It's a Match (2 page)

Gabriel swirled the whiskey in his glass, watching the ice cubes
swish around before taking a small sip. As he put his glass down, he glanced at
Cams sitting beside him, feeling the sadness permeating her whole being. Her
hand rested on the table between them and he almost reached for it, but she
raised that hand and put it under her chin as she sighed.

It had only been a few hours since they last saw each other. Her
face looked bare and natural now that her lipstick had faded, save for the
faint black smudge around her eyes. Either way, she still looked gorgeous, and
Gabriel wondered yet again why he wasn’t her date for the evening.

 “So are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked her again.

Cams looked up, her cheeks red. “It’s embarrassing,” she said
finally.

“What else could be more embarrassing than you bursting into tears
in my office back when we hardly even knew each other?”

Gabriel felt a flash of triumph when her eyes brightened at the
memory. After finding out at his cousin Pia’s class that Cams made phenomenal
cupcakes, he got her to supply desserts for the new bar and bistro he’d opened.
They had started meeting three times a week for that, with him picking up the
cupcakes from her house or her office, depending on where she was. They had
always been formal and professional around each other, until one slow evening,
when she dropped by with a new supply of pastries.

“We’re not due for another delivery, right?” he’d asked, looking up
from his paperwork. Cams had entered the back office with a box unlike what she
usually brought, looking a little lost.

“No,” she had replied. “I just had some extra, so I thought I’d
bring them here.”

Cams was sad—this was what Gabriel noticed the first time he met
her. Her smile rarely met her eyes, and she always seemed to be lost in her
thoughts. He’d never asked about it because he thought it was a personal
matter. But that night, it was as if the cloud over her head had then become a
full-blown storm, so heavy that Gabriel could almost see the lightning flash
around her.

 “Are you okay, Cams?” he had asked.

He had heard her take a shaky breath and expected her to speak. But
instead, she had burst into tears.

The tears had caught him by surprise, and it had taken him a while
to give her something to wipe her tears (his box of tissues was usually in his
car). Finally, he’d pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to
her tentatively.

Then Cams had started talking, and he learned that she had just come
fresh from a breakup. The cupcakes she had been carrying were supposed to be
for her ex-boyfriend, but she’d found out from the office grapevine that her ex
was now with his best friend, who also happened to be his true love and the
reason why he broke up with her. It hadn’t taken long for Cams to tell the
story, and by the time she was done, she had stopped crying. She’d apologized,
he’d offered her a drink, and they’d kept each other company until it was
closing time.

“There, you’re smiling,” he said, pulling her back to the present.
“That’s a prettier sight.”

Cams’s smile grew wider. “Thanks, Gabriel. I really appreciate you
being here now.”

“I assume this is a case of a terrible date,” he said. “I mean,
that’s the only reason I could think of, so if you don’t tell me what happened,
I’m just going to assume that until you tell me it’s not.”

“It wasn’t really so bad,” she said. She glanced at him warily. “I’m
sure you’ll think I’m such a freak. I panicked when he invited me to his place
when we weren’t even halfway through dinner.”

“He invited you to his place?” Gabriel frowned, taking another sip
of his drink.

Cams nodded, then she sighed. “Maybe I freaked out. I mean, it could
have been a harmless invitation—”

“You did the right thing, don’t worry,” he interrupted, his voice
hard. Anger coursed through his veins—but he wasn’t quite sure if he was mad at
the guy or at himself. “He was just after a hookup. You were right to call for
help. Who knows what could have happened.”

Cams gave him a long look. Then she scowled, pressed a finger
against his chest, pushing him slightly. “This is your fault.”

“How is it my fault?” he retorted, ignoring the burning feeling that
her finger seemed to have left through the layers of his clothing. “Did I make
you say yes to that guy? Did I choose your date for you?”

“You got me into this online dating thing,” she complained. “If you
didn’t talk so much about it, then . . .”

“Did I install the app on your phone? You did it all yourself.”

“But you made it sound so exciting,” Cams argued. “And you’re always
out with someone new. I just wanted to feel that again, you know?”

A bit of gloom descended once again as she sighed. Gabriel took
another sip from his drink, watching her carefully.

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” she replied, forlorn. “It’s easier for you because
you’ve been doing this for a long time. You’re always out with someone new.”

Didn’t she realize that always being out with someone new was
tiring? Gabriel was weary of the dating game. Didn’t she know that all he
wanted now was to be with her?

Of course she didn’t. Because he wasn’t telling her anything.

“It shouldn’t be so hard,” she continued, obviously not waiting for
Gabriel to weigh on her rant. “Why is it so hard to find someone?”

She fell silent, and he watched her for a few seconds. Then he took
another drink, longer this time, while trying to decide what to do next.

“Gabriel, I’m sorry,” she said, after a beat. “I’m just . . . It’s .
. .”

“Maybe you’re looking too hard,” Gabriel blurted out. Cams gave a
little start before looking at him, and somehow this gave him the burst of
courage he needed. “What if the person you’re looking for is right in front of
you?”

