“I don’t know,” I say, keeping my voice light. “I’m kind of being greedy keeping you to myself for now. Once we open those doors—we shall never be able to close them again.” I’m trying to be funny, but he frowns slightly.
“Well, I don’t really plan on closing those doors, do you?” He has his hands held up in front of him, not wanting to contaminate anything with his raw-chicken-juice fingers.
“No, it’s not that,” I say, feeling like I messed this up somehow. “It’s just…I likethis. And my family, I love them, but they’re a lot.”
He washes his hands and dries them on the checked towel tossed over his shoulder. Then he walks over to me, bracing his hands on either side of me on the counter. He ducks down to look directly at me with those serious brown eyes of his. “I grew up with a tiny family and have always wanted to know what it was like to be in one like yours—spanning generations and cultures. I’m not scared.”
It melts me from the inside out. “Of course. I’ll plan it, okay?”
He kisses the tip of my nose. “I’m looking forward to it.”
As I set the table, my phone blows up. A string of texts. It’s the interns.
omfg Gemma Flores posted about O&O!!!
I immediately tap the link to the post. It’s a video of Gemma and Peter walking on a sidewalk, his arm around her shoulders as shesmiles radiantly at the camera. There’s dreamy music playing and the text over the video says, “POV: You find your true love via ancient matchmaking methods.” In the caption, she tags the One & Only account.
The post already has more than twenty thousand likes and hundreds of comments:
@friendorimagine being matched with gemma fucking flores?????
@spideydaddybrb going to one & only
@tcmcYOU need a matchmaker?? Not me dying alone
@wednesdaycakeDROP THE MATCHMAKING DEETS
I check One & Only’s account and find that we’ve more than quadrupled our 1,900 followers in the half hour since Gemma posted. We now have nearlyeight thousandfollowers. In thirty minutes.
“Holy shit.”
Daniel comes over to see what I’m looking at. “What?”
I hold the phone out to him. “Gemma posted about us, and we’ve gone viral.”
He scrolls through, his eyebrows shooting up. “This is incredible!”
“Right?” I can’t stop smiling. “Oh, I’m so happy for her.”
“Happy for her? Happy foryou!” Daniel exclaims. “Cass, you’ve gotta capitalize on this ASAP. This is great for your company!”
He’s right, but in the moment I can’t absorb it. “Okay, but how?”
Dinner’s forgotten as Daniel clears the table and brings his laptop out to help me brainstorm leveraging this viral moment into a new marketing campaign. He’s a machine, and I’m impressed by how quickly his brain works. By the end of the night, the chicken is left cold, but we’ve come up with some ideas for social media posts and advertisements based on Gemma’s endorsements.
And then, on a late-July afternoon, Daniel asks if I will attend a wedding with him—a wedding for one of his employees. We haven’t talked about Ellis in weeks, since our first date, actually. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about him. And so, I pause when I get the email from Daniel. It has a link to a wedding website for Max, the young Latino guy with the paint-splattered pants who I remember from Joshua Tree. He’s marrying a man named Curtis at the Madonna Inn—a wonderfully kitschy hotel up the central coast. We’ve had a couple of our clients marry there in the past, so I am very familiar with it.
In the email, he apologizes for the last-minute ask—it’s in two weeks—but he says he forgot it was on his calendar for months until today and he’d love for me to go with him.
So, not only is this going to be our first weekend trip together, it will be with Ellis. I assume he’s going, anyway. I feel the pressure of it bubble inside of me before I twist my jade bracelet around my wrist. My anxiety dissipates with the assurance of the cold band on my skin. It reminds me of my gift, of who Daniel is to me.
Sounds great,I reply.Should I get Betty stuffed and take her as a purse?Daniel and I have a running joke that we’re going to hire a hit on her, since the first night he slept over she shat on his Wales Bonner sneakers.
I try not to remember how much Betty liked Ellis. I need to give him a heads-up before the wedding. It’s the right thing to do. It’ll also give him an opportunity to duck out of it if he wants to,although that makes me feel shitty. My phone still in my hands, I start texting him:Hey Ellis. Daniel asked me to go to Max’s wedding. I wanted to make sure that was okay with you first?
I stare at the text and feel lightheaded at the thought of sending it. It also feels weirdly passive-aggressive. I delete and try a new one:Sorry for the rando text lol but just thought you should know I’ll be at Max’s wedding.I can hear the interns’ “cringe.” Delete, delete.Hi Ellis, I hope you’re doing well—
Omg delete. Finally I draft:Hey, just wanted to give you fair warning that I’ll be at Max’s wedding.It’s the right text but I just can’t hit send.
