Matchmaking for Beginners(101)

“Even when he asked me to marry him, he wasn’t overjoyed,” I say slowly. “When I said yes, he looked absolutely shocked. Happy, maybe, but mostly shocked. And even when we had sex, it was—”

“Okay. I’m willing to listen to most things, but I draw the line here. Your sex life. I used to have to put on headphones when you and—oh, never mind.”

“Sorry.” I look over at him and think about him listening to Noah and me making love. Fighting. Crabbing about things. Making up again. And him knowing all along how Blix hadn’t wanted Noah there.

Then his phone rings, and he picks it up and says, “Hi, Elizabeth.”

He takes the phone into the kitchen.

“Yeah, I’m thinking the second week in December most likely,” I hear him say as he paces the kitchen. “No, no. I’m renting a U-Haul. Sure . . . No, people do drive in winter. I’ve heard it can be done . . . I think the drive will do me good.”

Ah, his sister. He really is going to Wyoming. With a U-Haul.

I slump down into the couch even farther. I feel exhausted to my very core. My head is throbbing and now my leg aches where I knocked it when I slipped, and I just want to close my eyes and disappear.

And I’m so tired, so paralyzingly tired, and everything I’ve thought and believed here has been wrong. I don’t know what Blix saw in me, but I didn’t help anybody. And I’m certainly not a matchmaker. I’ve lost the one guy who, boring or not, actually wanted to marry me, all because I cheated with the guy who had left me! And I’ve made a mess of things with Lola, whom I like so much, and somehow I feel like I’ve even betrayed Blix, by not protecting her papers. And because of that, her stupid grandnephew and his unscrupulous family are now going to try to get the will changed.

And Patrick, the one person here that I can talk to, who makes me laugh—though he thinks I pity him—is going to move far away. Retreating even farther away from people. So much for Blix’s plan.

“I’m going to drive straight through,” he is saying. He laughs. “Right. It’s not like me to stop. In public.”

And what am I going to do, now that I’m not heading home to marry Jeremy?

Am I just to go back home and face my family’s exasperation? They’ll hear tomorrow from Jeremy what happened. They may even be hearing about it right this minute! He will, of course, move on with his life—so much for the fun little team we were going to create. Working in his office together and being all happily married and going to Cancun when we retire. Why couldn’t I have just done that? What the hell is wrong with me, anyway? I’ll be back in my childhood bedroom once again, seeing the consternation on everybody’s faces as they try to figure out once again what I should do with my life.

Ohhh, Marnie!

What are we going to do about Marnie?

And Natalie—sorry, sis, but I won’t be having a baby and raising it right alongside yours. No barbecues by the pool with our tanned, relaxed husbands. I screwed everything up.

Of course I don’t have to go back there. Once I leave here, having disrupted and/or ruined everyone’s lives, I can pick somewhere else to go. Look on the map and select a new location where no one knows the havoc I can wreak. Honestly, I should be required to have a sign on me: MENACE! THINKS SHE’S GOT MATCHMAKING SKILLS. STAY AWAY!

I close my eyes.

Patrick, as if speaking from a great distance: “Well, yeah. Myself, yes. No—well, not much furniture, of course, but I have the computers.” He laughs. “No, of course I need them! I’m not exactly going to leave them behind.”

I open one eye and see the computers across the room, blinking approvingly as I slide away, down into the darkness.

Later I feel something being placed over me, and I struggle to open my eyes. Patrick says, “Let me make sure your pupils aren’t dilated.” He lifts my lids, one at a time, and says, “Hmmm.”

“Patrick,” I say through a thickness in my mouth. “I don’t believe in magic anymore.”

“Bullshit,” he says.

“No, it’s not bullshit. And I have to go home.” I struggle to sit up. Roy has been sleeping in the crook of my arm, and he jumps off the couch. My head is throbbing like there are a million tiny hammers inside my brain. My eyes don’t seem to be operational in the usual way.

“Absolutely not,” says Patrick. “You need to stay here. You shouldn’t be alone with a possible head thing. Come on. You can sleep in my bed. I’ll get you settled.”

He gently helps me up and leads me to his room, which, even in my sleepy state, I can tell is so spare it’s almost monkish. Hardly any lights. And he draws back the covers, and then he puts his hands on my shoulders and sits me down on the side of the bed and takes off my shoes. Then he sits back on his heels. I feel his eyes on me.

“Hmmm. Your clothes still have turkey stains all over them. Shall I go upstairs and get your pajamas?”

I don’t answer. I just plop down on the bed on my back.

“Right. I know. You can wear one of my sweatshirts.”

“Too hot.”

“Okay, then a T-shirt.” There’s the sound of drawers opening and closing, and then he’s back—I smell his presence more than see him—and he puts something in my hands: a shirt, I realize. “Do you need help? Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought much about this part.”