance.
I checkthe text message again, but the information hasn’t changed since Dean first sent instructions.
Dean: Toronto Reference Library, Lobby
It’s a beautiful day, nearing golden hour. I thought he’d want to do headshots outside. There’s plenty of green space to be found in Toronto. But I’m not a photographer, so what do I know?
Actually, what I know is my new client memberships have fallen this last quarter. Not by a lot. A few percentiles, negligible for a business in its first five years, really. Except it feels…whatever the opposite of negligible is.
If Dad knew, he would tell me to loosen my grip. There were a few years as a teen that Dad and I couldn’t really connect. My parents had been divorced since I was eight, so I wasn’t angry at either of them anymore. I liked his partner— now my stepdad— Charles, and the revelation that he was bi had already settled into the DNA of our family. The disconnect was probably the result of me being a teenage girl, but at the time, it felt like an impassable rift. The only thing that didn’t really change between us was baseball. The data, the beauty of a game played on green grass, under blue skies, distilled into numbers, communicated in signs. When we couldn’t speak to each other about the important things, we could speak to each other about ball.