Cams couldn’t remember when she started crushing on Gabriel. Was it
during their long business meetings to map out their schedule? Or was it when
he accompanied her to do a supply run? Was it that time she taught him how to
bake, or those nights when she would stay with him at the bar and waited with
him until closing time? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that one day, she
looked at him and realized that this guy, her friend and business partner, was
someone very special and she couldn’t imagine her life without him.

But she never said anything, for several reasons. First, they did
business together. She didn’t want to break their working relationship,
especially now that he was planning to open another bar and she was about to
launch her own cupcake shop. 

Second, she had just gotten over her ex-boyfriend. For real this
time. It had been so liberating when she realized that she was finally okay,
and she cherished the freedom that came with it. This meant she could date
again, but as much as she wanted it to be Gabriel, she was still cautious
around him because he knew her entire sordid story. After all, he had witnessed
one of her breakdowns.

And the third biggest reason she couldn’t tell him anything was
because Gabriel was dating. Nothing exclusive, but she knew he was going out
with different girls regularly. She’d known this even before they had become
friends because he’d reschedule their pickup days whenever he had to meet
someone or someone else would receive the supplies from her when she delivered
them. She confirmed it when she accidentally saw a notification on his phone
from Sparked Match, a new dating app that Charlie told her about. Cams wasn’t
ready to indulge in her feelings for someone who was obviously busy with other
people.

“Isn’t online dating hard?” Cams asked when they talked about it
over dinner after a business meeting one time. “How are you sure that they’re
real people?”

 “You meet them in person,” Gabriel answered with a shrug.

“But how do you know if the person is worth meeting?”

“You talk to them first, of course,” he said. “Ask about stuff.
Things on their profile. Their hobbies, where their photos were taken. Then you
decide if you want to meet them, and you ask.”

Cams wrinkled her nose. “What if you don’t like the person and they
ask you?”

 “That’s why you only talk to your matches,” he said with a laugh.
“It’s just like offline dating, only you get rid of that obstacle of going to
places where you could meet these people because they’re here already.” Gabriel
tapped at the screen of his phone.

He then proceeded to do a demo of the app for her, and she felt both
fascinated and slightly apprehensive. Online dating had never been her thing.
She met her ex and all the other guys she’d dated through friends and
acquaintances in real life. Going online to talk to total strangers seemed a
little weird, not to mention unsafe.

“Of course, you exercise caution when you talk to them,” Gabriel
added. “I’ve met really nice people here, so it’s not all bad or scary.”

“But did you move past the first date with anyone?”

“Do you mean second date or physically?” He had a wolfish grin on
his face that made him look so handsome, Cams lost her breath momentarily.

 “I meant second date!” she exclaimed when she recovered. Her face
felt warm. Then she gave him a challenging look and added, “Unless this online
dating thing is just a façade for hookups for you too.”

He blinked, and Cams felt a momentary surge of victory when she
realized that she had him. But that went away quickly when Gabriel tilted his
head to one side as he looked at her, and she suddenly felt self-conscious. Why
was he looking at her like that?

“As Kelly Clarkson once sang,” he said slowly. “I do not hook up. I
also do not kiss and tell.”

“I’m not asking you to kiss and tell,” Cams snapped, but there was
an awful twist in her stomach when she imagined Gabriel locking lips with
someone else. She rolled her eyes instead to cover for the sick feeling.

“You know what, let’s not talk about that anymore,” she said,
shaking her head. “I hope you find true love there.”

Gabriel’s expression turned serious. He asked, “Why don’t you try it
out?”

“What? I—”

“It’s not going to kill you,” he continued. “If anything, it’s
practice. And there
are
interesting people there anyway. I mean, I’m
there and you find me interesting, right?” he teased.

Cams rolled her eyes again, even if he was actually quite close to
the truth. “Is my single status so alarming that you have to push me to do
this?”

“Just try it out. You said so yourself yesterday that you’re ready
to date. There’s nothing to lose.”

He had a point. Cams looked at her phone on the table and then at
Gabriel, who gave her an encouraging nod.

“Look, I’ll even help you with your profile,” he offered. “And I’ll
help you figure out who to avoid. It’s all about marketing.”

“You really believe in all of this, huh,” she said, slowly reaching
for her phone, trying to ignore the tiny pinch in her heart. It felt just a
little sad that he was pushing her to do this, but she also knew carrying a
torch for him wasn’t going anywhere. She had to squash this little crush
because it would probably just hurt her later on and maybe even ruin this good
friendship. She would rather have him as a friend than lose him over any
unrequited feelings.

After their online dating tutorial had finished, Gabriel walked Cams
to her car, as usual. She looked at him, her
friend
.

 “Can we agree that we won’t like each other’s profiles if we see
them on Sparked Match?” she told him. It had occurred to her while he was
explaining the app that this could happen. Gabriel stopped walking to look at
her, making her self-conscious all over.

But she pressed on. “Because we’re friends. And it’s going to be
weird if we saw each other there and we get matched with each other, right?”

Gabriel’s expression was still unreadable. Cams wondered if she had
said the wrong thing—should she take it back? But she only said that to protect
her heart.

It felt like ages before he nodded. “Okay.”

Gabriel
hadn’t meant to do it.

It
wasn’t exactly wrong, but it was against the word he had given to Cams. He’d
been casually browsing through Sparked Match, but he was barely looking at
profiles or reacting when he received match notifications. It had been a while
since he’d been on a date, not because he didn’t get matches, but he just
didn’t feel like asking anyone out. He figured he was pretty much done with the
online thing, but he couldn’t stop it because there seemed to be something else
that kept nagging at him. He just couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

Lately, his fingers would automatically press the X button without
even looking at the profile. So he almost didn’t see Cams’s smiling face look
back at him from his screen, if not for his phone vibrating from a message.

The message remained unread as he stared at her photo.

They had been spending a lot of time together recently. After their
business meetings, they would hang out for a while, talking about their own
lives, and he liked that the best. Gabriel found out that she actually enjoyed
her IT job, even if the workload stressed her out often. To combat that, she
would go for a jog almost everyday, and he wondered how she could find the time
to do that. He found it baffling how Cams could be friends with her ex’s
girlfriend, but it was also just
so
her, being one of the nicest people
he knew. There had been times when she had ranted about it, how awkward it felt
being friends with her ex and his girlfriend, but she still did it in a very
nice way that it was almost endearing. They had become good friends in the past
months, that it was already hard to imagine his life without her.

The Cams he knew now was way happier than the one he first met. And
she should be, now that she was finally over her ex and now that she was back
in the dating pool again. She deserved to be happy. 

Gabriel’s thumb moved from the X button and clicked on her photo to
open her profile. He noted the tiny changes from the first time they set it up,
such as that cute little line in her bio about making the perfect cheesecake,
which he knew she hadn’t really worked on yet because the cream cheese she
wanted was too expensive. She added new photos too, and he really liked that
one where she was smiling at the camera while holding a piping bag poised over
her famous red velvet cupcakes, oblivious to the flour on her face. Charlie
must have taken this photo because he couldn’t remember ever seeing it.

She looked beautiful.

She always did.

Gabriel had thought about romantically pursuing Cams several times,
because why not? They were both single and available. He had always liked her,
and they got along well. But he liked what they had, and he didn’t want to ruin
it. It was, for all intents and purposes, a business decision.

But now that she was actually dating—or at least, getting there—did
that change anything for him?

His finger went back to click the X and hesitated again. It made
perfect sense when Cams asked him to do this, for their friendship’s sake. It
had given him a strange feeling when he agreed to it, as if there were an
opportunity he was refusing. He had that same feeling now.

Gabriel glanced at her photo again. His heart skipped a beat.

Without thinking, he clicked on the heart, and Cams’s smiling face
slid to the right of the screen.

It wasn’t like she’d find out anyway.

Cams had been staring at Gabriel for a while now, and he was staring
back. Of course he was, because that was his profile picture. It was a solo
photo taken somewhere, the background a little blurred because his face was the
focus. His eyes looked straight at you, as if he could really see you and
only
you. A tiny smirk was on his lips, making him look a little mischievous, like
he was up to something and it was about you. The other photos had just the
right amount of mystery for ladies to want to like him: a shot of him posing at
the counter of the bar (taken during an interview he gave for a food zine), one
of him laughing as his dog Thor, a Siberian husky, licked his face, and one of
him at the beach, holding a surfboard. Gabriel always told her to avoid
shirtless guys on Sparked Match at all costs, unless the show of skin was in an
appropriate place. Cams spent more time looking at this particular picture, admiring
how drops of saltwater glistened on his toned upper body, strengthened by all
his runs and weekend surfing trips. His smile was bright against his tan skin,
and Cams thought this was the most natural photo of all. Perhaps because she
took this photo, that summer she joined Gabriel and his staff on a beach trip.

She totally understood now why this would be an attractive profile.
This was a showcase of the best things about Gabriel: his charm, his
professionalism, his adventurous nature, his compassion. But it also didn’t
show a lot about him, the things that Cams knew—like how he would always sleep
in on Saturdays, or how he liked his coffee with two sugars, or how he would
always eat a bite of dessert after every meal no matter how big of a meal it was.
It didn’t talk about how he was into animal rights, or how he was a wide
reader, or that he had this childhood dream of being a teacher. She wondered
how long before he told the girls he dated about these little things—did they
talk about it the first time, or did it take many dates before he opened up?

A message popped up at the top of her screen. It was Kevin, one
match that she actually enjoyed talking to. She liked him well enough, despite
his little tendency to overshare, but that wasn’t really a deal breaker.

She let the message slide back up on her screen, the red
notification badge on the corner reminding her about it. Cams glanced at
Gabriel’s face again and sighed.

Quit it, Camilla.

Her finger hovered over the X. She asked for this, right?

Then she pulled her finger back, looking at Gabriel’s dark eyes and
bright smile again. It’s not like he’d know if she decided not to do what she
asked him to do. At least, she could be completely honest about what she felt
for him here, since she couldn’t do that in real life.

Cams pressed the heart.