CHAPTER NINE
“If it doesn’t stop raining, I’m going to drown myself.”
I shot a glance to Aja sitting in the chair opposite my desk. Her normally flat-ironed hair fell in waves across her pale face, and for the last two weeks, she’d traded in her bright and sometimes tacky wardrobe for muted blacks and browns.
“I’m the one who got dumped. Remember?” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, then glanced back to she if she’d even noticed. She hadn’t. Just like she hadn’t noticed the stack of mail on her desk that needed sorting, or the emptiness of the container of coffee, which is the reason I’ve had to run to the corner shop for a cup twice a day.
“I know.” She dropped her chin to her palm and her elbow to the only clean corner of my desk. “But I’m the reason.”
She felt horrible about it; I got it. But even when I managed to get myself out of bed, dressed, and with a smile on my face before heading to work, she reminded me all over again how badly I should feel. “Tony is the reason.” I stood and walked to the coffee pot out of habit before I realized there wasn’t anything for me there but avoiding this conversation. “You didn’t leak the photos on purpose. I know that.”
Her forehead hit my desk, and honestly, I wanted to do the same thing, and have wanted to since I left the hotel two weeks ago with a broken heart, and the news I’d torn up our paycheck to explain to Gram. Boy, did she not take that well.
“I shared it with the one person other than you I thought I could trust. I should have known better.”
I picked up a napkin from the counter and headed back to my desk. Knowing where this conversation was going to end up, the napkin would come in handy sooner or later. At my desk, I moved my chair around to Aja’s side and sat next to her, paper napkin in hand, and waited for her to lift her head. Sure enough, streaks of black ran down from her eyes, though I wasn’t sure how, given she’d worn little to no make-up for the last several days.
“He was a jerk. You trusted your relationship enough to share a happy picture of a friend with him and he exploited you to the press. I’d say you dodged a bullet.”
“At your expense.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose so loud, the only other two journalists working on staff peered out from their cubicles, before pretending they’d seen nothing and ducked back in.
I handed her a tissue from the box beside my desk and patted her shoulder. “It’s Gram I’m really worried about. She’s taken this whole thing hard. Her first missed match in forty years.”
“It wasn’t really hers.” Aja’s eyes widened the second she said it.
I wrinkled up my nose, but forced a grin soon after. Aja felt bad enough without me pumping the guilt trip dry. “She hasn’t said as much, but judging by the way she sulked around the shop for the last week, I’m pretty sure she’s taking this one personally.”
Aja wiped her nose again and stuffed the tissue in her pants pocket. “I guess I should get some work done around here.” She stood. “Let me know if you need any help with Gram. It’s the least I can do.”
I smiled and nodded, though bringing Aja anywhere near Gram for the next six months or so wouldn’t be the best thing for either of them. “I’m having lunch with her today. I’ll let her know you said so. It might help.”
Aja stuffed her hands in her pockets and slinked more than walked back to her desk. I watched her sit and sigh before she flipped over the same notepad of to-dos she’d flipped though for the last several days.
I couldn’t take the gray feeling any longer. I saved the half an article I’d managed on the new proposed ordinance to extend the noise curfew for new bars and grabbed my coat.
Gram insisted on meeting me at the Golden Gondola, and as much as I hated the idea of eating there with Tony's memory from that night still so fresh, I agreed for her. I shuffled through the rain and the crowed hovering under the overhangs to avoid the bulk of the wetness, and pushed through the door to find Gram at a booth, which was two spots behind the one Tony and I sat in together just weeks before.
“I could have suggested a place closer to your shop.” I shook out my coat and hung it on the back of the booth before sitting. A mug of hot ginger tea already sat steaming on the table in front of me, and I cupped my hands around it for warmth. “You shouldn’t have come this far in this rain.”
“The rain I don’t mind,” Gram responded. She waved down the waitress and ordered two lasagnas with extra cheese on top and a basket of garlic knots. “Who cares if my garlic breath drives away the customers today?”
“The shop that slow?” I sipped from my mug, mostly to hide the quiver of my mouth when I thought about Gram suffering from my mistake.
“It’s the normal nasty weather lull. Nothing to get worked up over.”
“And no more matching calls?” I sipped again, but this time, the quiver caused some of the hot tea to dribble down my chin.
Gram handed over a paper napkin and tilted her face. “I’m not worried about the calls; they’ll come. We’ve gone longer than this even after successful matches.”
“And no one even knew about Tony’s arrangement, so there’s that.”
The waitress returned to refill Gram’s mug and I took the couple seconds of Gram’s distraction to breath through the building sob. Too late. She glanced over as I released the whimper and her brows fell into arched lines of worry. “You’re concerned about the shop, Liza?” She reached across the table. “The shop is fine and so is the matchmaking. Even if it wasn’t, I’m so close to retiring, it wouldn’t matter if I bumped it up a year to two.”
