“It means I don’t have to worry about you getting involved with him. Avery is a good guy most of the time, but when it comes to women, I’ve seen him be downright mean, and I don’t want that to happen to you, because I would have to kill him.”
“Mean?” I had to ask, because Des was a sensitive girl.
Des shrugged. “Well, maybe not mean, but like he just doesn’t care that much. Avery turns the charm all the way up to get these women into his bed, keeps them around for a few weeks, then he acts as if they don’t exist. We’ve been out to dinner before, and a girl he dated came up to talk to him and he just blew her off. I wanted to stab him with a fork for being so rude to her, so imagine if that had been you. So yeah, like I said, glad you’re married.”
I averted my eyes as she continued. I felt a little guilty for not correcting her, but this wasn’t the time for my little divorce revelation. It was her wedding day, and I really didn’t want to hear any I-told-you-so chastening from her. “Can you believe it, Tori? An hour from now we’ll both be married women! We can have married lady lunches, and married lady shopping trips, and take couples vacations if Rafael is down with that, an—”
“Des, you haven’t named one thing that doesn’t sound God-awful. What the hell is a ‘married lady lunch’?”
“Girl, I don’t know, I’m just excited! I really can’t thank you enough for bringing Drew and I together. We wouldn’t even know each other if it weren’t for you!”
Humph. I would think she had forgotten, the way she acts like the queen of good decisions.
Drew had been one of my harder customers to match even though on the surface, he should have been easy. Sweet, handsome, tall, fit, rich, and smart, his qualities read like one of those lists I received from clients way too often, as if those were really the things that would make a relationship work. None of his great attributes could cover up the fact that when it came to women, Drew was painfully awkward, and it presented itself as an incessant need to talk.
One day, in the middle of a conference call to coach him through that quirk — which was making him seem self-centered, and scaring away his matches — Desiree burst into my office in her usual bubbly fashion, gushing about the office space she’d found for her lingerie boutique. While I wondered why Des needed to come all the way from Chicago to Dallas to tell me about it, Drew caught a glimpse of her through the video monitor. For once, he was speechless, enthralled by my gorgeous, mahogany-skinned friend. I shooed her out of the office, but Drew insisted on meeting Desiree. They hit it off, and now, two years later, they were getting married.
I charged a pretty penny for my services, but I had an impressive record to back up my rates. Of course, not every relationship worked out, because there was no way to account for every single quirk and nuance that came along with humanity. In the six years since I’d gone into business, it wasn’t often that I received the sad news that a couple had broken up, but good reports were frequent. I loved to hear about couples moving cross-country to be together, buying houses, and having babies, but the words I loved to hear most were “Please come to our wedding”, which is what brought me to the Maldives for Drew and Desiree’s wedding. Client’s weddings always felt like a perfect stamp of approval, the confirmation I needed that I was doing something that mattered.
“I should be thanking you,” I joked with Des. “Drew probably would have fired me if you hadn’t agreed to go out with him.”
“He wouldn’t have!”
I sucked my teeth. “Girl please! You didn’t see the way he was begging me to introduce you two. ‘Tori, please, she’s so fine. Is that her hair? Is that her real ass? Please, Tori, you have to let me meet her!’ I can’t believe you’re marrying a man that begs,” I teased.