Failure to Match: Chapter 7

If I had a sleep paralysis demon, it would have Jackson Sinclair’s eyes.

That was the loudest thought running through my head as he glared at me from across the living room, jaw tense like he was biting back how badly he wanted to tell me to get the fuck out of his house.

Physical demeanor in professional settings: abysmal.

“That’s about everything you should expect from week one,” I continue, undeterred. It wasn’t like any of this was surprising. I’d had rock-bottom expectations for him, and he was simply delivering. “I’ll be acting as your shadow, collecting data that will be used to find someone whose daily habits and lifestyle are compatible with yours. I suggest going about your day exactly as you normally would, pretending like I’m not there.”

The more I talked, the more rigid and resentful Jackson’s demeanor became. Until there were two separate veins popping out of his forehead and multiple muscles worming through his jaw.

It was a delightful sight to behold. Truly.

I hadn’t felt this much job satisfaction and accomplishment in months—eight and a half of them, to be exact.

“That will take us to week two.” My tone was unabashedly reflective of the fluffy delight his rage evoked in me, and we both knew it. “Which will be when we start your coaching.”

His fists were white. “I don’t need coaching.”

“Oh, you definitely need coaching,” I said without hesitation. “I can say with absolute confidence that if anyone needs a dating coach, Mr. Sinclair, it’s you. That’s my professional opinion, speaking from direct personal experience.”

His glare was seething, but I didn’t care.

He’d asked me if I was hard of hearing and gotten my name wrong in the same sentence, for fuck’s sake. And the date had only gotten worse from there. I mean, I was pretty certain he’d been trying to sabotage it, but still. As the wise old karmic saying went: fuck around and find out.

“The coaching will be personalized to fit your specific needs,” I continued, “covering all your major weaknesses, as determined by my evaluations.” Which, in Jackson’s case, was pretty much everything other than his physical presentation and attire. “However, if there are any specific areas you’d like for us to put additional focus on, please let me know.”

Jackson’s eyes flicked down to his wristwatch, his foot tapping once. Sadly for him, we still had seventeen allotted minutes left for our meeting and I didn’t plan on ending it even a second early.

After all, I knew how much Mr. Sinclair loved punctuality. He always arrived on his dates exactly on time and ended them the nanosecond the hour was up. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Charmed had a sixty-minute first-impression requirement, which, again, had been put in place to ensure that our carefully selected pairings actually gave each other a fair shot.

“The focus for weeks three and four will depend on how the first two go. I’ll still be gathering data, though likely at a reduced scale at this stage, especially since I won’t be shadowing you at work anymore. If your coaching has gone well, we can move on to discreetly monitored dates. This time around, however, your partners will be selected based on my gathered data in addition to what we discuss during our sit-down interviews, a schedule for which has already been sent to your team. Our interviews will be held outside of regular office hours so they don’t overlap with any other meetings you may have, and you will be expected to attend them all yourself. I don’t accept subs.”

That was the gist of it. I had all the main points covered. Good thing I had absolutely no shortage of relevant topics to talk at him about until the hour was over and he cut me off.

So that was exactly what I did—wasted his time like he’d wasted so much of mine.

I talked and talked until the skin under his eye twitched, and I could see him silently counting down the seconds until three, two—he shot to his feet a half-second before the big hand hit twelve and walked out of the room while I was smack in the middle of my sentence.

I rolled my lips, suppressing a smile as I picked up my phone again.

Abysmal.

Manners. Attitude. Body language.

All of it.

All of him.

Abysmal.

“I’m sorry, you’re where right now? Doing what?”

I wiggled deeper into the stack of pillows propped up against the bedframe and almost purred. It was like being hugged by a puffy cloud.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me right now, Jamie,” Ria snapped, glaring at me through the painfully bright screen of my phone. It was incredibly sunny where she was—some island off the coast of… a country, either in Europe or Africa. I honestly couldn’t keep track anymore, and not just because I was perpetually exhausted. All I knew was that they had internet access for the first time in almost two weeks.

“Sorry.” My eyes were watering with the effort it took to stifle my yawn. “This bed is insanely comfortable, and I didn’t sleep very well last night. Nerves and stuff.”

