Match This! (The UnSocial Dater#1) (13 page)

I throw my feet over the bed and grab my black robe with the glittery number 69 on the back before facing my day…my Mom-ster.

While walking down the stairs I read some of the responses to Macey and my online man-ssacre.

Jesuet4638: What are you looking for in a man?

Kat: Usually a bullet.

Macey sent that one, he didn’t respond.

JONA227: What are my chances with a hot feisty babe like you?

Kat: On a scale of 1-10, you’re a no.

Boboh2: How are you today?

Kat: Horrible, I just found out I have an STD.

I snorted when I send it.

He didn’t reply.

HOWDY342: I want to make you scream.

Kat: Mission complete.

Macey responded as me.

HOWDY342: That easy huh?

Kat: The pictured did it, you’re one ugly motherfucker.

I yelled at her for that, then laughed.

I can’t read anymore, but this may actually be fun…when the headache goes away.

I set the phone next to Mom’s and yes, I steal a glance. She has seventy-three notifications.
Huh,
I think.

I look around and she’s not in the room, so I pick it up. I don’t think it’s being nosey, the woman read my diary when I was sixteen for fuck’s sake.

I thumb through and see one conversation had at least sixty messages.

The man’s name is Lance, and he is married. Apparently he is waiting for his child to graduate from high school to leave his wife, who apparently cheated on him. My mom messages him that it’s admirable and that she wishes him luck.

The conversation doesn’t stop there, as it should.

He tells her he has never been attracted to anyone like he is to her. She tells him she’s flattered. He tells her he’s almost embarrassed to tell her that he sometimes gets hard when he thinks about her. She tells him that it’s a natural reaction to an attraction and he shouldn’t be embarrassed. He tells her that he appreciates it but it feels wrong. A woman like her should be shown that they make a man feel like that and not told. She doesn’t reply for a couple days. He messages her that he didn’t mean to offend her but it’s her fault that his body reacts that way. It’s her fault that after a year of not ever wanting to touch a woman he finds himself unable to stop thinking about her. She replies that she’s sorry, and that if it makes him feel better she thinks about him too.

He tells her he’s touching himself right now and thinking about her. She tells him she doesn’t feel comfortable with the conversation. It feels wrong. He tells her nothing about him and he feels wrong and asks her to send him a picture via text and leaves his number.

The messages end there.

I look up as my Mom walks in.

I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m looking through her phone, and
she
doesn’t seem upset.

“Lance?” I ask setting it down.

She stops toweling her hair and shrugs. “He’s a nice man.”

“He’s married,” I remind her.

“Unhappily. His wife—”

“I know I read it. Did you actually give him your number?” I ask turning around and grabbing a cup off the counter.

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you send him pics?”

“Pictures? Yes.”

“Do you even know anything about him aside from the fact that he is Lance and gets hard thinking about you?”

“I know his last name is Sealy, and—”

She stops when I open up her Facebook app and search his name. His name doesn’t come up as Lance Sealy I scroll through the suggestions and find a James Sealy.

“Does he have an identical twin?” I ask as I click on the profile page.

“No,” she says and walks over, sets the towel down and looks over my shoulder at the screen.

“That him?”

She doesn’t answer, just looks at the pictures as I scroll through them slowly.

James Sealy is an accounts manager for IBS Incorporated, he appears happily married and has three children.

“Why would someone do that?” she asks.

I laugh. “Mom, he said he’s married.”

Her face turns bright red and I feel sick to my stomach. “Did you send him pictures?”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She grabs the phone and turns her back to me.

“You asked for my help.”

“I know I did Katherine, it’s just,” she pauses, “what is wrong with people?”

I laugh and she turns around and her frown starts to turn upside down.

“It’s not a big deal Mom, just get more information from them before giving them any of yours.”

I shower and get ready for my day. Every time I walk by my mom she is scowling at her phone. At first I feel pretty bad for her, and then I decide not to.

Her phone rings and she answers it in a very chipper tone that doesn’t mirror the one she’s been toting around all morning.

“Hey baby, how are you? Is everything okay?”

