Page 20 of Love's a Script
“It’s going take forever getting out of here,” Mary said mostly to herself as Hattie had closed her eyes and started shimmying to the music pouring out of the bar next door.
Mary used her ridesharing app and booked the cheapest car, which happened to be one where they’d be commuting with other customers. She linked her arm with her sister’s and approached the curb, craning for a view of the incoming vehicles. Within minutes, their hired dark Hyundai Elantra pulled up ahead.
“She drunk?” the driver asked Mary when she opened the backseat door.
“No, she’s fine. A little tipsy.” Mary still took the middle spot to act as a potential vomit buffer between Hattie and the stranger in the right window seat.
Once Mary made sure her sister was buckled in, she turned to acknowledge the other passengers, but froze when she found Ruben, of all people, beside her.
He smiled and greeted her like they’d planned to meet in such warm, close quarters. Meanwhile, she was unnerved and negotiating her leg’s position to maximize the space between them.
“This is Mary,” Ruben told the woman in the front passenger seat who he introduced as his cousin.
“The matchmaker?” Junie said, whipping her head around and revealing a striking appearance of bleached brows and facial piercings. “What a cool job you have.”
“Thank you. I do enjoy it,” Mary said.
“Were you at the concert?” Ruben asked.
She looked at him but quickly turned away. With traffic at a standstill, the brake lights from the vehicles ahead tinged the interior of the cab red, making it almost feel like she was in the corner of a pulsing nightclub with a sexy stranger.
“No, dinner with family,” Mary replied, patting her dozing sister whose head had lolled against the window with a soft thud moments earlier. “You?”
“Trivia night at the Bull Trout Pub.”
She vaguely recalled something about the hobby on his admission forms. “Did you win?” she asked.
Junie groaned while Ruben explained, “We had a good average score, but a whole round on Romeo and Juliet adaptations did us in.”
“I have a question,” Junie said, turning again to address Mary. “You’re an expert on relationships. What’re your thoughts on love at first sight? Do you believe in it?”
“Sure, I believe in it.”
Ruben scoffed.
“What?” his cousin asked. “You disagree with your matchmaker?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Mary said, surprising herself.
“Okay,” he said with a laugh, “but I just think the concept of falling at first sight is something that sounds nice in stories or wedding vows so people insist it’s real.”
“Around 15 percent of our successful clients say they fell in love immediately with the person we matched them with.”
“I’m sure that’s in retrospect,” Ruben said, angling his body slightly toward Mary. “It’s easy to assign depth and significance to that initial spark once someone is actually in love when in reality it was all carnal.”
“It might not be the deep love felt by an aging couple, but it’s still a version of it.”
“There’re better words to use in that case, like ‘smitten,’ ‘infatuated,’ or ‘besotted.’ Maybe the Germans have a term we could borrow. But let’s reserve the word ‘love’ for the real thing.”
“A purist,” Mary said dryly. Their knees bumped with each groove in the road, and it added a vitalizing current to their exchange. “How do you define real love, then? What waiting period is needed to reach it? A month? Six months? A year?”
He shrugged. “It’s not about the length of time specifically?—”
“You’re rejecting the legitimacy of love at first sight, so obviously time is relevant to you,” she countered.
“If in an instant,” Ruben said, “someone can know the good, the bad, and the morning breath of someone else, then fine, I believe in love at first sight.”
“But you wouldn’t say a novice pianist isn’t making music because they’re not as good as someone performing with an orchestra, would you?”