I’d also stayed up way too late, going over my highlighted notes from my two weeks of training with Vivian. The material hadn’t been difficult, there’d just been a lot of it.

“You can sleep after you tell me what happened,” Ria insisted. “Because the last time you and I talked, you were burnt the fuck out and on the brink of a legit emotional breakdown over this man’s bullshit. Yes or no?”

“Correct,” I confirmed. She’d threatened to fly back to Toronto in the middle of that conversation. It’d taken me almost an hour to convince her that canceling the rest of her honeymoon was a massive overreaction and completely unnecessary. Even though, selfishly, I missed her enough to almost want to allow it. Almost.

But I couldn’t do that to her or her husband. Poor Adrien had been understanding enough as it was. The day Ria moved out, we’d cried so much that he’d felt the need to triple-check and make sure it was actually what she wanted. Then he’d offered me a permanent room in his penthouse, where I could leave all my stuff and stay over whenever I felt like it.

That was what had finally gotten us to calm the hell down. And you could just see the relief in his body language when her tears had slowed. He was so painfully in love with her that sometimes watching them interact was like looking directly at the sun.

They reminded me of my parents.

And that was all I’d ever wanted, you know? Ever since I was a little kid. That pure, blinding happiness that comes with finding your person. If I really thought about it, that was probably why I got into matchmaking in the first place. I fucking loved love, and what could be more fulfilling than helping… people… find…

“…Jamie!”

“Mmm?”

“You’re dozing off!”

I forced my eyelids back open. It was not easy.

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Jackson Sinclair. The Immersive. Explain.”

Ugh. It was such a long story, though. And I was so sleepy. It was half-past eleven and Toebeans was already curled up beside me, snoring softly.

I let out a heavy sigh. “Can it wait until we’re back in the same time zone so we can talk about it over a bottle of wine? I’m dying and Satan-clair’s day starts at, like, five in the morning.”

She was disappointed. I knew she was disappointed because her eyes flicked away from me right away, the one corner of her mouth dipping.

I couldn’t blame her. I’d been so busy with this stupid file and her internet access was so annoyingly shit, that we’d only had one or two conversations last longer than fifteen minutes in a month. The worst part? The majority of what we talked about was how I was still struggling. That’s how much space I’d allowed my job and one stupid client to take up in my life.

The anger and resentment rooted in the pit of my chest flared again, making my mouth taste bitter.

“I’m sorry, Ree.” I swallowed back the raw emotion kicking at my throat. “I know this was supposed to be our catch-up session, I just…”

“It’s okay,” she said with a sigh. “The time zone thing is a bitch and none of these stupid islands have any Wi-Fi. It’s supposed to be on purpose, for guests to disconnect and yada yada yada, mental health. It’s not your fault.”

I adjusted my feet under the duvet, tucking one behind the other. “Right, but I’ve also just been so exhausted that… I mean, even at your wedding⁠—”

“None of that,” she said. “I don’t want to hear another apology over it. I already said it was okay.”

Was it okay though? Because falling asleep at your best friend’s wedding reception felt very much like it stepped into not okay territory.

It was only for a minute, and it happened while I was waiting for her on the couch just outside the bathroom, but still. It felt very, extremely not okay to me.

I’d almost cried when she’d gently nudged me awake and offered to take me upstairs to my hotel room so I could get some rest. Even thinking about it now made me feel like shit.

“I’ll make it up to you,” I promised. “When you’re back, I’ll make up for all the… for how I’ve been over the last eight months.”

The Immersive would be over before Ria and Adrien were back, and I was going to quit my job at Charmed as soon as I received the second half of my bonus. And then I’d make it up to her.

To my parents.

To myself.

Ria pressed her lips together, shaking her head once. “We’ll talk about this when I get home. You’re doing that thing where you’re being unreasonably hard on yourself, and I have thoughts.”

I huffed a little laugh. Of course she did. If nothing else, Ria had thoughts. Always, and about everything. And I couldn’t fucking wait to hear them. Right after I finished exacting my revenge on Jackson Sinclair.

She was going to be so proud of me, bloodthirsty as she was.