Perfect Match (6 page)

I nodded. “You're so right,” I said. “None of them would be anti-boy if I could find them the right boys! Flan the matchmaker. Why didn't I think of that?”

Feeling immediately more empowered about the fate of my Valentine's Day, I sneaked a final peek at my pals across the lunchroom. Everyone had stood up to recycle their trash—everyone except Camille, whose head was back in her hands in her Hunchback of Thoney pose. Hmmm. Finding a match for Camille should probably be my first priority.

“Flannie?” SBB asked innocently. “You're not going to tell anyone who I am, are you? I won't be able to really immerse myself if I know that my disguise isn't airtight. My Jakey-pie told me that I need to try to lose myself in my role while I'm here.” She grasped my hands tightly. “You'll help me be a real live high school girl, won't you?”

Even as my mind was scrolling through all of the guys I knew, I had to laugh at SBB's earnestness.

“Don't worry, Not-SBB. Your crazy secret is safe with me.”

A few hours later, I was terry-cloth robe–clad and lounging in the ladies' waiting room at Bliss spa on Forty-ninth Street. Around me, Harper, Amory, Morgan, and Camille flipped through fashion magazines and munched on platters of olives, cucumbers, spicy hummus, and apple wedges. Usually, I loved this pre-spa treatment ritual at Bliss, but today I was consumed by the fact that I still hadn't gotten a chance to check in on Camille about how she was handling the breakup.

Across the room, I caught her eye. “Whoops,” I said, looking down at my wrist. “Just realized I forgot to take off my watch.” I cocked my head toward the locker room while holding Camille's eyes. “I'll just go throw it in my locker so it doesn't get all seaweed-wrapped.”

“Me too,” Camille said, stuffing her wrist in her
pocket to hide the fact that she'd already taken off her watch. “I'll go with you.”

Once we were out of earshot of the other girls, I gave Camille a big, silent hug.

“Where've you been all day?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly. “I looked for you at lunch.”

“I … uh …” I stalled, remembering SBB's plea for secrecy, even from Camille. “I realized I had to help Ms. Demsey with the layout for the newsletter. But I've wanted to talk to you all day. Everyone kept saying how bummed you've been, and after I saw Xander last night, I tried to call you, but—”

“Wait, you saw Xander last night?” Her forehead wrinkled and she bit her lip. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I tried to call you all night,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “When I didn't hear from you, I figured you weren't up for talking. For what it's worth, Xander looked pretty upset about it.”

“Good, I hope he looks upset.” Camille crossed her arms, getting the giant sleeves of the terry-cloth robe tangled up in each other. “No, I don't. Yes, I do. I don't know, Flan. I've never been so confused.”

“What happened with you guys?” I asked, helping to untangle Camille from her robe. “Everything seemed so good.”

Camille nodded and sniffed. “He said it was
too
good. He said he got scared. Does that sound like the biggest lie you've ever heard or what?”

I was about to say no, that in a way I understood what it felt like to be nervous about feeling so strongly about someone, but when I saw the fire in Camille's eyes, I knew that wasn't what she wanted to hear.

“I refuse to mope around forever,” she huffed. “And I will
not
be one of those bitter girls who sits around on Valentine's Day, crying into a box of tissues, watching Lifetime movies and eating Lindt's.”

The image of film-snob Camille watching Lifetime movies made both of us laugh.

“I need to snap out of this funk before you guys start thinking of me as your downer friend,” she said, as if she were convincing herself.

“Camille,” I said, tossing my watch in my bag and snapping my locker shut again, “I know you pride yourself on being the world's most positive person—and I love that about you. But this breakup just happened yesterday. You might need to give yourself a little time to feel it.”

As soon as I said the words, I realized that completely went against the plan SBB had helped me hatch about getting my friends hooked up with new guys for the Valentine's Dance, but it felt like the right thing to say. Camille was going through something heavy. It might
have to be up to her to decide when she was ready to move on. I realized then that if she needed me to skip the Valentine's Day Dance, I'd do it without question.

“Hey girls.” Amory stuck her head into the locker room. With a grin, she attempted her Swedish masseuse impersonation, sticking out her chest, batting her eyes, and raising her voice intonations an octave. “They're ready for our treatment!”

