Page 6 of The Match Faker
“Also, why?”
With a defeated sigh, I dive into how pride and shame, in equal parts, got me into this mess.
She passes me a new bag of ketchup chips, unsullied by floor. “It’s going to be okay,” she says firmly. “We’re going to fix this.”
We’re not. We’re absolutely not. There’s no way I’ll find a man I want to date in just a couple weeks and convince him to be my boyfriend. Oh, and also get him to lie about how long we’ve been together.
“I have to quit my job,” I say into the bag of chips. There’s chip dust on my fingers and the bag is lighter than when Jade set it in my hand, but I don’t even remember eating them.
That’s a lie. I can’t quit my job. I can’t run away from this hole I’ve dug for myself. If I could up and quit like that, then I’d have never walked into work on Mitchell’s birthday. I would have saved myself the embarrassment. Even though there’s no solution to this, it feels better just being here, telling my sister everything. With her, the incessant need for perfection doesn’t drag me around by the teeth.
“Noooooo. We’ll find someone. Let’s comb through Instagram and see who’s lookin’ good.” She shimmies on the couch, snapping her fingers to some beat in her head.
I’d rather pull out my eyelashes one by one than use social media to find a boyfriend. I only go on Instagram to periodically update my sewing account. My timeline is a singular reminder of everyone else’s personal and professional success—PhDs and MBAs, entrepreneurships, first homes, renovations, even secondary properties, travel, weddings, promotions—and a stark contrast to the lack of my own.
The last vacation I went on was to Disney World before our father left our mother to start a new family with a younger woman. And the idea of purchasing a home in Toronto’s astronomical market is more tragedy than comedy, even though I’ve been good with my money. I’ve stayed in this tiny Annex apartment far longer than I should. I’d planned to leave once Jade graduated and I was married, but who knows if that will ever happen.
Whether it does or not, I don’t need a front row seat to all my high school friends’ achievements in the meantime.
Besides, I sank all my finances into Jade’s education, and I don’t regret a cent of it.
The only thing that doesn’t bother me about social media is the babies. I’ve done my best work raising Jade. Plus, who needs kids when you’re attracted to men.
“No way. Then I’d be no different than those creeps who slide into women’s DMs with dick pics and sugar daddy propositions. Don’t you know someone you could set me up with?” Anxiety swelling, I crumple the chip bag.
She makes a sound of protest, lifting the bag gingerly from my hands and flattening it back out. “My psychology professor is very sweet.”
For a moment I’m hopeful. I met one of her profs last year and he made tweed look like a truly luxury fabric.
“But he’s like sixty. And married. And he tucks his shirts into his underpants so you can always see his Jockeys.”
I glare. She winces.
“The Jockeys are old, too.”
With a huff, I drop my head into my hands. I don’t want to do all this again, thethisof meeting someone new, learning about them, what makes them happy and what doesn’t. It’s exhausting figuring out a person, what they need and what I need to do to be enough for them.
“Is it still cool to say FML?” I whine.
She pats my back. “It was never cool.” Her smile is bright. “But I’ve been thinking about the men you date.”
I groan into my hands. Not this again. The men I date are never good enough for her, regardless of how charming or successful they are. That’s easy for her to say when she barely dates, and when she does it’s definitely not cis men.
“Just listen, okay? You give all of yourself to your partners. You give too much, and you never get anything back.”
“What does this have to do with lying to my bosses about having a boyfriend?” I ask, gathering up empty snack plates and chip bags andthreecans of pop because apparently people don’t experience gut rot until their thirties.
Jade follows me to the kitchen, her socked feet sliding along the floor. “You deserve a partner who will be good to you, who’s just as serious and invested as you are. Even if it’s just for a date to an engagement party.”
I sort trash and recyclables and stack dishes next to the already full sink. Through the window above the sink, a family of raccoons peers at me from the balcony across the alley, their eyes glowing in the dark night. The dishes need to be done, and the front hall needs to be tidied up. I’ll have to check Anaïs’semails at least twice before bed and schedule reminders for her appointments tomorrow morning.
I may not be sure of what I deserve, but I know for a fact that the kind of relationship Jade envisions isn’t real. It isn’t real for me, and it wasn’t real for our parents.
“You should sign up for this matchmaker,” she says, shoving her phone in front of my face. On the screen are happy smiling couples of every age, race, and body type. Same-sex and straight-passing, they snuggle like whatever they’re feeling is real and they haven’t been paid for the use of their likenesses.
“They do one-on-one interviews and have an algorithm with a ninety-nine percent success rate,” she says when she sees my dour expression.
Normally, the wordsnear perfect algorithmwould be all the argument she’d need to make. Taking the emotion out of it, the feelings, the misconceptions, and the preconceived notions, makes dating crisp, clean. Sterile. Things I love. But I’m immediately defensive at the idea of a computer telling me what to do.