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“You have wonderful children,” Becky says to John. “They’re so smart and polite…”
“Oh, they are in public. Wait till they get home. That’s when the pumpkin carriage expires and they turn back into the gremlins they really are,” John laughs. “How did you enjoy the food? Caballero’s makes the best pork sausage I’ve ever had…”
“Agreed,” I reply, enjoying some of the soda water to wash down the chorizo spiciness of the main course. “I loved the food. How about you, honey?”
“Oh, definitely,” Becky says, her voice soft and sweet. It’s like she means every word, and I’m not sure she’s even a good actress. It stirs me, deep inside. “I haven’t enjoyed much Spanish cuisine, truth be told, even though we live… well, here, in this marvelous city. Granted, there’s always a Mexican plate on the menu at home—Elliot is a huge fan of the beans—but original Spanish dishes? Not so much.”
“I like this place” John says. “They bring some of their meats directly from Spain. You know, they’ve got a jamón ibérico that’s worth about three grand on their special menu. One evening, we should bring the wives here to try their original recipe sangria. It’s incredible. It’ll get you hooked!”
He’s warming up to us, I can tell. Becky has been sharp and incredibly cool at the same time. I think she’s better at this than she originally thought, although I find her regular self-doubt particularly adorable. This woman could reshape entire geographies if she set her mind to it. I’m amazed she’s only made it as far as a graphic designer within HeartMatch, but I know raising Elliot on her own hasn’t exactly allowed for greater professional strides.
“I’ll go for that jamón and a glass of tangy red anytime,” I say, leaning back into my chair.
John eyes us both carefully, half-smiling. “So, you two met on HeartMatch, huh? The beta version… How’d that happen, exactly?”
“Oh, I can tell you all about that,” I reply, but just as I’m about to, he politely raises a hand to silence me and nods at Becky, instead.
“I would love to hear it from Becky.”
The temperature dips all of a sudden. Becky giggles nervously, briefly looking to see how Tamara is handling Elliot. Everything seems in order, and the kid is definitely enjoying Tamara and Sunny’s attention, while the boys keep kicking the water from the pool’s edge to get each other wet.
“That’s okay,” Becky whispers my way, then gives John a gentle smile. It’s been her signature move so far, and it seems to be working—I’m definitely melting, and I’m pretty sure it’s getting to John, too. “I was in between jobs as a graphic designer, actually. I was doing okay, but I needed some extra cash, and I saw this job posting on a message board at one point… this guy from HeartMatch, at the time a new dating platform that was supposed to be better than what was already on the market… This guy was looking for women from my demographic to set up some profiles and literally test the phone app.”
“And you signed up,” John replies.
“I did. Like I said, I needed the money. It wasn’t much, but it would keep me above the redline for a couple of weeks while I scheduled some interviews,” she continues, faithfully following the script we’d both worked on. “So, I went ahead and signed up. I fiddled with the profile settings and tested the algorithms as best as I could. I liked the interface, it was easy to use, but they needed some better designs for the features pages, not to mention the actual profiles… The beta version was crude, to say the least. It just so happened that right about the same time, HeartMatch was also hiring, so one of their offers made it into my search results. I applied, and next thing I know, I’m scheduled for an interview.”
“Look at that. Serendipity,” John says.
I watch her closely, amazed by how cool she is, how smoothly she recounts something that never happened. She’s making it sound like something I would’ve wanted with all my heart to have actually lived through.
“You can say that, yeah. That weekend just before the interview, I matched with Todd Connors here,” she giggles, prompting John to laugh as well. “I had no idea who he was, mind you. It didn’t say anywhere in his profile about him being the big kahuna of HeartMatch or anything. But I did like what I saw on there, you know? Hot-looking guy, debonair smile, big baby blues… like, come on…”
“Yeah, Tamara likes him, too,” John shoots back with a cold grin.
“You’re gonna make me blush,” I quip.
Becky laughs. “We talked for hours, you know. The whole weekend. On Sunday he called me. We were on the phone for eight hours.”
“Whoa,” John gasps.
“Exactly—eight whole hours,” she replies. “We talked about everything. About him, about me, about the future, about the app, about what life was about for us at the time. And he didn’t tell me who he was, mind you.”
“But we met during one of the interviews, a couple of weeks later,” I laugh. “Remember the look on your face, babe?”
“Myface? You should’ve seenyours!” Becky says. “Christmas had come early, and Santa had caught you with your pants down or something. I wasn’t sure whether you were exhilarated or morbidly horrified…”
John is watching us with renewed interest. “You two really love each other, don’t you?”
“You sound surprised,” I reply.
“You’ve barely touched her,” he says.
And it hits both Becky and me at the same time. He’s right. We’ve been talking and laughing and acting comfortably around one another because we’ve practiced for weeks before. The dinners, the lunches, the coffees, the many playdates with Elliot. We’ve got the familiarity part down all right. But the intimacy of a couple in love… well, damn, we never got that close.
It’s an awkward moment because there is absolutely no excuse for the physical distance. Becky is frozen, staring at me blankly like a deer caught in the headlights. I can’t think of anything to do other than to reach out and pull her in for a kiss. It happens fast—so fast, in fact, that she doesn’t even register what’s happening until our lips meet. Hers are soft and sweet and quick to part for me.
I groan subtly as she instantly surrenders, and I taste her slowly and deliberately. It’s a short kiss, but it means everything to me. It completely disarms her, too. She’s blushing and breathless as I inch back and give John a half-smile. “We’ve been trying to keep things polite, John. Usually, we can’t keep our hands off each other for too long,” I say.
