I should have said no. I should have thanked him for the tea and left and figured out my own problems like a functional adult.
But my phone was buzzing. And outside, somewhere, Greg was probably asking innocent bystanders about 8-track players. And this grumpy, sad, inexplicably soothing stranger was offering me the only peace I’d found since this whole nightmare started.
“I might take you up on that,” I said.
“I might regret offering.”
“Probably.” I moved toward the door, and the buzzing crescendoed. Paused at the threshold. “Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For not asking too many questions.”
Something flickered across his face—not quite a smile, but a softening. “You looked like you’d had enough questions for one day.”
“For one lifetime.”
I stepped into the main room. The phone exploded with notifications—962, 978, 1,003—and the music box started playing again, something that sounded almost mournful. Thetaxidermied owl’s head was definitely in a different position than before.
“Your owl moved,” I called back.
“He does that.”
“You said he didn’t!”
“I said usually.”
I laughed again, despite everything. Stepped outside into the chaos of notifications and the October sun and a world that had apparently decided my love life was a multiverse-spanning emergency.
1,047 matches. 1,089. The numbers climbed like a fever.
But I knew where the quiet was now. I knew where I could go to make it stop.
Tomorrow, I’d come back. I’d sit in that cramped back room with the grumpy antique dealer and his opinionated radio and drink tea and pretend this was all going to work out somehow.
The phone buzzed. 1,124. A new message:Someone special is waiting for you!
I shoved it in my pocket and started walking back toward my apartment, where my best friend was probably still explaining smartphones to time-displaced men and a disco enthusiast was asking about 8-track players.
Somewhere behind me, I heard a burst of jazz from the antique shop. The radio, apparently, was feeling celebratory.
I walked faster.
3
THE MATCHMAKER’S INHERITANCE
WHERE I DISCOVER MY FAMILY TREE HAS ROOTS IN ROMANTIC CHAOS.
By the time I made it back to my apartment, the lawn had been cleared.
No Jimmy Kowalski. No Greg from the disco era. No greaser asking about sock hops. No Brad in his neon crop top. Just Cassie sitting on my porch steps, looking exhausted, and Liam leaning against the railing with the expression of a man who had seen too much and needed whisky.
“They aren’t here?” I asked, slightly breathless from speed-walking six blocks while my phone vibrated like an angry beehive in my pocket.
“They can’t get through,” Cassie said, seeing my expression. “Margaret put up a ward. They’ve been circling the block looking confused.”
As if on cue, I spotted Greg across the street, peering at my building like it had personally offended him. He waved when he saw me.
