Page 26 of Most Likely to Match
From the parking lot at the side of the school we can’t see the football field, but the silent disco’s MC’s voice echoes over the building toward us. Chloe stands with her hands on the closed trunk, her lip caught between her teeth, a small frown marking her brows.
“Do you think that went well?” I ask. “Like, do you think it was worth it?”
She doesn’t answer me right away, taking another moment to stare across the parking lot. “I hope so. I want to make sure you get the clients.” She shrugs.
I tap the top of the trunk, a soft metallic thud. “That’s for me to worry about,” I assure her, and I’m struck, in this moment, at how long it’s been since I spoke to my own therapist and what she might think about me entering into this arrangement with Chloe.
Well, I know what she’d think. She’d set her pen down, because she’s the type of therapist who still takes handwritten notes, and she’d sigh and say, with great effort, “Dean.”
“I never asked,” Chloe says. “Why you came back.”
I turn, resting my butt against her trunk. “Why’d I leave London, you mean?”
She nods, her hands still pressed to the trunk lid.
I sigh again, an attempt to be intentional about my breaths. “My girlfriend broke up with me,” I say simply.
“Oh.” Chloe sounds surprised, as if she hadn’t considered I had a girlfriend. I don’t know whether to be offended or chalk it up to Chloe being Chloe.
“We dated for a while. After I closed my boyfriend-for-hire services,” I joke.
She doesn’t laugh.
“She owned her own place, and I moved in. She was a veterinarian. And, eventually, she made it clear she wanted more. And I realized that I didn’t.”
Chloe turns to face me now, her hip leaned against the car. “More as in marriage? Kids?”
“Yeah, you know.” I shrug my shoulders to ease the sudden tension. “Commitment.”
“And you don’t want that.” She nods as she says it.
“Not necessarily.” I’ve thought about it before. Marriage, or common law. The tying together of two lives in whatever way fits. “I’d get married,” I say, “have kids. I’llbewith someone for as long as we both shall live. Or, at least, I’m willing to try it.”
“Oh.” Chloe almost sounds disappointed, and I smile, studying her out of the corner of my eye.
“I just didn’t want to do those thingswithher.”
“Oh.” She winces.
“Yeah.” I broke her heart. That’s not a good guess. She told me.You broke my heart, Dean, as I packed the last of my things into the back of the rented moving van. I kind of broke my own heart, too. Though I didn’t tell her that. It didn’t seem like the right time. “I wished I could have, you know? Given her forever. But…” I shrug again. A useless, empty gesture.
“But what?” she asks. “How did you know? How did you know you couldn’t give her forever?”
This time I face her, too, settling so we are almost eye to eye. I put my hand on my chest, over my heart, the heat of my palm spanning my left pectoral muscle. “I felt it. Or didn’t feel it.”
Her brow furrows, cutting deeper grooves into her skin.
“There wasn’t any one thing. It wasn’t even a list of things. It was…” I tap my fingers against the smooth cotton of my t-shirt. “When I pictured forever, it wasn’t with her.”
“Who was it with?”
“I mean, no one. I don’t know.” I smile awkwardly. “I don’t have anyone in mind.”
“Then how do you know it’s not her?” she asks, and I’m positive that Caroline— my ex— and Chloe don’t know each other, but Chloe seems to be her staunch advocate, nonetheless.
“Forever can’t be the person who only looks good on paper,” I say. “It has tofeelright. And when I thought about forever with Caro, it was…okay. It was imaginable, I guess. But it didn’t feel easy. And I’m not saying relationships should be easy. They aren’t. They can’t be. But the loving someone part? The waking up every day and putting them first part? Choosing them even when they piss you off or annoy you. Even when they hurt you. That part has to be easy. It has to be solid. And I didn’t trust myself with Caro to make that choice.”
“But you have felt it,” Chloe says.