She listens intently and then looks up at me and smiles.

“Early? Wow why, what’s—” She stops and a concerned look crosses her eyes. “He’s what?”

Again she listens and then nods her head like the person on the other end can see her.

“Mom, they can’t see you agreeing,” I say and I begin walking away.

“Yes, it’s Kat. Hold on a minute.” I turn back and she’s holding her phone out, then pulls her reading glasses down, I assume so she can see better.

“I don’t know where it is,” she yells into the phone, then holds it to her ear. “Oh yes right.” She holds the phone out. “Can you put this on speaker. Darby wants to say hi.”

“Hi Kat,” she says quietly.

“Hey Darby, did I hear you’re coming home from Italy early?”

“Yep, Dad is thinking about closing his accounting firm and going back to work for the church,” she says.

“Will the Catholics let him back in after he divorced them?” I joke.

Mom doesn’t look amused and Darby doesn’t say anything.

I shrug. “Tough crowd.”

“They need to get divorced first.” I swear Darby’s voice cracks.

“It happens Darby,” I say in a softer tone than I used before.

Darby is the only person I have ever really let in. She’s the one person I will answer a question in a way that allows for feelings to seep in for. She is my sister. She is my sister who has an overbearing mother who drives her crazy and a father who dotes after her like she is a little princess and I love that about them.

“I gotta go, see you in a week,” she says.

“I love you Darby.” The sadness in Mom’s voice mimics hers.

“Love you Darby,” I say.

“Love you both,” she says quietly and then hangs up.

“What did you do to her?” I question my mother.

“Excuse me?” Mom acts dumbfounded.

“Darby, what the hell happened to her?”

Mom stands up from her chair and walks past me. “Darby,” she stops and turns around, looks at me, and says, “she’s been through a lot.”

“What?”

“Katherine,” she sighs and leans against the counter.

“Mom,” I sigh dramatically in response.

The silence is deafening.

“Mom?”

“She, she had a bad year. She fell into the wrong crowd, started doing some very bad things—”

I interrupt, “What kind of bad things?”

Bad things to my mother were things like climbing a tree, slurping your cereal bowl’s excess milk, not finishing your dinner because, ‘
There are kids starving all over the world.
’

I blame her for my
chubby phase
that lasted until I was a senior in high school.

She looks at me and then away. She chews on her lip for a minute and then peers out the corner of her eye towards me, and sighs.

“You can’t say anything to your sister or anyone else.”

“Who am I going to tell?” I ask.

“I want a promise you won’t say a word to Darby.”

“Mom—”

“No Katherine, she is my daughter.”

“Really? I wasn’t aware.”

“Look, I allowed you to push me away, I allowed it and I regret it. Unfortunately, I was young, naïve, and scared to death I was going to fail you for the first several years of your life. Then your father had to go and die—”

Unable to hold it back I laugh, and it’s not a ha ha laugh, it’s an angry laugh.

I’ve heard her say that phrase ‘
had to go and die
,’ too many damn times in my life, and I had become accustomed to ignoring the accusatory tone in her voice directed at my father for so fucking long that it even shocked me that I let it out, but fuck if it didn’t feel good. “Like he had a choice Mom, that’s why they call it an accident!”

“He had a choice Katherine. He had a choice whether or not to stop at the bar for an hour to unwind every day after work, and that particular day, he made the choice to stay for three hours.” As soon as the words leave her mouth I see regret on her face immediately.

We look at each other speechless, I know she is wishing she hadn’t let that fucking cat out of the bag and she knows her words cut me deep.

She shrugs, then shakes her head and whispers, “I’m sorry Katherine, but he had a choice.”

Unable to speak, unwilling to let my emotions to get the best of me, and unbelievably angry I nod and walk away. She doesn’t follow.

I lay on the bed holding the book he had given me the day I fell out of that damn tree to my chest. I hold it tight, somehow believing the pressure will stop my heart from beating out of my body. Believing that if I just hold it tight, inside of me the pain will pass.

I look towards the door when she walks in. “I’m sorry that’s the way you found out.”