We all cracked up. When I first met Amory, I was drawn to her funky style and effortless poise. Now what I loved the most about her was what a huge goofball she could be. She could always come up with something to lighten the mood.

“And,” she continued, shimmying her shoulders, “guess who's working today?”

“Georgio?” Camille and I gasped at the same time. Georgio was an immaculate bronze god masseur from Greece. We hadn't seen him since the last time we'd all fought over which one of us would be the recipient of his magic touch.

Now Amory grinned and raised her eyebrows. “We all agreed to donate him to
you
today, Camille.”

“Oh, you guys, I couldn't possibly accept such a gift,” Camille said, swatting her hand. “Well, okay, if you insist.”

But hey, if my friends wanted to nudge Camille
toward drooling over other guys, I was definitely all for that.

We filed down the tranquil hallway into the lavender candlelit group massage room. Five beds were set up like lotus petals, with all the heads facing one another so we could chat while the spa technicians worked their magic. We all lay down on our stomachs and grinned.

“It's been too long since we've done this,” Harper said.

“Waaaay too long,” Morgan agreed, closing her eyes. “The last time we were here, they were playing Carrie Underwood on satellite radio.”

Leave it to Morgan to categorize time according to what music was in or on its way out.

“Maybe I should get dumped more often,” Camille said. “You know, to give us a reason to indulge.”

When everyone's face fell, she added, “I'm
kidding
, you guys. I don't want us all to feel like we have to tiptoe around it. Xander broke up with me. Life goes on, right?”

“Right,” we all agreed, looking down at our beds.

In a rare moment of chattiness, Georgio leaned down to Camille and said, “Whoever hurt you is an idiot, Princess. A beautiful flower like you should have any man she chooses.”

Even in the dimly lit room, I could tell Camille was bright red. But Georgio was right: Camille was a total catch. Maybe what she needed now was a guy who wasn't afraid to remind her of that. It was a shame Georgio wasn't a viable option.

Camille sighed. “Maybe I just need to, you know, put the whole thing out of my mind.”

Exactly!
I thought. Put Xander out of her mind with the help of an older, more mature, more Georgio-like guy.

“Exactly,” Morgan said. “Which is why the rest of us have sworn off boys indefinitely to support you. Right, girls?”

“Right,” Harper chimed in evenly, and Amory nodded in agreement.

“Right,” I added. Sigh.

I looked up at the other girls to see if I could gauge what they thought of Morgan's guy-ditching doctrine. Harper looked stoic as usual. In fact, something about the way she was lying there, sheet-clad, reminded me of someone. …

It struck me out of nowhere. She looked exactly like the subject of a painting in our country house in Connecticut! Patch's artist friend Trevor had painted it last summer when he was studying at Julliard, and my mother thought he was so talented that she'd
bought it to hang over our fireplace. I remembered my mother grilling Trevor about his blossoming talent, but when she'd asked him who his muse was, he'd blushed and stammered that he hadn't met her yet. He had just painted his ideal beauty.

I wondered if Trevor was still painting in New York. And I wondered how quickly I could arrange to introduce him to his future muse. …

“Flip,” my decidedly un-Georgio-like masseuse commanded. I turned over onto my back so the hefty Swedish woman could slather the cool green seaweed mask on my other side.

I closed my eyes and continued to let SBB's matchmaking advice marinate in my thoughts. Where was I? I'd already come up with a type of guy for Camille—now I just had to think of the right older, handsome man for her. And Harper would be totally excited when I told her about my plot to make her an artist's muse. I craned my neck to the side to look at Amory to see if inspiration would strike a third time. She caught my gaze, winked, and stuck out her tongue at me.

Good, now what guy did I know who was as much of a ham as Amory? He would have to have the same stylish exterior and goofball interior—ooh! What about Alex's actor friend, Phil, from the movie
premiere? He'd looked pretty amazing in his Kenneth Cole pin-striped suit. And he had been cracking jokes all night. I'd have to ask Alex if he was single. …

“Flan? Are you in?” Morgan's voice brought me back to reality.

