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My new bartender friend looks wholesome today. The long sleeves of the waffle shirt she’s wearing under her Shelter Volunteer t-shirt cover up her tattoos, and she has her hair in a long braid.
“He, actually. Max. He’s looking for his forever home.”
“Aw, I wish I could help, but I’m heading home to Mass soon and I can’t take a kitten with me.” The statement slips through my lips before I have a chance to filter it.
If I’d been a little more on it, I wouldn’t say anything about adopting or not adopting the cat, personally. Because all that involves a future. A future where I’m not in Pines Peak. A future where I’m in Cambridge, steering a company toward international success—with or without funding from Mitch Manning. I’m seriously screwing up the assignment he gave me.
Not only that, but the assignment he gave me is screwing with me. I’m starting to doubt my own matchmaking process.
“You sure about that? I bet he’d love to see what city living is all about,” Delilah suggests.
I know she’s trying to be helpful and friendly. But right now, me going back to the city is a sore subject that I’d rather not talk about.
Parker joins us and scratches the kitten’s head.
“My apartment lease allows for one pet only,” I say. The little kitten seals his eyes closed and dissolves into mini-purrs. The sound is so faint, compared to the lawnmower type noises my grown cat makes. I run the tip of my finger over the downy soft fur between Max’s ears.
“Any luck finding your ring?” Delilah asks.
I swallow. The ring is another subject that nags me, painfully, like a blister getting bigger with each passing day. Every time I think about it, I think about my great-grandmother and her long marriage with my great-grandfather.
Seventy years.
To me, that’s what love’sreallyabout. Not flashy romance, hot dates and wobbly knees; grand gestures, roses, or diamonds.
Real love is functional. Mundane. It’s about finding a life partner who will weather storms with you. Make you tea if you’re sick. Drive you to the dentist. Not get bored, when they wake up next to you for the ten-thousandth time.
My great-grandmother wore that bent spoon around her finger for seventy years as a symbol of her love for the husband she accepted and treasured. She and my great grandfather grew old together, and that’s what I want, too.
Someone to grow old with.
A couple times this week I’ve comethis closeto talking to Parker about what the ring really means to me.
But this thing between us just started up again. I can’t dump all this stuff about marriage on himnow. We’re only getting to know each other again. I’d be crazy to talk to him about whether or not we could grow old together.
And besides, I ran our numbers.
I know Parker’s Right Match profile isn’t perfect, because I filled it out myself, and it’s incomplete. But the fact that we only scored 81% together worries me.
According to my own Right Match system, that’s not a green light for marriage.
I know I’m nuts to be thinking about this stuff—but that’s me.
Nutty, control-freak Gemma.
I pass the sleepy, tiny kitten back to Delilah carefully, aware that Parker’s studying my expression.
“Everything okay?” he asks, as we walk, hand in hand away from the booth.
“Fine.”
“Nah. I don’t believe that. What’s eating you? You’ve been quiet since we left the school.”
In my purse, my phone rings.Whew.
I pull it out and see that it’s Claire Holt. This is the third time she’s called this hour, so it must be urgent.
“I should take this,” I tell Parker, as I swipe the screen and lift it to my ear.
