“How’s your job going?” I ask Phoebe. “Any word on the promotion?”
“Not yet, but I should hear soon.”
“You’ve got this,” Julie tells her.
“They’d be stupid to pass you over,” Maren agrees.
We spend the next hour talking jobs and friends and family and dates, offering encouragement and support to each other, with me taking various notes in my master Muff Matchers notebook, and steering the conversation when necessary, but it’s not really necessary.
These women lift each other up all on their own, and they help each other feel deserving all on their own too.
I know I could do the same for each of them, but this way, they get extra friends, and they don’t have to worry I’m only telling them what they want to hear because they’re paying me.
In theory.
I don’t actually see payment until I make a match.
Possibly I should rethink that, but it’s the fee structure that lets me sleep at night.
Phoebe’s phone alarm goes off shortly after two. “Gah. Bridesmaid dress fitting.”
Maren, Alina, and Eugenie groan.
“Prospects for a date?” Maren asks her.
They all look at me.
I smile brightly like I have as much confidence in me as they do. “Want me to find you a good-enough date?”
And that’s when it hits me.
I know what I need to do to survive going back to Richmond.
I need to take a super hot, athletic, rich date.
There’s not much time between our late lunch and my next appointment, but when the ladies leave, I hop in my car and point it toward a house that is not my own.
It’s a lovely Victorian in a private neighborhood with large mansions on huge lots, populated with smart, successful, occasionally famous residents who donate more money to charity every month than I usually see in a year.
In other words, it’s not a neighborhood where I fit in.
But it’s where Kami lives, and she’s my favorite cousin in the entire universe, and she’d still be my favorite cousin even if we weren’t related.
There are three things you need to know about Kami.
One, she’s this adorable, brown-haired, brown-eyed, kind, sweet, smart, petite-ish, big-hearted animal lover.
Two, she’s been in love with Nick Murphy, her best friend’s older brother, basically since high school, and she pulled a total baller move last year that had him crawling on his hands and knees begging her to love him for like a month, which is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
And three, she has the cutest baby on the entire planet.
Naturally.
Despite Nick being the baby’s daddy.
I pull my car to a stop in front of the house that Nick bought her as his final please take me back gesture, which I can’t be mad at him for, since the house came with room for their pet cow-dog, and he got lucky in that Kami’s always wanted to live in a Victorian mansion and that was the kind of house for sale when he needed a few acres for farm animals too.
Long story.
There’s an Escalade parked in the driveway, which means Ares Berger is probably here as well, but it’s not a big deal. Ares doesn’t talk, so he won’t repeat anything he’s about to overhear.
And it’s time for me to spill my guts to Kami.
Some of them, anyway.
I bang on the front door, hear a subtle moooo in the backyard, and take that as the cow-dog giving me permission to go in.
And would you look at that?
The door’s unlocked.
“Kami?” I whisper-shriek, in case the baby’s sleeping.
“Muffy?” comes my cousin’s louder reply from the living room.
I bolt for the sound of her voice. “Kami! Kami, I need Nick.”
She’s still in her scrubs from work—she’s a vet, naturally—as she rises from the rocking chair, baby cradled in her arms, like she just finished feeding him. “You…need Nick?”
It’s a strange request. I get it. If I had a leaky toilet or I needed something off a high shelf, Nick wouldn’t be my first choice. Ever.
Not because he’s not tall or capable—he is—but I have a stepladder. Also, never trust Nick Murphy around a toilet. It’s a rule.
Which means I wouldn’t trust Nick for other home repairs either. Or most anything else.
Nick, the dark-haired, green-eyed, prank-pulling goaltender for the Thrusters, pokes his head in from the dining room. He’s eyeing me like I’m an alien being who shouldn’t be trusted around his wife and baby, which is probably fair. He nods, still wary. “Muffy.”
“I need a fake date to a thing on Monday morning. Can you glue on a super thick villain mustache, use a fake earring, wear color-changing contacts, and answer to Renaldo for a day?”
He blinks once at me, slides a look to Kami, and disappears again.
So I turn back to my cousin, who’s now eyeballing me like I have finally gone off the deep end.
For the record, I once set her up on a date with an octogenarian criminal—yes, yes, the same one my mother was having breakfast with this morning who Heimliched my boobs—so it does actually take a lot for her to think I’ve lost my marbles.
“Please?” I drop to my knees and clasp my hands. “Please talk him into being my fake date. I won’t kiss him, I won’t touch him except to possibly take his elbow since that’s something a date would do, and I won’t talk on the drive there or back since I know it would annoy him. I’ll even spring for his hotel room Sunday night since it…doesn’t make sense…to drive in Monday morning. I only need him to make me look good. Like I’m not a total disaster.”
“Muffy, you’re not—”
“I live with my mother, my matchmaking business is improving but it’s called Muff Matchers, and we all know there’s only so good it can get after that. I have student loans that the authorities will probably ask your kids to repay for me someday, and I also found a really weird mole behind my knee this morning that had me freaking out until I showered and it came off because it was a smudge of ketchup. Ask me the last time I had ketchup. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know when I had it or how it got under my pants. I am the very definition of a total disaster. And I cannot go to this fu—thing with these people who already saw me at my very worst without looking like a million bucks, and the only way to look like a million bucks is to stand in its shadow, so please. I need Nick. For one day.”
Kami bounces in place and pats the baby’s bottom while she frowns at me, the back of her head reflected in the mirror over the mantle, also bouncing, and I swear her ponytail is frowning at me too. “You’re going back to Blackwell.”
The name of my medical school makes me cringe, but I push on. “Veda asked me. She has this…ceremony thing…and she asked me to be there to support her. I owe her everything.” I know. I know. A funeral isn’t a ceremony thing, but if I tell Nick I need him to be my fake date to a funeral, he won’t go.
This is even worse than asking someone to be a fake date to a wedding.
At least at a wedding, you get cake and it’s okay to gossip about other people’s drama, which is why I’m willing to help clients find maybe not the perfect guy, but a good enough guy to take to one. At a funeral, it’s like all hushed whispers and you can only say nice things. It’s a rule.