“That’s a conversation for you and your own therapist. And possibly your former conquests.”
Dammit. Allie hasn’t used that one on me before. “Why do you need a date to this thing so badly that you’d ask to borrow Nick in disguise?”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I need to get home and change before I’m late to my next appointment.”
“Cod Pieces?”
“Client. My job at Cod Pieces is complicated, and I’m not explaining it to you. I’m a matchmaker. I match muffs. And I need to get back to it.”
“Great. You’re hired.” What the hell am I doing?
“I choose my clients. I don’t pick you.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t fit what my clientele is looking for.”
“What are they looking for?”
“Matches to their misfitness.” She finally turns to face me again, and she gestures up and down my body. “You’re a highly-paid, naturally-gifted, attractive professional athlete who can carry on conversations about solar panels, DNA, and Shakespeare. You play Pokémon and watch Dr. Who, which puts you on the geeky side of a sliding scale of personality types, but considering your profession, it adds depth to your character rather than pigeonholing you. Also, you could probably make three phone calls and get a chance to hang out on the set of Dr. Who if you wanted to, which means you operate on a completely different plane of existence than my clients who might still live with their parents, have a stutter, lack fashion sense, or miss social cues. You don’t think the ideal woman exists because you don’t want to settle down, and if you did think the ideal woman existed, she’d probably be a size two, love to run through the mountains with you on a spring morning, spend the afternoon drinking kombucha at a coffee shop while you debate if Wayne Gretzky or Stan Lee would be a better dream dinner companion, and then go to a baseball game in the evening as much to be seen and support fellow professional athletes as because you want to actually watch the game. Also, she’d give the best blow jobs, she wouldn’t mind trying butt stuff, and she’d appreciate when you make her breakfast in bed but probably never tell you that your scrambled eggs are too runny for her taste, because she’s so grateful you’d lift a finger to try. Sound about right?”
Not all of it, but too much of it. I do like my eggs runny. “I’m not a superficial asshole who only cares about size. And my sister Staci used to stutter, and my sister Keely has the worst-smelling feet of anyone you’ve ever met, but I still love them both. I’m not surrounded by perfection. I’m real as fuck.”
I don’t add that I fucked her too—her being Muffy, not one of my sisters—and she’s not anything like the perfect puck bunnies she described—who don’t exist, by the way—because she’d probably throw back that since I don’t want forever, I’m not all that picky.
And she’d be correct.
She nods. “You’re right. You have everything together.”
“Exactly.”
“So you have no reason to need to be my fake date to a fu—few things, and no reason to sign up for Muff Matchers’ services.”
“And that’s exactly why I’d be your perfect date. We screwed. You ghosted me. We have zero future romantically. No one will mistake me for one of your clients. And we can still be friends. I’m hot as balls and every other woman there will be jealous you have me on your arm.” What am I saying?
What the hell am I saying?
And why is Muffy looking at me like she’s a squirrel and there’s a garbage truck barreling down the road at her and she doesn’t know if she should go left or right, but she knows she’ll get squished if she doesn’t decide?
She makes a vague gesture with her arm that might be I’m trying to distract you or it might be some kind of weird help signal and she’s hoping Kami’s watching from the window to come save her.
Seriously, it reminds me of my sister Brit’s Who shall rescue me from this wanker? gesture that she created after my sister Staci set her up with a friend’s brother and no one realized he’d made it his life’s mission to be the world’s grossest photographer.
You don’t want to know. Trust me.
Muffy blinks twice, sucks in a loud breath, and then nods. “Okay. Great. I’ll text you the details.”
“Do you still have my number?”
She mumbles something that might be a yes or a no. I can’t decide.
“No problem. I still have yours.” I whip my phone out and text her, and her phone audibly dings in her pocket.
So she didn’t change her number.
That’s good.
“Anything else I need to know before we do this?” Other than that I’ll have a few hours alone in a car with her to convince her to tell me exactly what it was I did wrong so that I can figure out how to fix my broken dick?
“Don’t you have practice on Monday?”
“I’ll get out of it. We can leave right after morning skate on Sunday.”
Her squinty doubtful face tells me she knows it’ll be an uphill battle for me to convince Coach to let me out of practice.
And that almost has me smiling.
I do like a good challenge.
“Great.” She doesn’t sound like it’s great. “I have to go. Thank you. It’s very kind of you to come with me to Veda’s thing. Dixie! Tyler has treats! Get Tyler!”
Kami’s cocker spaniel takes a running leap to dive at my crotch while Muffy weaves around the other two dogs and heads back to the house. I oof and try to calm the dog down, watching Muffy’s hips swing the whole time.
She’s infuriating and fascinating and perplexing.
And I want to be done with her, but the truth is, I don’t think I can.
Not when I think I need her to help me solve my little problem.
7
Muffy
It takes me longer to get ready for my meeting and then my shift than it should, because I’m hyperventilating about taking Tyler with me to Veda’s dad’s funeral.
On the one hand, we’ve hung out off and on for a year, he’s seen me naked—kind of, I mean, since it was sort of dark in the fridge—and we’ve screwed, which means faking intimacy shouldn’t be difficult.
On the other, despite my assertion to him that I didn’t want to hear from him, he ghosted me.
The sex was ho-hum. Whatever. It happens, right? Doesn’t mean it would’ve always been ho-hum.
But he didn’t call.
He didn’t text.
He didn’t use the contact me form on my website, which I know he knows about, to drop me an email.
He didn’t ask about me. If he had, Nick would’ve told Kami, who would’ve told me. I mentioned the kind part, right? Kami doesn’t press, but she does have eyeballs, and if she thought I wanted to hang out with Tyler and he wanted to hang out with me, she would’ve mentioned if he talked about me.
She didn’t.
Which means he didn’t.
I might’ve claimed I ghosted him, but that was my wounded pride talking.
Better to be the one who walked away, right?
And now, I’ll probably have to tell him why I left med school, because other people who know—or at least strongly suspect some vague version of the truth—will almost certainly be there, and while I seriously doubt any of them spend any time thinking about me on a regular day, I don’t know if any of us will be able to look at each other without me thinking about why they’re practicing doctors now and I’m not.