Chapter 3
Allison
I leaned back against the arm of the couch, balancing my laptop—and Bub—on my legs. I certainly wasn’t the poster girl for good office ergonomics, but I’d been at my desk for most of the morning, and now I just wanted to laze around in my yoga capris and feel comfortable. Because of how well Scintilla and the app were doing, Joshua had given everyone a half day off as a thank-you.
I, however, still wanted to work. He’d had to chase me from the office, telling me to go relax, and promising we could get together later.
Typing in my password to access the site, I clicked on Admin. A few keystrokes later, and I was eyeballing the various single men and women who had created profiles.
I started by looking for common interests. Not everything had to be the same, but a couple could maybe bond over their mutual passion for anime, or noir films, or birdwatching. If they had one thing to do together, it was a start. But once I’d found a few people interested in, say, anime, I’d next look at who might be a match based on personality types. It got tricky here, because not everyone took the same personality assessments. Also, maybe within the anime group, there wouldn’t be any matches. It could be that none of these anime enthusiasts would be compatible. I’d have to investigate other common interests for those people. It sounded tedious, but I loved it.
This wasn’t my job, but it was my favorite part of the company—bringing lonely people together. It reminded me why Scintilla existed. The matchmaking site had never been just an easy way to make income for Tolbert & Tolbert. It had been Joshua’s dream.
After staring at the anime lovers’ profiles for an hour or so, I came up with four matches. I notified each personally that they’d received Sparks. Congratulations—you have a Spark! Click here to send the first message and learn more about your match.
Now, it was up to them. Would they be brave enough to make contact? Would those contacted be brave enough to respond? I remembered when EdensNomad had first contacted me—the rush I’d felt, the flurry of indecision. And finally, how I’d been brave and answered his message.
One of the best decisions of my life.
My phone chimed next to me. It was Jess. Wow, it must’ve been the middle of the night in France. She’d gone back with Jeremy last week, since he’d lined up more fashion show spots for her.
“Alls!” She yelled so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“What on earth…?” I said. “Jess?”
“You’ll never guess where I am.”
“Paris, France.”
“No, my beautiful nerd friend, I am…well, yes. I’m in Paris. But more specifically, I am at the top of the Eiffel Tower.”
“Isn’t it midnight there?”
“Yes. It is. And the moon is shining brightly, reflecting off of my—”
She didn’t need to say it. My eyes filled with tears of happiness. But I let her finish the sentence.
“—my sparkly new engagement ring.”
We screamed together. “Congratulations, Jess!” I yelled. Bub jumped off of my lap, looking indignant. “This is so, so great!”
I could hear her crying on the other end of the line, which made me start crying, too. But we were also both laughing. Jeremy’s voice was in the background, sounding mildly alarmed as he asked her if she was okay.
“Congratulations, Jess,” I said. Bub came over and rubbed against my hand, so I scratched behind his ears. “Let’s talk more tomorrow. Get back to Jeremy before he takes you to the hospital or something.”
She giggled. “Thanks, Alls. You’re the best friend in the world. I had to tell you right away.”
“I’m so glad you did, and I’m so happy for you both. Wait, don’t hang up yet. Have you already talked about a date?”
“Yeah, and it’s soon,” she said. “And before you ask, no, I’m not pregnant.”
“Phew,” I said, exhaling loudly. I actually wouldn’t have thought that at all, because she’d always been fanatical about birth control, evangelizing everyone she knew…and sometimes even strangers. But still, if they were getting married really soon—she had to know how it would look.
She laughed. “It’s just that we have everything we need, and we want to be done with it. We’re going to do it in October.”
“Jess, that’s in, like two months!”
“I know. We want to do it before either of our moms can get too involved.”
“What about a dress? A caterer?”
“I found the perfect dress here—I’ve had my eye on it for weeks, hoping Jeremy would propose one of these days.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “He didn’t even know I’d picked it out. And if we can’t find a caterer, we’ll do a potluck or something. But we can always find someone. I’m going to ask Aunt June about using her B&B for the venue.”
“That would be gorgeous in October,” I said.
“I know! So, October. Keep the whole month free, okay?”
I smiled. Crazy Jess. “Okay, I will.”
“And you are, of course, my maid of honor.”
“You bet your ass I am.”
We hung up and I immediately got back on my computer to start researching venues for a bachelorette party. Jess wouldn’t want anything over the top. We were too old to do the whole strippers-jumping-out-of-a-cake thing. Maybe a really nice dinner with hot waiters, instead.
A text came in—a gorgeous image of a diamond ring on Jess’s fourth finger, with a landscape of city lights in the background. It was stunning. Tears came to my eyes again, tears of happiness for Jess and Jeremy. They were so in love, and now they would celebrate that love in a lasting way.
Despite my excitement for Jess, a twinge of sadness had started knocking around at the back of my mind. Marriage. A family. Were either of those things that Joshua would ever want? I loved him so much—would he ever want to settle down? I could see us together forever, but I wasn’t sure he felt the same way. And if he could see us together forever, would marriage even be a part of that, or were we too busy with our careers?
I’d given up on marriage before even starting my job at Scintilla. When my younger sister got married and started her family, I’d pretty much resigned myself to being an old maid. Not because I thought I was unattractive or incompatible with the male population, but I just didn’t think I’d meet the kind of guy who would sweep me off my feet like Joshua had.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed with missing him. I bookmarked a few restaurant sites to make some calls later for Jess’s party, and then I dialed Joshua’s number.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
His voice was soft and rumbly. It made me want to crawl into his lap and kiss his mouth. I felt heat gathering in my core as I remembered our mini make-out session in the elevator at work. His hands in my hair, his lips on my neck, trailing lower…
“Hey,” I said. “I was just sitting here, and I just started missing you all of a sudden. Are you free? Want to meet for coffee?”
“Yeah.” His smile was apparent in that one word. “I’ll meet you at Connie’s? When?”
“Half an hour?”
“I’ll be there.”