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"I'm low on trust?" Jon asks and looks to Marina for an answer.
"Oh, yes," Marina says and takes the questionnaire summary back. "According to my questionnaire, you're afraid of being hurt so you only date – and I say ‘date’ loosely – women who are not interested in relationships. Who only are interested in fun and excitement."
"When did you do this?" I ask, taking the questionnaire from Jon's hands and reading it over once more.
Marina smiles. "When we began work on the app. We had the first run at our algorithm and I had you both do the test questionnaire. Remember that first one? It matched the two of you up from all the other candidates we had in the system. All the other iterations of the questionnaire have been just getting the technical bugs out of the app's algorithms. The questionnaire has been the same all along."
"What about the bad dates you fixed Jon and me up with?" I ask.
"Yeah," Jon says. "They were like every other woman I would normally date, but none of them were serious matches for me. I wouldn't consider any of them as commitment material."
"They were the worst matches for both of you, but ones that you both would have chosen yourselves," Marina says to me, her expression pointed. "Jon wasn’t into commitment so he looks for women who aren’t into it either. He knows you are, so he picks women who are not like you. The two of you have been dancing around each other for five years because neither of you were ready."
"Why didn't you just tell us?"
"You wouldn't have gone for it. You wouldn't have believed it because you had both convinced yourself you weren't the right match for each other. You thought he was superficial and glib about relationships, and he thought you were too serious. I had to force you each to see how good the other person really is by putting you with someone who really is wrong for you."
She smiles, the biggest smile I've seen on her face for a long time.
"You manipulative little…" I say, at a loss for an appropriate insult that also shows how impressed I am, but I can't think of one. "All these years you've been pushing us apart!"
"No, I haven't. When you and Jon first became friends, I thought you two would get together. But you both held off, giving all these excuses why. I knew neither of you were ready. I merely parroted back all the arguments you were already making and they were enough to keep you from committing to each other."
"You never once said you thought we should be together. Ever."
"If those arguments could keep you apart, neither of you were ready," she said. "But I knew. When I developed the questionnaire and saw the results, I knew it was real, but your fear of commitment meant you had to learn to trust each other. The only way to do that was to force you two to face up to your feelings."
"You are so conniving…"
"It worked." She smiles.
"All this time, I've wanted to talk to you about Jon, but I was afraid you'd shoot me down," I say.
"You had to grow a backbone and realize it was more important to be happy with Jon than be on good terms with me. I can take it. Besides," she says and takes a sip of her coffee, smiling like the Cheshire Cat, "I'm damn good at this."
I can't help but smile back at her. Beside me, Jon is shaking his head in amazement.
"You are. Here I thought MATCHED was a flop. We were so confused, wondering why you matched Jon and me with such bad dates."
"Nothing helps clue you in to a perfect match like a bad one. You remember my latest matches for you both? They got together at the party and are very happy together now. They were perfect matches for each other but terrible matches for you guys."
She winks at me, grinning at the two of us like she owns the world.
"Genius," Jon says.
I sit and think about everything for a moment while the waitress takes our orders.
"So? Are you happy?" Marina asks when the waitress leaves. She looks between us, her smile huge.
Jon and I hold up our cups of coffee. "Very happy." Jon bends down and kisses me and I kiss him back, cupping his face with my hand. It feels good to be able to show him affection in front of everyone.
I no longer care what anyone thinks. The only people who matter are Jon and me.
"Good," Marina says and holds up her coffee cup. "My work here is done."
Chapter 22
JON