I clasped my hand around my mug again, ready to cover my mouth if the tears rolled down. “Something is worrying you, or you wouldn’t be such a mope around the shop.”
Gram patted my hand before pulling it back and sipping her own mug. I imagined to hide her own quivering lip. “I didn’t realize I’ve been that obvious.”
“Then you admit it?”
“I do.”
The waitress came and Gram stopped talking long enough for our food to be placed in front of us and until we were alone again.
“I made a mistake, Liza. I’m so sorry I kept it from you, but these things can be so delicate. I’ve been a matchmaker for forty-three years, since a day not long after my father died, and my mother sat me down and said we were going to make some extra income. I’ve never been wrong about a final match. Not once in all those years. Not until now.”
“You weren’t wrong.” I felt the heat cling to my cheeks. “Tony never made it through your list for one thing, and he never gave you the real things he wanted in a match.”
“I’m not talking about lists, Liza. There’s more to matchmaking than who you know. I’m talking about the feeling.”
“The feeling?”
“The buzz that radiates when you’re between two people who belong together. Haven’t you ever felt it?”
There had been times when I wasn’t really thinking about it when I’d felt something akin to a spark around a couple, though I’d never contributed it to anything other than the energy they threw off. “I guess I have.”
“And you’ve never felt that spark for anyone yourself? Only for those around you? Correct?”
I nodded my head, thinking back to every time I’d been near someone I’d had even the slightest crush on. “Yes, I guess so.”
Gram leaned in over the table as if she had the world's largest secret to share. “That’s the gift, Liza. Your mother had it, my mother had it, and now you too. It’s inherited daughter to daughter, as it’s been done for generations, long before recorded history.”
Matching wasn’t a real thing. I’d known it since the first time my mother claimed to have the gift. Especially since the only decent man she ever bought home convinced her I’d be better off without her. But if I dared say any of that to Gram, more so now that she’d been so low the last few weeks, I’d never hear the end of it.
“If matching is a family gift, why have we had generations of women who sucked at picking men?”
She leaned back from the table and angled her head just so. “You can’t feel the buzz for yourself, Liza. That’s the one drawback to matchmaking. But I felt it for you.”
My skin chilled and I stop stabbing my pasta and glanced up. “You felt it for me? When?”
“The night Prince Antonio walked in the shop. You two buzzed louder than a car alarm. Made my head hurt for days after, the attraction was so strong.”
“Was that the real reason you were in bed?”
“I wasn’t faking, honey. Though being out of commission did help get the two of you together. Even his cards said you were his match.”
I let my fork fall to my plate and put my napkin on the table, then thought back to that first night when she’d tucked his future card back in the deck. “He was my match?” I spoke slow and clear, as if trying to figure it all out while talking. “Tony. My match. And you didn’t tell me.”
“Would you have believed me if I did?”
I guess I wouldn’t have. I would have wanted to believe her, and for that reason alone, I wouldn’t have. “You could have tried.”
“If I’d told you, would it have changed anything?”
I let my head fall forward. “At least I would have known.” Tears burned the backs of my eyes and I let them come. Holding them back in front of Gram would only make her question me until I caved, and then I’d end up crying anyway. “Does he know?”
She clamped her hands together and rested her chin on them. “I thought I’d have time to tell him after he’d gotten to know you. I’d hoped it would come naturally between you two.” She leaned in a little and the light shone off the moisture on her lashes. “I know you don’t believe, Liza. I didn’t want you to dismiss Antonio because he was a match.”
“I wouldn’t have.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Sheepishly, I glanced back up. “At least, I hope I wouldn’t have.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “You could call him. He left a number at the shop.”
“No.” I smiled, though I felt no part of it other than the movement in my lips. “It goes deeper than that.”
“Oh.”
The rush of tears burned again. “I made a mistake too.”
Over two glasses of red wine, I filled her in on the impromptu date, the picture, and Aja’s innocent mistake. By the time we traded our pasta in for tiramisu and coffee, I’d given her every last detail up to the document Alifonso asked me to sign.
“What did Antonio say?”
I blinked. “He wasn’t there.”
Gram stiffened. “Then how do you know he agreed with the deal?”
I pulled in a deep breath and held back the rolling of emotions threatening to break inside me. “Because, he didn’t stay to tell me any different.”
Gram leaned back, leaving her spoon on the plate. “Then I did fail at making a match.”
She reached for her bag and scooted clear of the table before she turned back to me. “If you were truly a match, you never would have taken Alifonso’s word for it. You would have pushed until he allowed you to hear it from Antonio himself.”
She plopped a stack of bills on the table and walked out faster than I could stop her. The air of her disappointment lingered and broke down the wall I thought I’d created. The flood almost came before our waitress returned with the check and I sucked it all back in. I could break down at home. An ugly cry kind of breakdown. No doubt about it.