Match Me If You Can, page 5
Any idiot with half a brain would know why I’m mad, and Caleb is as far from an idiot as it gets. How dare he pretend to be one? That’s my brand.
He stops on the sidewalk to face me. “Why are you mad?”
“I’m not.” The words fly out of my mouth automatically.
He gives me a look. “I think we both know that’s a lie.”
“Do we?”
“Want me to walk you back through a timeline of evidence to help jog your memory?”
“I’d rather you offer me a bribe instead.”
He gives me a faintly amused but mostly exasperated gaze. Even as a kid, I used humor as a shield. Joking was my armor against things that made me uncomfortable or sad. Nothing could be so terrible as long as I found a way to laugh about it. Even if it was usually in my own head.
“Ashira—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“I take Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, Apple Cash—”
“How is it possible to have the appearance of a grown adult and yet be stuck in a child’s state of mind?”
I gaze at him innocently. “I’m just trying to help.” But the truth is that I can’t let him in. I can’t allow myself to be vulnerable with the man who crushed my spirit all those years ago. I refuse.
“You know what?” he says, continuing to walk. “I’m just about crazy enough to offer you money if you promise to stop joking and take this conversation seriously for two minutes.”
The problem, I realize, is that I want to let him in. I miss Caleb. I miss our friendship. And it terrifies me.
“It doesn’t have to be money, per se,” I reply. “I’m not that mercenary. It could be a designer handbag of my choosing. Or a cute pair of boots.”
“You don’t say,” he drawls.
“Oh, but I do.” I nod. “Just the other day, I found the most adorable secondhand pair of Louboutins on eBay, and in surprisingly fantastic condition—”
“If I had to choose,” he cuts in, “I’d rather talk about the weather.”
“They’re knee-length and shiny, black patent leather. Now, they are stilettos, which do of course require attention to detail as to where you’re stepping. If you’re not vigilant, you can find yourself stuck in sidewalk cracks or sinking into grass, so you have to really know what you’re doing in order to—”
“Tinsel,” he exhales slowly. “You and I were close once. Remember?”
I can’t bring myself to respond, but at least I refrain from yapping on about the boots. Baby steps.
He glances at me. “I made sure you did your homework and ate your vegetables.”
“Still traumatized from that.”
“—I made sure to keep you safe—”
“—No one asked you to—”
“—You were like a little sister to me—”
“—I’ll have to take your word for it—”
“—I would’ve taken a bullet for you—”
“You dying would’ve been an easier pill to swallow than disappearing out of nowhere,” I say hotly, my repressed emotions rising to the surface. My mouth drops open, shocked by the words that flew out. Caleb looks equally stunned.
Yet now that I’ve started, I seem unable to stop. “You disappeared overnight, you abandoned me—”
His head rears back as if I had slapped him. “It wasn’t like that—”
“It was exactly like that.”
“I wrote you a letter—”
“Oh, yes.” I laugh and pick up the pace. “The letter that explained your abandonment. How kind of you. It made you slightly better than my father.”
“You don’t mean that,” he says horrified, stopping on the sidewalk.
“Of course I mean it,” I reply hotly. “Did it not occur to you that you left just like my father had?”
He sucks in a sharp breath. “I didn’t leave remotely like that jackass did—”
“Yes, you did!” I’m so revved up that I don’t realize my voice is raised until I notice people staring.
“Then you obviously have amnesia,” he retorts, also raising his voice, “so let me remind you of a few facts.”
“My memory is fine, thank you.”
He looks like he’s debating a few options, none of which end well for me. “Fact number one,” he says in a low, even-tempered voice, “every time I tried calling that first year, you refused to come to the phone.”
“You weren’t calling to speak to me, you were calling for Zevi,” I say, reliving the hurt. I resume walking, and so does he. “I was an afterthought. A chore. Your personal charity project that you could do to pat yourself on the back.”
“Why would you think that? You’ve never been any of those things to me,” he says, eyes flashing at me in anger. “Never.”
“Never?”
“Never,” he repeats. “Not even when you started a fire in my parents’ kitchen and I took the blame for it.”
“Well, that was kind of your fault,” I feel the need to point out. “Who leaves a seven-year-old in a kitchen with the stovetop on?”
“I had to pee, and I expressly told you not to touch anything.”
“And you thought I’d listen?” I make a psshh sound and shake my head.
“You were never any of those things. Not even when you called Aviva and told her I had a crush on her,” Caleb continues.
“You’re welcome, by the way. It worked out for you, didn’t it?” Aviva was his first official girlfriend, and he brought her to the house on several occasions. I always felt a smug sort of pride knowing that I played a role in bringing them together. A born matchmaker, my mother had called me.
“Why did you guys break up, anyway?” I ask.
“It was so long ago.” He shrugs. “I can’t remember.”
“I wish you had talked with me first. I’ve saved a lot of couples from splitting up.”
“I have no doubt that you’re excellent at your job now, Tinsel, but since you were twelve at the time—”
“Convenient excuse,” I sniff.
