Page 5 of The Matchmaker's Melody
She was about to walk towards Halli and pull her away from Rob when someone called her name. She turned around to be met with a charming grin and two hazel-green eyes.
“Phil!” The tenor had joined the choir last year, and while he wasn’t the strongest singer she’d heard, he was good enough. Pleasant to look at too, with his light brown hair and high cheekbones.
They chatted for a moment about nothing until the small talk ran dry. Emma’s mind wasn’t on his silly prattling, with Halli so present in her thoughts. Phil followed her eyes.
“Who is the new soprano?” he asked. “A friend of yours?”
A little zing went through Emma’s fingertips. This could be… interesting. What did Phil do, anyway? He was in his late twenties, so a touch old for a nineteen-year-old, but it wasn’t too much of a difference. She knew a lot of couples with a wider age-gap than that. She tried to remember what she knew about him; keeping up on everyone was part of her business as an influencer, after all. That personal connection, even with her anonymous YouTube audience, was key to her success. Phil… of course. He was in advertising. Sort of like her, telling people what to think and what to buy, but she was a creative, whereas he was a paper-pusher. No matter. Middle management was still management, and a huge step up from a chair-arranger.
Emma turned back to him with her own grin. “That’s Halli, and she’s new to the city.”
She waited for a moment. Like most people, Phil had to fill the silence. It was always enlightening to hear what they had to say, since it was often the first thing that came to mind.
“She looks very… nice.”
Did he fancy her, too? Excellent.
“She’s lovely. And so pretty, isn’t she? And she’s smart. I was thinking of seeing if she wanted to do something this weekend. Maybe just go down to the waterfront or something, see parts of the city she might not know.”
She gazed at him with wide eyes, and he bit.
“That sounds like a great idea. If you want to make it a party, I’d be happy to join you. More fun with a group, right?”
Yes!
“That’s a great idea.” She beamed at him. “I’ll talk to her at break, and perhaps afterwards we can firm up our plans.”
He returned her smile. He was quite good looking, really. He would do well for Halli. “Very good. Perhaps we can exchange contact information now. So we don’t forget later,” he added. He pulled out his phone, and in seconds, Emma’s number and email were in his contact list, and his in hers.
At that moment, Randall cleared his voice loudly, the signal that rehearsal was about to begin, and they had to abandon their conversation for the time being. But Emma’s eyes spent as much time darting between Halli and Phil as focused on her music.
Plans were made and duly carried out, and on Saturday morning, as arranged, Emma met Halli and Phil at the St George subway station, where both bundled into her car. Halli slid into the back seat first, and Emma expected Phil to sit next to her, but was surprised when he took the passenger seat at the front instead. This was a strange way of getting to know Halli, but then, she supposed, he was used to sitting up front, and the back seat might be a bit cramped for his legs.
Men. Always thinking they took up more space than they did.
Never mind. There would be plenty of time for them to chat once they had all arrived at their destination. Speaking of which, this was a great time to draw Halli out a bit.
“Have you spent much time in Toronto before now?” she asked, making sure her voice was loud enough to be heard in the back seat.
“A bit,” came the quiet reply. “We all came for big events, like the exhibition and baseball games and concerts sometimes, but we only saw the big sites.”
“So you’ve never been to the Beaches?”
She caught a glimpse of motion in the rear-view mirror that was probably Halli shaking her head.
“You’re in for a treat, then.”
Emma guided her car along Bloor Street towards the Don River, and then through a knot of roads and entrance ramps towards the highway that carried them first in the direction of the lake, and finally, along a massively wide city street that eventually brought them to their destination. Here, quite a distance east of downtown, the industrial lands along the lake gave way to leisure facilities and parkland. Sandy beaches hosted volleyball players and paddleboarders. A long network of paths stretched through the parks and along the lakefront for several kilometres, welcoming strollers, bikers, dog-walkers, and more, as they forgot for a moment about the massive city all around them.
A couple of blocks to the north, Queen Street paralleled the beach, tempting shoppers and browsers with everything from big chain coffee shops to unique boutiques. A cup of joe, a Vespa, and a vintage ball gown could all be found within steps of each other.
It was a sunny day, and still warm at the end of September. The trio began their excursion with a stroll along the boardwalk, planning to have coffee or lunch afterwards, as the time and weekend crowds allowed.
At first, they walked all together. No sense making either Phil or Halli feel uncomfortable. This was, after all, just supposed to be a get-to-know-the-city outing, not a date. Let them chat a bit, start to feel comfortable with each other. She could manoeuvre them together at some later point, if one of them didn’t take the initiative first.
“There’s the lifeguard station.” She pointed to the small house-like structure on the beach. “It’s been there for over 100 years. They were going to take it down years ago, but the community got together to raise awareness and funds to fix it up, and the city kept it. I read about it, and it inspired me. It’s just a little thing, but it also shows how people can make a difference, and how getting the right information into the right ears can change things. I think that’s when I first started thinking of becoming an influencer.”
They wandered down the rocky beach towards the hut. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful structure, but its white clapboard siding, large windows, and tall lookout structure on top made it picturesque against the expanse of the lake. The rescue boat, ready and waiting, made it even more so. Never one to pass up a possible image for her various social media platforms, Emma whipped out her phone and took several shots.
