Matchmaking for Beginners(57)

She turns to her ex. “If I had known, Andrew, that your girlfriend wasn’t going to cook for you, I could have fed him breakfast.”

“It’s fine. We had a nice breakfast down the street. I always like eating in this neighborhood.” Andrew puts his hand on Sammy’s head, which I see Jessica register as some possible violation, and Sammy looks down miserably and kicks at something on the floor.

“So where is she?”

Andrew mumbles something, and then the two of them glare at each other, and then he dips his head, smiles, and steers Sammy over to where they were before, the glove section.

“Good-bye!” she says. “And don’t come home later than you said, okay? We’ve got to stick to the schedule we agreed on, Andrew.” She turns to me. “Let’s get out of here. Do you mind?”

Sammy is giving me an imploring look. Me! Like I could help.

“Of course I don’t mind,” I say. And I smile at her son.

“Sorry that was awkward,” she says. “That man is constitutionally unable to stick to a plan, even if he’s the one who made it.”

“So I’m not the only one processing about an ex,” I say lightly, and am glad when she laughs.

“Gah! No, I’ll be processing this guy for the rest of my life if I’m not careful,” she says.

By the time we get back to Yolk—after threading our way down the street as she points out the best places for beers, for East Asian clothing, for jewelry, for hamburgers, for muffins, for coffee, for everything—it’s somehow become our turn to eat, and we snuggle into a tiny table near the back.

The waiter comes by, a hot-looking guy with a black knit cap and red plastic glasses, and I order a cheese omelet with bacon, coffee, and whole grain toast and grits, and she says she’ll have the same. As soon as he’s moved on, she says: “Okay. So we’ve established that we’re both dealing with exes who are in our faces right now, but I don’t really know the story of you and Noah. Before we get to be best friends, do you want to tell me what happened between you?”

So I haul out the usual story—the wedding, the honeymoon, the walkout, all of it minus the wedding gown dismantlement—and then a waitress comes by and puts two coffees down on the table, and I suddenly know that she has recently broken up with the waiter, and they’ve not been able to put things back together between them, but there’s a guy walking down the street who would be perfect for her. Maybe she should take off her apron and take a few minutes off to go run into him. She could make it look all casual-like. Or maybe the guy will come this way. He needs breakfast. He needs a hug. He needs her.

At the next table, a couple is falling in love. Outside, a golden retriever has run down the sidewalk and is licking the face of a toddler. A toddler who laughs and says, “Mommy, I want doggie!”

My head feels funny. It’s like there’s a golden light spreading over everything, like maple syrup poured on pancakes.

I look up and Jessica is smiling at me quizzically.

“Jessica,” I say. “You need to get back together with Andrew. You do know that, right?”





TWENTY-FOUR





MARNIE


The maple syrup haze stays with me. It’s like I’m moving in some sort of glow-filled fog. All the moments stand out somehow. Everything is brilliant and bright and etched in my brain like it will always stay in my memory. Even when Jessica laughs and assures me that she will not be getting back together with Andrew. No thank you, not now, not ever.

“He. Is. Sleeping. With. Someone. Else,” she informs me icily.

“But you match,” I tell her. “You both match. You don’t see that?”

She laughs. And then she pays the breakfast tab, and we walk back to the house—and along the way she says, “You and Blix with your get-back-together-with-Andrew talk! I’m beginning to see why she wanted you to have this house, so you could take up her song and dance about me and Andrew. Come on, tell me the truth. Did she put you up to this?”

“No,” I say and feel that dazed, shaky sensation again, like the air is wobbling.

“Well,” Jessica says. “I cannot forgive a man who’s been unfaithful! Sorry, but that is a deal breaker, pure and simple. Period. No excuses. No backsies.”

I try to remember exactly what Blix had said about all the people in her crazy little community. Certainly she mentioned Lola and Jessica. But she just said that all of them needed love, and all of them were fearful of embracing it.

But the thing is, I can almost feel her around me just now, feel her thinking that Jessica and Andrew are meant to be together. Maybe that’s what this hazy feeling is about.

“Listen,” I say, “one day I called her up when I was so miserable, when Noah left. And I asked her to do a spell to get us back together. I could tell she didn’t think it was a great idea. She said she’d send some words for me to have a good life, for energy, for love . . .”

“That’s because she probably didn’t think Noah was right for you. Also I can’t imagine her agreeing to manipulate somebody’s path that way.”

“And then—right after that, I lost my job, which sucked, but then I moved back home, and then I fell in love again with Jeremy, my old high school boyfriend. So! That was obviously the spell she sent, right?”