“It is, isn’t it? Fact number two,” he continues brusquely, “I wrote to you. Both email and paper mail. I even included stickers,” he adds. “Do you think it was easy to leave the barracks when you’re in pain from all the physical ass-kicking to then drive around until you find a store that sells bunny stickers? Do you know how rare bunny stickers are?”
I pause. I hadn’t known that there were stickers in his letters because I threw them in the trash without opening them. My heart softens. And bunny stickers, no less. I did have a thing for collecting those.
And yet, I’ve held on to this resentment for almost two decades. I’m not ready to forgive his abandonment that easily.
“Not even around Easter?”
“Fine, yes, one month out of the year, Tinsel. Good point.” He casts me a disparaging glance.
“I’m just saying, you could’ve bought in bulk.”
He mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Or you could’ve bought dog stickers,” I remark. “I liked those too.” But his glower prompts me to put up my hands and mumble, “Sorry, sorry. And thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He gives a stiff nod. “Fact number three, I came to see you on my first visit home, and what did you do?”
“I think it’s supposed to be cloudy tomorrow,” I say, desperately trying to change the subject.
“You opened your bedroom door and tried to beat me with an iron hanger. I still have a scar in fact.”
I look at him horrified. “You do?”
He starts unzipping his jacket. “I’ll show you.”
“No, don’t!” I glance around, panicked. “I believe you. Just . . . Please keep your clothes on. And I’m sorry about that. I really am.”
He gives a brief nod of acknowledgement, then continues. “Fact number four, it was Zevi’s idea not to tell you ahead of time. He said you’d be sad and try to change my mind, and that you’d get over it faster as long as I sent you stickers and candy.”
“Wait—” I pause on the sidewalk and shake my head. “It was Zevi’s idea?”
He nods. “Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
The wall I built slowly starts to chip. I’m beginning to realize that my perception of the past is misconstrued where Caleb is concerned. Maybe I had been reliving the pain of my father’s abandonment and taking it out on Caleb. I was seven years old when he left and never sorted out my emotions. My mother was too much of a wreck herself and was just trying to survive on a day-to-day basis, and Leah and Zevi were in no shape to help me.
The only advice I got came from my paternal grandmother. Someone quite odd and definitely not all there. “You know my trick?” she said to me after she found me crying in my room one day. “I take all the bad feelings, pack them in a suitcase, and store them in the attic!”
“What attic?” I said confused.
“This one,” she said, tapping the side of her head. “And then you lock it up—” she mimed it as she spoke— “And throw away the key,” she finished, pretending to fling a key over her shoulder. Then she spread her hands wide and trilled, “Taaaah daaaah!”
I know now that this wasn’t the healthiest advice. But I took it anyway, and discovered that life was easier when you lived on autopilot. Existing without feeling helped me survive the hardest years of my life. Now, at twenty-eight years old, I find myself unwilling to open that attic door. I’m not a fan of pain.
“You actually sent me candy?” I say, clearing my throat.
“A green Laffy Taffy with every letter.”
“My favorite.” I smile sadly. “Such a waste.”
He turns to me abruptly. “Didn’t you get my letters?”
“Uhm. Yes.” I nod. “But also . . . no?”
“Explain the ‘no’ part.”
“I threw them out without opening them.” His eyes narrow and I rush to add, “But if I could go back in time, I definitely would. Actually,” I joke, tilting my head, “it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway since I hadn’t evolved yet to accept bribes.”
He mutters something unintelligible under his breath and I bite back a smile.
“And you should’ve known better than to listen to Zevi,” I say, sidestepping a questionable substance on the sidewalk. “He avoids confrontations like they’re a life-threatening disease. This is the guy who was going to marry a woman just to avoid telling my mother that he’s gay.”
Caleb chuckles. “Yeah, that was dumb of me.”
We walk in silence for a while, both lost in our thoughts. I hadn’t realized how much he cared. I didn’t know that in my effort to protect my heart, I hurt his. And if I were to be completely honest, I wasn’t being fair to him. He had just turned eighteen and was just a kid himself, trying to live his truth. My resentment slowly melts away and it feels surprisingly good too. I feel lighter somehow.
But.
Forgiving someone is very different to trusting them, I remind myself. And even though I understand the past in a new light, there’s no taking back the fact that he still left. He still signed up for a lifestyle where he’d be absent from my life, aside for a few weeks a year. He still left the Orthodox way of life. It’s hard to trust someone who one day picks up and becomes a different person.
Who’s to say that he wouldn’t do it again? Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have a midlife crisis and abandon his wife and kids to chase some childhood dream of becoming a rockstar? After all, the biggest predictor of the future is the past.
“Looking back,” Caleb says, breaking into my thoughts, “I think I was afraid that I’d take one look at your sad face and crumble.”
I blow out a long breath. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time. And,” I add, swallowing against a sudden lump in my throat, “you’re not like my father.”
He looks equal parts hopeful and suspicious. “Do you mean that?”
I nod. Mostly, anyway. “And you don’t have to buy me the boots.”
He laughs and shakes his head as we continue walking. “I’ll get them anyway.”
