The Opposite of Me (29 page)

“Oops! That chair tripped me, Jane. Now that chair is giggling! You’ve got a crazy giggling chair!”

“It’s me!” Chris erupted from underneath the chair, his face flushed. “Am I really the best hider?”

“The best I’ve ever seen,” I promised him.

“I think the world’s best hider and his sister deserve a treat,” Jane said. “You guys can pick one show to watch.”

The kids took off upstairs like they’d been shot out of a cannon, and Jane gestured for me to sit down.

“Can I get you some coffee or tea? We’re guaranteed a half hour of peace,” she said. “They don’t get to watch TV very often.”

“I’m fine, thanks. And they’re great kids,” I said, pulling out my notebook.

“Thank you,” Jane said, looking pleased. “I think so, too. When my husband and I split up, I vowed I’d do everything I could to make their lives happy.”

“What happened between you and your husband?” I asked. I had to dive right in if we only had half an hour. May had told me to get as many details as I could; that way, if Jane had broken up with her husband because he was a workaholic, we’d know not to set her up with another one.

Jane sighed. “Oh, you don’t want to know. Have you ever met a walking cliché?” She couldn’t quite pull off the lighthearted tone she was aiming for, in part because her lower lip was trembling. “I’d love to be able to say that we grew apart, but the truth is I messed up,” she continued. “I married the wrong man.”

I nodded sympathetically. Ouch. What an awful realization, especially when there were kids involved.

“One day I went to his office to surprise him,” Jane said. “It was his birthday and he had to work late, so I decided to bring him a piece of the white chocolate cheesecake I’d baked for him. That was his favorite.”

She took a deep breath. “That’s how I found out he was having an affair.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I didn’t walk in on him or anything,” she said. “But his secretary told me he’d left early. It didn’t take long to figure it out, once I’d waited up for him and he’d come home pretending he’d had a long day at work. Anyway, I’ve gotten over it for myself, but it kills me that the kids will be affected by this for the rest of their lives. So I only say good things about Daddy to my kids. But between you and me, I burned all our wedding pictures.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to lay all that on you. You’re a good listener.”

“I’m glad you told me,” I said. “I need to know all about you if I’m going to pick the right man for you.”

“My husband—I mean my ex-husband—is getting remarried next month,” Jane said, so softly it was almost as though she was speaking to herself. “For some reason I couldn’t resist treating myself to something special. It doesn’t make any sense, and God knows I can’t afford it—I’m a schoolteacher, and you know how well that pays—but I’d love to meet someone. I’d love just one more chance to pick the right guy.”

I looked around at her cozy house. Three aprons—one big and two miniature—were hanging in the kitchen, next to a tray of what looked like homemade muffins. A giant stuffed giraffe with chewed-on ears and a plastic doll were sitting at the dining room table, the remnants of a happy little tea party on the table before them.

“I’m sure May told you about our sliding scale,” I said briskly, holding up my notebook so she couldn’t see the page I was staring at was blank. “I see here we can offer you a rate of twelve hundred dollars instead of our usual fifteen hundred.”

“Really?” Jane said, her eyes widening. “But that’s wonderful!”

So I’d have to give up my commission to help Jane. If a single-mom schoolteacher with a cheating ex didn’t deserve happiness, who did?

“Tell me about your ex-husband,” I said. “Then I’ll know what kind of guy not to set you up with.”

Jane wrinkled her adorable little nose. “How can I sum up Kyle? Let me put it this way. I spent a semester in college abroad, and I remember the French had a saying that went something like this: There’s always one who kisses the cheek, and one who lifts their cheek to be kissed.”

She grinned wryly. “My husband was the cheek lifter.”

“Got it,” I said. “So we need to find someone to kiss your cheek.”

“That would be wonderful,” she said. “And he has to love kids. They come first.”

She looked down at herself. “There’s peanut butter on my knee. I drive an old minivan. And my dress-up clothes are overalls. Do you seriously think you’re going to find a guy who wants a schoolteacher with lunch smeared across her leg?”

I looked at Jane sitting there with worry in her eyes, and a wave of protectiveness washed over me. How dare her ex-husband
make her feel undeserving? How dare he take away the hope in her eyes? What a jerk he must have been.

“Hey, Jane?” I said.

She looked up from trying to scrape the dried peanut butter off her overalls.

“Who said anything about just one guy?” I asked.

Jane stared at me for a moment, then broke into a grin so huge that her eyes nearly disappeared.

“You’re a matchmaker?” Matt asked. “Seriously?”

“Sort of,” I mumbled, cradling the phone against my shoulder and pouring myself some Red Zinger. The stuff was addictive.

“You went to this woman’s house, signed her up for a dating service, and then you picked a guy to go out with her?” Matt said. “When do we get to the ‘sort of’ part?”

“Well, when you put it
that
way,” I said, carrying the tea to my room.

“I’ve always been a stickler for logic,” Matt said. “Oh, wait, no—that’s you.”

“Stop picking on me,” I said. “I’m going through a midlife crisis.”

