Page 7 of Love's a Script
“Sorry.” He took a drink from the mug anyway. “I got caught up with some work.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Actually, yes. You’re looking at the latest client of Hearts Collide Matchmaking.”
“Man, what’re you talking about?”
“I’ve joined a matchmaking service for research purposes.”
“You’re lying,” Junie said, so he pulled out his laptop from his weathered messenger bag and showed her the evidence.
“There’s a lifetime’s worth of password security answers in here,” she said, horrified. “You’ve never downloaded a dating app in your life, but here you are doing all this.”
“It’s for work,” he said.
“Don’t lead with that on dates,” Junie said. “It’s no way to get a woman to marry you.”
“Marry me? Lots of intermediary steps missing there.”
“But that’s the goal of a service like this, no? Marriage is in the realm of possibilities.”
“Same could be said about winning the lottery,” he replied flippantly.
“It won’t kill you to express some optimism, you know.”
“You’re right. I have hope in my heart that—” Ruben suddenly clutched his neck, making a show of gasping for air before dropping his head sideways.
Junie threw a crumpled napkin at him. “All I’m trying to say is you don’t disclose information about your bank account balance when you’re just looking for a hookup.”
Nothing his cousin said was untrue, but Ruben didn’t have inherent faith in much, and matchmaking was, at this point, an unproven method. So he was going to take everything one step at a time, and currently, he had about twenty different forms to complete.
A new sculpture of Jesus on the cross had been erected at the front of the church auditorium, and to Mary, he appeared unusually—and perhaps sacrilegiously—ripped.
She was crammed on a velour-covered pew between her sister and her dozing father, scrutinizing the marbleized son of God and wondering if she was the only one who was. Mary believed Jesus, at least this version of him, ought to be lanky, tortured, stoic. Not rendered in the image of Calvin Klein.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her sister’s knobby elbow jabbing her side. “What?” Mary asked, and Hattie, with her eyes still fixed on the pastor, smacked the purse Mary held in her lap. Only then did she register the muffled chirp of her ringtone. Quickly, she dug for her phone and silenced it but not before receiving some glances and waking her father. She used the interior of her purse as cover to text the client who’d called, promising to respond in an hour.
The pastor eventually dismissed the congregation with hopes of a blessed week, and while they filed out of the sanctuary, Hattie said to Mary, “You should remember to put your phone on silent.”
“I thought I had,” Mary said.
“It’s rude and a distraction,” Hattie continued as they stopped shy of the building exit for the brief conversation their family always had before parting ways each Sunday.
“I know that.”
“If you were a neurosurgeon on call, I’d understand, but?—”
“Nice sermon, wasn’t it?” their father said with put-on pep.
The sisters, though impartial, nodded. They weren’t really a religious family, but when Mary was twelve, their dad, a recent divorcé and single father to two girls, had believed church was the best way to combat the threat of teenage pregnancy. Fortunately, the sisters had attended public school with competent sex education. Nowadays, habit and the reality they’d only ever see each other during the holidays kept them regularly attending.
“How was your week?” their dad asked.
“It’s still diapers and spit up all day and all night,” Hattie said.
“Work’s been good,” Mary offered. “I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but I’m up for an exciting project.”
“Is that right?” her dad said. “I’m sure you’ve put in the work to earn it.”
