Settled equals married.
Shoot me.
“I don’t wanna get married.”
“Boo frickin’ hoo.”
I grouse, “You know, this is very dehumanizing. I’m not some slab of beef with no feelings.”
Dick hoots with laughter. The asshole.
“I’m being serious!”
“Shut up, Mason. If you could be trusted to choose a good girl on your own, we wouldn’t be in this situation. But your taste in women runs from bad to worse, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let some illiterate, money-grubbing broad with a face tattoo whose ex-husband is a blood relative sink her claws into you. We’re gonna get you a nice girl, from a nice family, who you can settle down with and have a nice life.”
Nice is the foulest four-letter word in the English language. It’s got fuck beat by a mile.
I mutter, “I don’t want a nice girl.” Don’t deserve one, either.
“No shit, Sherlock! Hence the matchmaker! Look, we’re here. Just be quiet and I’ll take care of everything. Try to look earnest.”
“Earnest?”
“Sincere. Like you’re into it.”
“Yeah, I know what the word means. But have you seen my face?” I point to it. “The default setting is Fuck You, volume ten!”
Dick pulls into a parking space in front of an office building that was converted from a Victorian house. It’s all cutesy, painted pale pink with yellow trim. Lots of dainty pink rosebushes line the white picket fence that surrounds it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Bambi and Cinderella skipped out the front door. The place looks like Walt Disney threw up all over it.
The heart-shaped sign out front reads “Perfect Pairings. Because You Deserve Your Happily-Ever-After!”
Sweet Jesus. I’ve wandered into hell.
Dick shuts off the engine and turns to me, his face serious. “Mason, I won’t allow you to self-destruct. As long as I’m your agent, I won’t allow it. You hear me?”
“Let’s do the math. One: my ears aren’t broken. Plus two: you’re shouting twelve inches away from my face. Equals three: I hear you.”
“Good. Now if you will just let me do the talking when we get in there, everything will be fine.”
I examine his craggy face. He looks nervous, which is strange. Dick is usually about as nervous as a plank of wood. “What’s got you so riled up about this meeting? The owner a nightmare or something?”
“The opposite of a nightmare. She’s sweet, okay? One of those Southern belle types. A lady.”
I picture an old biddie in pearls with phosphorescent white dentures wearing a straw hat with plastic flowers on the brim and feel a pang of longing for the Irish pub we passed on the way here.
Dick says, “She won’t like it if you curse or”—he waves an aggravated hand at me—“act like your usual constipated self.”
“Excuse me, but my bowel movements are very regular.”
“You know what I’m saying! Behave!”
Because Dick is nervous, I start to get nervous, too. Empathy is one of the many things I hate about myself. If I could just block everyone else’s feelings out, life would be so much easier. But I’m like an emotional sponge. All that shit sinks into me.
Which is one of the reasons I drink so much. Alcohol helps me stay numb.
A pair of big boobs in my hands doesn’t hurt, either.
Dick throws open the driver’s door and sends me one final glare of warning before getting out of the car. I watch him amble up the front steps of the portal to hell—cleverly disguised as a matchmaker’s office—until he turns and motions impatiently for me to join him.
With a heavy sigh, I step out of the Benz into the beautiful morning.
Atlanta in May is one of the prettiest places I can imagine. Birds are chirping. Flowers are blooming. The sky is a dazzling shade of brilliant blue.
And here I am, a twenty-eight-year-old man who’s so fucked up his agent thinks finding him the perfect wife will save him from himself.
I’m only going along with it because I don’t have the heart to tell him that ship’s already sailed.
That ship has fucking sunk.
We walk through the front door of the building into a waiting room, and I have to stop myself from running right back out.
Everything is pink. Everything. The walls, the carpet, the sofa and chairs. It’s like being inside a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
Looking around in horror, I say, “What. The actual. Fuck.”
Dick hisses, “It’s romantic! Now shut the hell up!” Plastering a fake smile on his face, he strolls over to the counter behind which a big woman with a frizzy red perm dozes in a chair. Her eyes are closed. She’s snoring gently.
And by “gently” I mean “like a chainsaw.” I’ve heard riots quieter than this.
Dick has to clear his throat several times to be heard over the racket, until Sleeping Beauty wakes with a start.
Then she screams.
I say, “I know exactly how you feel, lady.”
Then everything falls into slow motion.
A door on the other side of the room swings open. Through it steps a young woman. She’s slim and petite, just over five feet tall, and dressed demurely, like a librarian.
A beige skirt hangs past her knees. A simple white blouse is buttoned all the way up to her neck. On her nose perches a pair of delicate gold-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair is gathered back into a tidy bun.
She doesn’t have any jewelry on. The only makeup she’s wearing is lipstick.
It’s the same horrific shade of pink as the walls.
She looks at the woman who screamed. She looks at Dick. Then she turns her head and looks at me.
She smiles.
I feel that smile all the way down to the darkest corner of my soul, the place where light never shines and I keep all the monsters hidden under lock and key.
She smiles with her whole body. With her whole being, like she’s a conductor of light itself and all that’s good and pure in the universe is being channeled through her on its way to me, where it surrounds me and bathes me in golden rays of sunshine, so warm and sweet I could almost cry.
I stand there stunned, stupidly gaping at her, until she speaks.
In a voice like music, the librarian says, “Hello.”
That’s it. One word. A simple, common, everyday word I’ve heard a million times before, except never in that voice, from that mouth, from those lips in their hideous pink lipstick.
In response, I think a simple, common word.
FUCK.
Remember my point from earlier, the one I said I had? Here it is:
For the first time ever, in all its variations, as a noun, verb, or adjective, that word doesn’t even begin to cover what I feel the first time I set eyes on Maddie McRae.
Unfortunately, I’m still me. Guess what happens next.
Spoiler alert: I fuck it up.
2
Maddie
I’ve never had an out-of-body experience before, but today is a day of firsts.
First time meeting the infamous Mason Spark.
First time seeing size eighteen feet in real life.
First time wanting to commit murder.
So here I am, looking down at myself from my vantage point on the ceiling where my soul has fled in horror as the scene unfolds below, terrible but weirdly compelling, like one of those accidents you pass on the highway where you know it’s wrong to but you still have to slow down to check for blood and mangled bodies.