“What about the ad agency?” Matt asked. “Are you still going back for the interview?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Then you’re not having a midlife crisis,” Matt said. “If you were having a midlife crisis, you’d chuck it all and become a matchmaker and take up bungee jumping.”

“You know I hate heights,” I said.

“That’s the point of a midlife crisis,” Matt said. “You do stuff that’s completely out of character. If a midlife crisis just made you eat more fiber and read Tolstoy, who would bother having one?”

“Did I tell you I’m babysitting for the woman I set up?” I said. “She never goes out, so she doesn’t have anyone to leave the kids with. I think I’m more nervous than she is about her date.”

“Who’d you set her up with?” he asked.

“At first I was thinking another teacher—you know, someone who loves kids and shares the same interests. But then I found a file for this guy named Toby. He’d filled out a questionnaire, and it was kind of dry. He’s a doctor. Podiatrist, actually,” I said, curling my legs up under me on the bed and taking a sip of tea. “I know, I know, fallen arches aren’t sexy, and Jane’s so energetic that I wasn’t sure about him at first. I was going to put his questionnaire back in the pile, but then I turned the page. And I saw that he’d doodled these little intertwined hearts all along the margin of the second page. It was so sweet.”

“Interesting,” Matt said.

“It’s a gamble, but I just have this sense about him,” I said. “He seems really kind. Jane needs kindness. So I called him, and we talked for an hour. He’s a great guy. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll find someone else for her. And him, too.”

“What’s May like?” Matt asked.

“She’s wonderful,” I said. “The stuff she’s been through with her ex-husband—I mean, what a jerk. But she’s so positive. She makes you feel good just by being around her.”

“Um-hmn,” Matt said.

“I mean, can you imagine me working with her? She sets her own hours and she interviews clients with a dog on her lap and when I went by to tell her about my meeting with Jane, she was just waking up from a nap,” I said. “Ridiculous. It’s a completely insane way to run a company.”

“Um-hmn,” Matt said.

“We’d drive each other crazy,” I said. “Who doesn’t use computers? She actually has her clients fill out forms by hand.
They’ve all got ring marks from her teacups. Oh, and sometimes when she laughs really hard, she snorts.”

“Um-hmn,” Matt said.

“Don’t make your shrink noises at me,” I said.

“Mnmh,” he said, then swallowed. “I’m eating.”

“Anything good?” I asked.

“Butterball turkey,” he said. “The client sent us a freezer full. First I had to look at turkeys for a month, now I’m eating them. I’m going to boycott Thanksgiving.”

“Matt?” I said. “I don’t think I’m going back to Givens for my second interview.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought so.”

“What do you mean?” I shouted. “I just said that. I didn’t really mean it!”

“Lindsey,” he said gently but urgently.
“Jump.”

“I don’t want to,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut.

“You can do it,” he said. “You just spent zero seconds talking about the ad agency and an hour telling me about May.”

“You’re wildly exaggerating,” I said. “Bordering on pathological lying. You should really see someone about that.”

“Stop changing the subject,” he said. “You can always go back to an agency later. Consider this a sabbatical.”

“When am I going to get another opportunity like this?” I wailed. “Givens will never want to see me again if I blow her off. And if I keep flaking out like this, I’ll have to move every three weeks. I’ll run out of cities and have to start applying for jobs in Europe. And I hate kippers.”

“Don’t forget escargot,” Matt said. “They’re nasty, too.”

“What am I doing?” I asked. I fell back onto my bed and put my hand over my forehead. “I’m not sure how, but I know this is all your fault.”

“You’re scared. But it’s going to be okay,” he said. “Lindsey? I don’t mean this to come across wrong, but I’m proud of you.”

Then me—me, who never, ever used to cry—lay there with tears streaming down my cheeks, feeling like something inside of me that had hardened into rock long ago was breaking up into little pieces and being washed away.

“It’s going to be okay,” Matt soothed me as I clung to the phone like it was a lifeline. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Seventeen
 

 

WHEN A CUSTOMER BANGED on the convenience store’s bathroom door, I nearly stabbed myself in the eye with my mascara wand.

“Just a minute!” I called, swiping on my final coat. I still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to let my family see me in my new clothes, so I’d found another place to change. This restroom was clean and the lighting was good, plus there was a hook for my clothes. All that and an endless supply of Hershey’s bars and Laffy Taffy—I could practically live here.

“She’s usually in there awhile,” I heard the cashier say.

“How often does she come in here?” the woman asked incredulously.

“Every day for the past two weeks,” the cashier said. “It’s the darndest thing. It’s like one girl goes in and another comes out.”

“Well, I have to
go
,” the customer said. “I’ve given birth to five children! When you’ve had that many children, you can’t hang around waiting for a bathroom. Do you catch my drift?”

“No, ma’am,” said the teenage clerk meekly.

“Unless you have a mop, you’d better let me in there!” the customer threatened, banging on the door again.

I quickly gathered up my makeup, shoved my navy blue suit into a garment bag, and opened the door.