Page 1 of Most Likely to Match
PROLOGUE: DEAN
15 YEARS AGO
Of all the places I’ve fooled around with Chloe Morris, this one is the most surprising. The old stairs to our school’s auditorium-slash-cafeteria stage are surprisingly quiet as I climb them two at a time. Backstage is cluttered with phys ed supplies and props from the drama club’s controversial presentation ofCabaret. Conical hats stacked on top of bowler hats stacked on top of dodgeballs, a cane stored with field hockey sticks. Someone has taped Alan Cumming’s face to a football tackle dummy.
I wish I had my camera, but my phone will have to do. I take a moment to find the best possible light, but even my new iPhone 3 can’t handle this dimness. I’ll have to come back later with my Canon and hope no one is here to question me.
“Chloe?” I whisper into the shadows. The lamp on the stage manager’s desk— likely left on after last night’s final performance— causes light to creep under the curtains. And the light from one spotlight creates a halo at center stage. Otherwise it’s dark back here. And eerily quiet.
“Chlo?” I ask again, making my way toward the thick blue mats piled up on the other side of the stage. If she’s anywhere, it’s got to be there.
If it were up to me, I’d pick a location other than a stack of mats that smell like must and sweat to fool around, but I’m willing to tolerate just about anything for Chloe. Especially if she does that thing with her tongue again.
I check my phone.
Chlo: backstage, 3rd period
I’m backstage.
And it’s third period.
But Chloe is nowhere to be seen. I’ve been semi-hard since about eight seconds after receiving her text. The second I walked up the steps, it got worse, like some kind of Pavlovian reaction. Part of me wants to leave. It is my lunch break, after all. I could run home and take care of things myself. But I’d rather it be her. I’d rather be with her. Even if we don’t fool around. Even if we lie on those mats for the next hour and fifteen minutes talking, listening to the increasingly noisy hum of students on the other side of that curtain. I’d rather that than nothing, than no Chloe at all.
I drag my hand through my hair, then adjust myself in my pants. I need to map a way out of here. Through the atrium teeming with teenagers on lunch, or spare, or simply skipping class. Down the hall past the home ec, auto mechanics, and photo lab classrooms. Out the door to the parking lot. Then all the way to my car at the back of the lot, where the smokers will inevitably be congregated, littering the hood of my dad’s Ford Explorer with cigarette butts, their second-hand smoke seeping into the upholstery. And I have to do it all without anyone seeing the raging boner in my pants.
I text her.
Coming?
I chuckle at the double entendre, even if Chloe won’t.
Except her text bubble appears and then:
Chlo: lol
Usually, I have to explain this stuff to her, so maybe more than just my French tutoring is paying off.
Chlo: I’ll be there soon. Got held up in comp sci.
Chlo: In the meantime, why don’t you get yourself ready for me ;)
Get ready?
I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’ve been ready.
Chlo: Yeah :) you know…touch yourself.
The bossiness doesn’t surprise me. We’ve played around with it before. Quiet, sweet Chloe Morris, who never makes a peep about anything, has a surprising need for control when we get our clothes off. And I don’t care either way. Sometimes I can’t believe she even gives me the time of day— though, arguably, in public, she doesn’t.
I like when she’s bossy, though it does make things a little worse for me right now. I’m so hard I’m aching.
What does throw me is her liberal use of emojis. They’re too vague, she says. They leave too much room for interpretation. But maybe she’s trying something new, like the whole hooking up at school thing. That’s new.
What did you have in mind…?
Chlo: Are you hard?
I nod as I type:
