Match Me (2 page)

Chase sighed. “Look,” he said, smoothing his blond hair off his forehead. “I’ve seen you do a lot of things—a lot—but…” His voice trailed off.

It was true. He had seen me do a lot of things. A lot of really stupid things. And he’d done a lot of those stupid things with me.

For some reason, I didn’t think he’d view crashing his wedding as one of those. I’d held out hope that it would make sense to him, that it would be the revelation, the epiphany he needed to see he was making the worst decision of his life.

Turned out, it looked like
I
had just made the worst decision of my life.

“I love Angela,” he said slowly, his eyes locked on me. “I am marrying her. Today.”

I started to speak but he held up his hand.

“Let me finish, dammit.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and began to pace. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. By this. But…you need to move on, Bonnie. Seriously.”

I felt the tears threaten again. How was I supposed to move on and away from the man I loved?

“You should go.” When I didn’t say anything, didn’t respond, he said, “Now.”

I nodded. I was being dismissed. Not just from the wedding but from his life.

FOUR

Paul led me down the stairs, back into the basement. My feet dragged on the steps as we descended. It was because I was numb. Numb with embarrassment. Mortification. Sadness.

“You gonna be alright?” Paul asked.

“Sure.” But I sounded unconvincing, even to my own ears.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said and I could tell that he was. “If it’s any consolation, I agree with you.”

I lifted my eyes. “You do?”

He nodded, frowning, his brown eyes troubled. “Angela is bad news.”

She was bad news. She was beautiful and she was rich but she was also mean-spirited and spoiled. She’d arrived in Mansfield three years ago, the summer before our senior year. Long enough for me to have a few classes with her, to see her at parties and then at Mansfield Community College. Long enough to know that she was shallow and petty.

But she wanted Chase. And Angela Biltmore got what she wanted.

“So why didn’t you stop him?” I asked.

Paul shook his head. “And how would that work, exactly? Chase is whipped. Big time. Only thing I could do was try to talk some sense into him.”

“And?”

Paul waved his hand, motioning to the church. “Uh, it didn’t work.”

I wanted to tell him that he should have tried harder. He was his best friend, after all. Friends didn’t let friends marry bitches. But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be looked at as the voice of reason here. So I said nothing.

“Look, I gotta get back in there.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You sure you’re OK?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

“If you wait down here for a couple of minutes, the coast will be clear. No one will see you.”

“OK.”

“And I’m sorry, Bon. I really am.” He hesitated. “I know you love him.”

I felt the tears again. All I could do was nod. Blubbering over Chase would have to wait. I’d already embarrassed myself enough.

I slid down the basement wall, close to the main staircase, and sat. The song started again. Not the one in my head but the one in the church.

I waited for a couple of minutes before starting up the stairs. The ceremony was back in full swing. The pastor was probably asking for people to speak now or forever hold their peace. I almost laughed. What if someone decided to stand up? And my sneaking around in the back of the church, chucking shoes at my ex-boyfriend had all been totally unnecessary?

I made my way back into the foyer. The front door to the church was open. I could slip out easily. No one would ever know I’d been there. Well, no one but Paul and Chase. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t tell anyone. Chase wouldn’t want to risk Angela’s wrath, despite the fact that his rep might suffer from people thinking he’d “fainted” at his wedding. But I was pretty sure he was more afraid of Angela than a hiccup in his reputation.

Paul. Paul wouldn’t say anything. I knew I’d been wrong about Chase—clearly, he
was
the kind of boy who’d marry the wrong girl. But Paul wasn’t the type to gossip. Never had been. I knew he wouldn’t say a word.

I took a step toward the entrance and then stopped. The sanctuary doors were still wide open. The church was silent. I couldn’t help myself. I peeked inside.

Chase and Angela faced each other, holding hands. The pastor held up a ring and closed his eyes. He handed it to Chase.

His eyes locked on her as he slipped the ring on to her finger.

Someone gasped. A loud, strangled sound, like a wounded animal had been let loose in the church.

Two hundred heads swiveled to face me. There was no wounded animal making that noise.

It was me.

FIVE

There was a stack of boxes in the toy store on Monday morning, a stack big enough that I could hide behind. Except my job was to unpack them and get the toys on the shelves of Wonder World.

Marcus, my boss and the owner of the most bizarre toy store on earth, didn’t say anything to me when I walked in at 9 a.m., and I wondered if he knew. He peered up at me through his thick eyeglasses and nodded a good morning from his perch in the back office. He was a man of few words and even fewer smiles.

I’d spent the Sunday after the disaster on the couch. My phone buzzed with texts and missed calls all day. I ignored them. I huddled under a burgundy afghan and watched Lifetime and cried over the sad movies. At least that’s what I told myself I was crying about. And every time my thoughts would drift to the scene in the church—the anguished look on Chase’s face and the murderous one on Angela’s, the bemused expressions of all the wedding guests—I’d force myself to refocus on
She’s Too Young
or
No One Would Tell
. It worked. Sort of.

I slid the box opener through the tape and pried open the box. A dozen plastic play sets, complete with tiny figures and furniture. I pushed the box along the floor and hauled them out and onto the shelf. The next box was filled with dolls, porcelain collector ones in elaborate costumes. These were on display in the case behind the counter, so I hauled the box up to the front of the store.

I lifted the lids to their boxes, looking for new ones. A flapper doll with a red-fringe dress and thick black eyeliner. A doll dressed as Dorothy, complete with Toto huddled in a little basket. And a bride. Dark hair, dark eyes. Just like Angela.

“Resorting to voodoo?”

I spun around.

Jill Wegman stood at the counter, holding a Starbucks iced-coffee and looking pointedly at the doll nestled in my hands.

“Um. No.” I placed the doll in the case.

Jill Wegman was many things. She was my best friend and the smartest person I knew. She was also the most outspoken person in the universe and I knew exactly what she would have had to say about my hare-brained idea. It was why I hadn’t told her. And why I hadn’t picked up the phone at all yesterday. But, somehow, she knew.

“You’re sure that’s not next on your list of stellar ideas?” She sipped her drink from a lipstick stained straw. “You know, since crashing the wedding didn’t work?”

I didn’t answer, just popped the lid off the next doll box.

“Seriously, Bon. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.” I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” She adjusted the strap of her purse, lifting her brown hair off her shoulder. “Any fallout?”

It felt like a trick question. Wasn’t the sheer number of phone calls and texts I’d gotten the day before a sign that yes, people had noticed and yes, there probably were going to be some repercussions from my latest stupid move?

“Not yet,” I said.

“You gonna tell me why you decided to pull that stunt?” She paused, her eyes narrowed. “And if you say the tarot cards told you to do it, I seriously will have you committed.”

She had no appreciation for spiritual tools. None. I didn’t think she would appreciate song inspiration either, though.

“No tarot was involved in the making of this disaster,” I said.

“So…what?” She tossed her empty drink in the trash can behind the counter. “Did you and Chase talk? Before the wedding?”

“No.”

“OK. Did you see Angela with someone else?”

I knew what she was doing. Trying to put together pieces of the puzzle. The only problem was, she did’t have all the pieces. And I couldn’t give them to her. She was my best friend but there were some things I’d done, some things that were so stupid, I couldn’t bring myself to share them with her. Especially with her, my perfect, no-nonsense, will-beat-me-senseless-if-she-finds-out-what-I-did best friend.

“No.”

Jill sighed. “I’m going to get it out of you eventually, you know. There’s a reason I’m going to law school.”

I smiled. I knew that. She was persistent and could wear even the strongest person down with her incessant questions. I’d told her more than once that she was missing her true calling. Why be a lawyer when she could be an interrogator for the CIA?

“How did you hear?” I asked.

“You didn’t see the front page of the paper today?” She laughed when she saw my expression. “Kidding. Though it wouldn’t surprise me. Danny was there. He saw you.”

I felt my face redden. I was glad Jill hadn’t been around to see me make a fool out of myself, but having her younger brother there was almost as bad.

“What did he say?”

“Just that you were at the church door, looking in. Moaning or something.” Jill shook her head. “Really, Bon. Not cool.”

“Did he say anything about Chase…fainting?”

Jill leaned against the counter. “Before or after you hit him with your shoe?”

My cheeks flamed tomato-red.

“No one knows it was yours,” she said. “Danny mentioned a shoe on the altar. There were a lot of Cinderella jokes. I was the only one who put two-and-two together. I mean, put you and shoe together.”

Of course. She was Jill, wasn’t she?

I flattened the box the dolls were in and tucked it behind the cash-wrap area. A customer approached with a stuffed bacteria in his hands.

I rang up the E. coli and swiped his credit card. Ten bucks. Jill watched in disbelief as I bagged it and handed the man his receipt.

“Who buys that?” she asked after he’d gone.

I nodded my head toward the door. “That guy.”

Jill shook her head. “Crazy. People are crazy.” She looked at me. “Including you.”

“Yes. I know. You’re ready to have me committed. Great. Lead the way.”

“Well, technically, that’s my last resort.”

“Whew.”

She pulled her phone from her purse and pecked at the screen. “We need to keep you busy. Keep your mind off the ex. And we need to set you up with someone new. Like, pronto.”

I walked back to the stack of boxes and she followed me.

“I don’t want to be set up.”

“Of course you don’t.” She pursed her lips. “You’re pining. You want people to feel sorry for you.
You
want to feel sorry for you. Well, guess what? You’ve been feeling like this for almost a year now and nothing’s changed. You’re single. You haven’t had a date in months. And the man you think you love just ran off and married the Wicked Witch.”

“I do love him.”

She rolled her eyes behind her tortoise-shell glasses. On anyone else, they would have looked bookish. Nerdy. On her, they looked hot. “Puh-leeze. You’ve ’loved’ him since you were five years old.”

“Not true.” I didn’t like Chase at all in kindergarten. Or at any time in elementary school, come to think of it.

“Fine. A long time. Too long. But at this point, I don’t think it’s love. It’s more like fixation. Fascination. Chase has become your security blanket.”

“Wrong,” I said. “You don’t know.”

“Oh, I do know. It’s safer to say you love Chase than it is to see anyone else and move on with your life.”

I didn’t say anything. And I wished that I had a rag to stuff in her mouth.

You’ve never given another guy a chance. But now you’re gonna have to.”

I shuddered. I knew what was happening. Jill was like that robot guy from the Terminator movies. Focused. Unwavering. Usually, she applied that to academics. There was a reason she was Valedictorian, a reason she managed to finish her undergrad degree in two years: sheer determination. AP classes in high school, CLEP classes to test out of others, and a full course-load every single semester. While I wandered aimlessly at Mansfield Community College, trying out classes like they were flavors of saltwater taffy, Jill plowed her way through credits.

But it was summer. Law school started in the fall. And she was looking for something to do.

She showed me her phone. A dating website called Match Me.

I shook my head. “No way.”

“Yes way.”

“What makes you think some guy I don’t know would want to take a chance on me?” I motioned to my body. “This? Really?”

It wasn’t that I was unattractive. I knew that. I was just…there. There was nothing singularly spectacular about me. Blondish-brown hair. Green eyes. Freckles. A smile that, if you cocked your head just a little to the left, stretched mostly straight. Too tall to be a gymnast but too short to look like a normal 20 year old.

“You’re not ugly,” Jill said. It was apparently as much of a compliment as she could manage.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Let me finish,” she said, annoyed. “You’ve just decided that you aren’t attractive. Again. It’s a fall back. Saves you from having to put yourself out there for the right guy. And the right guy is going to see that you’re gorgeous and smart and funny.”

“Chase
was
the right guy.”

“Chase
is
a moron. Look, we need to get you mingling with people outside of Mansfield. It’s entirely too insular here. You need to expand your horizons. And since you never step foot out of this God-forsaken town, well, this is one way we can get you to see what else is out there. Who else is out there.”

I knew she was right. She was always right. It wasn’t that I was a hermit. I had a job. I took a couple of classes. I hung out, sometimes, with friends on weekend nights. But when friends went down to the Cities, I always stayed home. I liked Mansfield. I was comfortable there. It felt like me. I felt out of my element when I stepped outside of Mansfield.