I looked around the lotus of friends' heads around me. “Of course,” I said, without having any idea what I was agreeing to. “Yeah, I'm in.”

“Good,” Morgan said. “I'll double-check with my parents that our cabin's free next weekend. We'll ski and drink hot chocolate and Jacuzzi and we won't even miss the Valentine's Day Dance at all!”

Wait—what? The Valentine's Day Dance was one thing, but had I just agreed to skip town with the girls the entire Valentine's Day weekend? How was I going to explain that to Alex?

As Morgan went on and on about how much fun we were going to have rejecting boys forever, I could feel my matchmaking plans slipping away from me. And I realized how fast I was going to have to act if I were to have any hope of salvaging the romance of Valentine's Day for my girls—and myself.

The next day after school, Morgan and I grabbed a cab and headed to SoHo, to the classy French bistro Balthazar. We were taking a photography class together and had to do a partners photo shoot where the focus was on food. Since Balthazar has some of the most gorgeous (and incredibly delicious) pastries in the universe, we figured there was no better excuse for a field trip.

“Oh my God, I love this song. Can we turn it up?” Morgan asked the cabdriver on the way downtown. She turned to me. “They never play the Kinks on the radio, can you believe this?” She grinned, singing along to the funky rock music.

I nodded in agreement, even though most of the time Morgan's music references were sort of over my head.

“My parent's have the best Kinks vinyl collection
at our cabin,” she said. “I'll have to play some for you when we go up there next weekend.”

“About next weekend,” I started to say. I knew I had to come clean to Morgan that I wasn't as gung-ho as she was about abandoning Valentine's Day, but I wasn't sure how to bring it up.

“Oh, here we are!” Morgan told the cabdriver as we paused on Spring Street to pay the fare. “Let's just hope Balthazar has enough taste to spare us the Valentine overload.”

“A romantic French café?” I joked. “That's likely.”

Inside the restaurant, the red leather banquettes were packed with cappuccino-sipping power-lunchers, miniature poodles tucked into handbags, and a few saliva-swapping newlyweds. I thought the Valentine's decorations hanging from the ceiling were totally tasteful, but Morgan looked at me and made a gagging motion with her finger.

We decided to eat before we worked, and slid into a booth as far away from the Cupid's arrows and groping couples as possible.

Morgan had just ordered a palmier and a latte, and I was looking forward to my linzertorte and Earl Grey tea, when I felt a strong hand grip my knee under the table.

“Flan, OMG.” Morgan's face was white. “
Random Exeter Boy
is over there.”

She pointed at a couple two tables down, though I could barely see the guy because his face was being swallowed by a waif girl with dyed red hair. I'd actually never had a chance to meet Random Exeter Boy back during his short-lived romance with Morgan, so I didn't know what to expect. I did know that Morgan was way cuter than the girl he was with today. I looked at Morgan to see how she was taking it, and to my surprise, the color seemed to be coming
back
into her cheeks.

“Hey.” I grabbed her hand under the table. “How you doing? Do you want to leave?”

“You know what,” she said. “I never liked the way he parted his hair. And look at how he kisses. It's all wrong. Yuck. He hated the Kinks too, if you can believe that! Plus, he does this really weird impersonation of his pet turtle that I just don't think I could ever be cool with.”

“I'm gonna need a visual on that,” I said.

Morgan scrunched up her lips and retracted her head back into her neck and started speaking in this really slow, hilarious, if-turtles-could-talk voice.

I started cracking up, and when Morgan saw my face, she started laughing too. By the time the waitress
arrived with our snacks, we were practically rolling out of the booth.

“So yeah, enough said.” I laughed, raising my mug of tea to cheers Morgan. “Looks like it's a good thing Random Exeter Boy didn't exactly come out of his shell. You should never be with someone who doesn't appreciate the Kinks.”

When Morgan finally stopped laughing, she sighed. “You know, in a city this big, sometimes I think it really is fate when you run into someone you've been avoiding. Here I've been beating myself up for weeks imagining Random Exeter making out with someone else. Now that I've seen it up close, I'm so not worried about what I'm missing.”