“Well, luckily for you,” I say, with a teasing smile, “I do accept peace offerings.”
“That is lucky.” His eyes dance with humor. “So,” he pauses and casts me a glance, “are we good?”
“We’re good.” I smile. I can talk about other things besides the weather with him now. I just need to remember to keep my heart at a safe distance, that’s all. That way, if he disappears again and moves across the country, or even the world, it won’t be a catastrophe. It’ll just be a bummer. Like that twinge of irritation when you realize you left something important at home, but know that it’s not the biggest deal.
“Good.” I nod. “So now that we’ve got that out of the way,” I say. “Tell me what you’re looking for in a wife.”
“Right. The thing is,” he pauses and runs his hand through his thick hair, “there’s one more catch.”
Chapter Six
I groan. I knew it. “What?”
He puts his hands in his pockets and stares into the distance. “It’s no secret that you’re an attractive woman.”
I’m so caught off guard that I almost walk into a streetlight. What the— I tilt my head and stare at him. Is he hitting on me?
“If you weren’t Orthodox, you’d probably be on some runway in Paris. Or on a magazine cover.”
OMG. He’s definitely hitting on me. I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Except it’s not funny because now I have to say no, and now it’s going to be even more awkward to be his matchmaker.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, and without my consent, my mind generates a series of images. Caleb pinning me in place with his eyes. Caleb gently placing his lips over mine. Caleb’s tongue slipping into my mouth and—
I shudder.
From disgust. Yes, definitely from disgust.
“So when I tell you that your diet and lifestyle concern me,” Caleb continues, completely oblivious to where my mind had been, “it has nothing to do with how you look, but everything to do with your health. Because being gorgeous on the outside doesn’t mean you can’t still wind up getting sick. Like your mom,” he adds quietly.
I blink. I know I heard the word gorgeous, but it was sandwiched in the most confusing way. I shake my head. “What?”
“I’m not saying that your mom got sick because of her lifestyle, I don’t want you to think that. All I’m saying is it couldn’t hurt to do everything possible to live cleanly.”
I shake my head again. There’s so much to unpack here. He thinks I’m gorgeous and that I have an unhealthy lifestyle, and that my mom might’ve died because she was the same way?
And what does living cleanly mean, anyway? I suppose it’s too much to hope that he’s referring to hygiene.
“So, I thought we could make a deal,” he says.
I glance at him wearily. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll hire you as my matchmaker, as long as you take on some healthier habits.”
My eyebrows shoot up. I don’t like the sound of that at all. “Like what?”
“We’ll start slow—”
There’s that pronoun again. “What do you mean we?”
“I’ll be your support buddy and health coach.” He catches the look on my face and adds, “Stop panicking, Tinsel. It’s not that bad. I do this all the time, you know.”
“Oh really? How many other matchmakers have you tried to blackmail?”
“This isn’t blackmail.”
“Well, it’s something,” I mutter.
“I volunteer for an organization that helps rehabilitate wounded veterans,” he says. “If they can do it, you can do it.”
“That is such a false comparison, and an insult to soldiers everywhere,” I say, to which he laughs.
“It’s a fair trade. I’ll hire you as my matchmaker and in return, you’ll get health lessons. As a matter of fact,” he says, eyes lighting up, “there’s a marathon coming up in five months that I was planning on doing. It’s to help raise money for heart disease research in women.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. “Is that because of . . .”
“Your mother,” he finishes with a nod. “Zevi was supposed to run it with me, but he dropped out of training. Too busy working on getting his latest project off the ground. I think it’s some kind of reality dating show.”
I nod. Reality dating shows are all the rage nowadays, and Zevi tends to skip the gym when he’s making a pilot to pitch to all the major networks.
“Why don’t you join me instead?”
My head abruptly swings in his direction. “Pardon?”
“The time frame isn’t ideal,” he continues, unaware of my growing dread. “Training should ideally start six months in advance for a beginner. But you’re not one to back down from a challenge, right?”
“Only because no one’s challenged me to run twenty-six miles before,” I say. The very idea of it makes me feel ill. “I definitely don’t mind turning this challenge down.”
“I get it.” He nods.
Whew. “I’m so glad—”
“Just like I don’t mind saying no to a bunch of blind dates.”
I gaze at him in horror. Uuugh. This man. And just when he was starting to get on my good side, too.
“That isn’t—you—” I’m so upset that I can’t get out a full sentence.
“I just thought of a way to make this even more interesting.”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “It’s plenty interesting enough as it is.”
“We could have our own race, and see who accomplishes their goal first If I get engaged before the five months are up, I win, and you win if you run the marathon before I’m engaged. It’s basically a win either way for you,” he adds.
He’s evil. He knows I can’t walk away from something that has the word win attached.
So,” he smiles, resting his shoe on one of the front steps, “do we have a deal?”
I cross my arms. All frustrations aside, this might be exactly what I need to get my health back on track. There have been times when I forced myself to exercise and eat things like walnuts and berries instead of donuts and chocolate milk, but I’ve never stayed consistent.