I don’t want to talk about it. Not with anyone, especially not with her.

“What’s going on with Darby?”

I forgot to bring coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, which means I had no coffee. It’s a big fucking deal and because of that, work blew. I’m aware it was because of my un-caffeinated mood, and so were the guys. They avoided me like the plague, which was perfect.

I got lost in my work, lost in the art, lost in another person’s emotional attachment to an innate object, saying, picture in their heads or piece of art that they needed to bring to surface serving as a visual reminder to the person wearing it permanently, or possibly as a way for them to share their emotional scars in the only way they can, visually.

The nonsensical emotional attachments we
inked
people have is frowned upon by the people who find them offsetting, like my mother, and some of my friends. Very few of my pieces were attached to emotions or memories.

The glasses on my forearm represent my father. He wore them when he read to me, when we escaped into the world of vivid color, fantasy worlds, and nonsense. It had always been my favorite piece.

Learning that my father’s death was caused by drinking and driving,
his
drinking and driving, was not something I was prepared for. I still hadn’t let it set in. I didn’t want to.

Thankfully work was busy. I had two appointments and four walk-ins. The guys looked at me oddly when I agreed to do a tribal sleeve half an hour before closing. Zack left, apparently he had a date, and Marcus paced outside my room.

“Lock the front door and leave out the back,” I said the last time he walked by.

“No can do,” he grumbles.

“Yes you can.” He doesn’t move. “I swear to all that’s unholy if you don’t leave I will cut you.”

Randy, the guy I’m working on laughs and Marcus sighs.

“Fine. See you Tuesday.”

“Not tomorrow?” I ask.

“No, I’m going back home for a few days.”

“Travel safe,” I say without thinking which earns me a weary gaze from him. “I mean get the fuck out.”

He laughs. “I think I like your Mom’s.”

“Is that so?” I ask keeping my…emotions in check. Fuckers, I hate them. It’s her fault, the Mom-ster.

“You can have her,” I say trying not to sound bitter.

****

“You’re in rare form tonight,” Macey says after half an hour of silence. “I’m actually excited Peppy-Mc-Peppy pants is supposed to be here soon.”

As if on cue Stephanie is standing at the oak high top pub table with a smile across her face. “Okay, hand it over, I want to know everything.”

“What?” I ask pushing my rocks glass towards her. “It’s Jack and Coke,” I warn her knowing she doesn’t like anything but wine, thus Wine Wednesday.

“The phone, give me your dang phone!”

I look over at Macey shaking my head. “Really?”

“What? It was the fucking highlight of my week. This one,” she points to Steph, “has been slapping uglies with the same schilittle for a year now.”

“It’s not ugly, and he’s not sch-nothing.”

“Wow and you’ve dealt with that for a whole year? I sure hope he’s good with his tongue,” I smirk.

She rolls her eyes, gives me the baddest ass look Steph can give, which is comparable to the stare of with a kitten waiting to be pet, and demands, “Hand over the phone.”

I pull the phone out of my pocket rolling my eyes and push it towards her. “Have fun with that.”

Steph slides the chair from the opposite side of the table to the corner between Macey and I.

“Let’s do this,” she smiles, sets the phone on the pub table and rubs her hands together.

If anyone’s smile was truly infectious it would be hers, thank gawd they aren’t.

“Tap that app,” I say to Macey. “You started this shit.”

For the next four drinks we all hover over my damn phone going through the ‘Matches’ this electronic matchmaker thinks are best for me.

Five out of thirty seem okay-ish, and only because I’ve had a few too many drinks.

“Like father like daughter,” I laugh to myself.

Four eyes are on me and I realize that
may
not have been my indoor voice.

“Fucking Jack,” I say lifting both hands in the air, middle finger sticking straight up.

“Uh oh, someone has had a few too many,” Stephanie laughs.

“Never too many.” Macey pushes out of her chair and hops down. She literally pushes her way through the crowd sneering at every blond headed Barbie bitch or Jersey Shore queen who dares give her a look or says something as all five foot two of badass plows through the crowd.