Page 14 of Never Let Go

7

FOSTER

Getting ready for my second date—Hope’s pick this time—I was on the phone with Kane, wondering out loud why I was even going on another date. “I mean, date number one was an unmitigated disaster. I really thought Hope had something to do with it, but she blacked out the girl’s real names and any other identifying particulars and then she showed me the results. A ninety-three-percent match. It’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe you did bail too early.”

“Dude, she wanted me to ask the chair’s permission before I sat down on it and she doesn’t believe in the concept of work. I didn’t bail too early. Maybe we had some stuff in common to have gotten such a good score, but the foundations just weren’t there.”

He sighed. “Well, I hope you ordered a sandwich or something this time so that you don’t end up wearing your entree again. That’d already make it easier. Although if you want a date, go to a bar. I really don’t understand why you’re putting yourself through this.”

“I’m putting myself through this because I don’t want to go to a bar to get a date. I want a date with the woman who’s handling my grandfather’s estate, but that’s not going to happen and this is a great distraction. Plus, I think it’ll help my clients if I have a little better insight into their experiences with the program going forward.”

He laughed. “Ask out the girl you want to ask out, and if your clients ever ask if you’ve been through this, you can already say yes. You went on a date, didn’t you?”

I looked at myself in the mirror mounted behind my bedroom door and decided the jeans and black long-sleeved shirt was more than good enough for a woman who wouldn’t even be seeing me. “Okay, well, I’ve got to get going or I’m going to be the one who’s twenty minutes late this time.”

“Good luck.” He chortled. “Hey, you never know. Maybe Hope is better at setting this sort of thing up than Porter. You could be on the way to meet the love of your life right now.”

I laughed dryly. “I doubt it. Most of the matchmaking is the computer anyway, and if Dana Dubois was what the computer spat out for me, then I don’t have much hope. I’ll call you after.”

Kane wished me luck again and I hung up. Groaning, I dropped my eyes back and take a good, long look at the brownish ceiling tile above my head. Over the years that I’d been working for Sight Unseen, I’d seen so many happy couples who wound up tying the knot.

I didn’t know why I was so negative about a process I knew worked, but I just was. Right now, as I stood here, I just didn’t feel like I was ever going to be one half of a happy couple. I’d never been lucky in love, and Milena was a genius, but she wasn’t a magician.

She couldn’t just make the right girl appear out of thin air, and honestly, even if she could, I didn’t know if I’d be able to stop thinking about Shelby for long enough to actually realize that the girl she’d produced was the one.

That blast from the past had knocked me off kilter and things just weren’t righting themselves the way I’d thought they would. Maybe it was because all of this felt too familiar, and maybe that was because I’d been here before.

Not exactly here, but after Shelby had moved into the honor’s dorm and I’d realized I liked her but didn’t stand a chance, I’d tried to distract myself with other women back then too. I’d figured I had a thing for a junior and that it would pass if I just kept putting myself out there, but it never had.

There was something about her that had always gotten to me in a place no one else had ever quite managed to reach. The thing about Shelby was that she was beautiful, but in that understated, effortless way. She was genuine and soft spoken. She was smart and witty, but she never rubbed it in anyone’s face that she’d managed to figure out work that should’ve been above her level way before they did. She also never made jokes at other people’s expense, and while she’d been something of a wallflower at times, she’d never been a shrinking violet.

Shelby had always stood tall and quietly proud, she’d been shy but not painfully so, and it was more like she just hadn’t found her people rather than that she wasn’t mingling because she felt like she was better than anyone else.

I blew out a heavy breath and shook my head at myself. I was being ridiculous. All of that had been a dozen fucking years ago and I hadn’t even really known who she was back then. I sure as shit couldn’t claim that I knew who she was now.

More than that, she was in charge of settling my grandfather’s estate. She was a professional and that meant that even if she had remembered me, she wouldn’t have gone out with me anyway. None of which mattered because she didn’t remember me, so it was a moot point.

Determined to give date number two a real chance and to stop obsessively thinking about a woman I’d never even really known, I headed out. The date was at a different restaurant this time, but the setup was much the same.

A pitch-black greenhouse in the garden that smelled like flowers but that I couldn’t see anything in. The waiter that took me there grinned when I introduced myself as Tyler Smith. “Your date has just arrived, sir.”

I was tempted to ask him if she’d seemed high, but I kept my mouth shut. Not only did I know that everyone who worked for the businesses we’d now entered into partnerships with had signed agreements not to reveal any information about the dates, but I also didn’t want to ruin it for myself.

All things being fair, I was just another client and I couldn’t try to use my position at the company to cheat the process. Once I was seated at the table in the greenhouse, the waiter stuck a wine glass in my hand. “Enjoy your drinks. I’ll be back with your meal in a few.”

As soon as he was gone, a tentative, pleasant voice spoke up from the other side of the table. “Tyler, right? I’m Mindy. Mindy Walker.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mindy Walker,” I said, relieved that at least she sounded normal. “I’m not going to lie to you, my first date didn’t go so well. Have you been on any others?”

She chuckled nervously. “One, but it didn’t go so well either. What do you do for a living, Tyler Smith?”

“I’m in tech. You?”

“Tech, huh? Well, that’s not going to make it easy to try to look you up after this. I’m in the publishing business.”

I smiled. “That’s not going to make it easy either, but I guess that’s why they keep the jobs and industries we work in vague.”