And if I’m going to hyperventilate before we make it through the doors to the funeral parlor for the viewing, much less to the graveside services the next day, Tyler deserves to know why.
But, since I’m running late, this is a problem for tomorrow.
Or Sunday.
Sort of like booking two hotel rooms is also a problem for tomorrow.
So I finish getting dressed, call to Mom that I’m heading out to dinner and a party with friends, and I take off to attempt to succeed at my dream job.
I mean, the dream job I found after I gave up the dream of being a surgeon. And let’s be honest here, does anyone who knows me think I could’ve actually been a surgeon?
Surgeons have their lives together.
I don’t.
Plus, Dr. Muffy Periwinkle?
Please.
No one would’ve come to me for anything anyway, except possibly to inspect their stuffed animals’ upset tummies after a tea party.
My therapist says the name is what you make it, not what makes you, but I wouldn’t have hired me. And now I’m filling a niche need in the world for special people who don’t know what they’re worth, even if it’s a struggle, and even if I’ve had to get creative in finding potential dates for my all-female clientele. I have a purpose. It’s not in physically fixing people’s hearts, but in emotionally fixing people’s hearts.
I call Veda on my drive to check in and see how she’s doing and reiterate my promise to be there on Sunday, which I have to do over voicemail since she doesn’t pick up.
Not surprising.
She’s planning a sudden funeral for her father, whom everyone thought would live to be at least two hundred years old, after he came down with salmonella poisoning. And I’m pretty sure she has complicated feelings about all of it.
She and her dad weren’t all that tight since he refused to accept that she’s bisexual and always thought she should be working harder and succeeding faster than anyone else, but publicly, she was his pride and joy for following in his footsteps. We bonded over mutual father issues.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
My client arrives at our meeting mere seconds before me, which I know because I pull into the parking lot at Cod Pieces in time to see her walking through the door.
Fingers crossed that my instincts are spot-on with wanting to introduce her to D’Angelo. Since I started here two weeks ago, I’ve had a lot of time to talk to him, and if ever there was a good candidate for Muff Matchers’ first male client, it’s D’Angelo. People are forever asking him if he plays basketball since he’s a tall Black guy, but he has as much interest in team sports as an armadillo has in fashion. His parents enrolled him in tae kwon do classes when he was ten to try to help smooth out his klutziness, and he’s here at Copper Valley University with an undeclared major and a serious love of all things Star Wars. Also, he’s a few years older than his fellow freshmen, since he worked at the family business while his grandpa was sick instead of enrolling straight into college after high school.
This match is my best chance at making a match without having to stretch into questionable territory for digging up male prospects.
I toss a Thrusters hoodie over my Cod Pieces polo and grab my messenger bag, which has a Muff Matchers new client box inside it, and I scurry into the dining room.
Lauren, the day manager, waves at me and taps her watch with her eyebrows raised in question. I point to a table and mouth I’ll wait and I have a meeting at the same time, which is most likely impossible to interpret, since I think I actually mouthed I’ll meet a waiting, which makes zero sense.
But since she’s a client and the reason I’m here, she speaks Muffy well enough.
She’s an engineering student in her third year at CVU, and she only works here as a manager because she’s worked here so long that she makes more than she would filing papers for the admissions office. The night manager quit unexpectedly while Lauren and I were having a meeting about potential prospects, and since I worked at a Cod Pieces in high school, it was easy to offer to help her out for a few nights.
And honestly? Making a little extra cash isn’t a bad thing. This job might be the only reason I make my student loan payments this month, hence why I’m not asking her if she’s found a replacement for me yet.
And fish and chips four nights a week?
I’m possibly here for this.
Okay, I’m definitely here for this.
Just like Tyler was last night.
Also, now I’m thinking about him again.
I’ll be your date, Muffy.
Why?
Why the hell would he do that?
Better question—who else can I find to take to the funeral so I can let him off the hook?
And why do I keep picturing Tyler stepping between me and my former classmates and professors, or whispering something in my ear that makes me laugh, or offering to bench press the casket when someone else’s date tries to prove he’s stronger than my hockey-playing, Aristotle-spouting, Pokémon-loving, one-night date?
Tyler would totally do that.
I’ve seen him.
Granted, he was being spurred on by his teammates and had had enough alcohol to flatten a non-hockey-playing person, plus, it was a fake casket at a Halloween party, but he did it.
Also?
He’s a professional hockey player with a super famous, billionaire party girl sister-in-law. Tyler’s in the gossip pages a lot. Everyone will know who he is. There’ll be zero doubt that I have an actual hottie by my side, and we do know each other well enough to sell the idea that we’re dating.
My client interrupts my internal musings by setting a powder-blue Cod Pieces tray on the table between us, and I pretend I don’t want to lean over and inhale the amazing scent.
You’d think a year of working here in high school would’ve ruined fried fish.
Nope.
Still love it.
I paste on a bright smile. “Hi, Brianna. Thanks for meeting me here.”
She’s twenty-five, also a freshman on campus with an undeclared major after recently leaving the Army, and worried she’s too stubborn and not feminine enough to find a man.
We could literally be besties, but it probably wouldn’t be healthy for either of us to continue to stew in our lack of direction in life.
Not that I’m lacking a direction.
I’m simply lacking actual skill at any direction I’ve tried, until a recent string of small victories with Muff Matchers that were entirely more difficult than they should’ve been.
Brianna sits, bends, and sniffs deeply over her fish, which is wrapped in foil stamped with Sir Pollock, the Knight Fryer, the franchise’s well-known cod mascot. “Oh, baby, come to mama. I missed you while I had to fit into a uniform.”
Confession: I slept with Tyler Jaeger because he looked at me the way Brianna is looking at her fish.
And not just once.
The looking part, I mean. Not the sleeping part.
Every time I saw him from the time Kami hooked up with Nick a year ago until Tyler and I got together at that secret club, he would look at me like he wanted to lick me from head to toe. And then he’d talk to me.
Hey, Muffy, had any cognitive stimulation lately?
You play Pokémon Go? Trade you Pokéballs.
Muffy, need your opinion. Does this shirt make my arm muscles look too big?