Page 1 of The Love Rematch
CHAPTERONE
emily
“Get up right nowand turn on channel four.”
Emily groans and pulls her vibrant floral duvet over her head. Bright colors are usually her thing, but right now, all she wants is darkness. What time is it? What day is it? And why on earth is her pillow yelling at her?
“Leave me alone,” she grumbles.
“Em! Get up!”
“Sam?” She recognizes her twin sister’s voice, but it can’t be. Sam lives eight hundred miles away in New York City. “What are you doing in Georgia? How did you get into my apartment?”
“Good lord, if I was in Georgia, don’t you think I’d be strangling you right about now? I called on the phone. You answered. So get your ass out of bed and turn on channel four before you miss it.”
“Miss what?” Emily feels for her phone on the mattress. She doesn’t even remember taking it off the nightstand.
“Miss Mom.”
“Mom?”
“On channel four.”
“On channel four?”
“Em!”
“I’m going. I’m going.”
Taking the Band-Aid approach, Emily throws off her covers in one dramatic swoop.Cold. Cold. Cold.She rolls from her bed and half falls into the closet to snatch her hot-pink robe. A morning person, she is not. Especially pre-coffee. It’s almost inhumane that her sister called this early. Can’t Sam sense this pounding headache? Aren’t they supposed to have twin telepathy or something?
Emily stayed up way too late the night before getting caught up on orders for Emily Ann Designs, her small—but growing!—jewelry label focusing on fiercely feminine designs, her own personal mantra. After all, knights in shining armor are overrated. All a woman needs to take on the world is a pair of killer earrings and a ring with enough carats to cut—the girlier, the better. But working all day at her mother’s flower shop, plus most weekends during the always insane wedding season, leaves little time for her own business. About once every two weeks she has to pull an all-nighter creating, packaging, and shipping her Etsy orders. Not that she’s complaining, of course. The more orders she gets, the more money she can save, and hopefully, the sooner she’ll be able to branch out full-time. Besides, her late nights are the perfect excuse to binge-watch old seasons ofThe Love Match.
Yes, that’s right.
The Love Match.
Sure, the dating show is an overly manufactured fairy tale that ends in heartbreak nine times out of ten, but she loves love. And seeing as she’s a struggling entrepreneur with no time to breathe let alone date, it’s the closest she’s coming to romance anytime soon.
No regrets.
Besides, there’s something morbidly fascinating about watching the lead kick suitors off one by one with the particularly brutal yet catchy send-off,I’m sorry, but you’re not my perfect match.At least in the real world, people offer an excuse.It’s not you, it’s me. We want different things in life. I’m in love with someone else.Whatever it is, it’s something. But simply telling someone to their face,Sorry, but you’re not it? Utterly savage.
“Hello? Em?” Sam’s tone hardens. “Did you stop to make coffee?”
Emily pauses with her finger poised over her Keurig. “Maybe…”
“There’s no time! Turn on channel four!”
“All right, all right.”
She presses the button anyway and winces at the telltale hiss. Sam snorts through the phone, but doesn’t say anything as the sound of voices fills the room. Emily clicks a few times until channel four blinks to life, and there in the crowd gathered outside the New York City studio is her mother, Tina Peters. She’s wearing a salmon cable-knit sweater, dark-wash jeans, a tan leather belt, and an adorable puffy white vest Emily fully intends to steal, but it’s the sight of the colorful beaded headband that brings a smile to her face. The piece is an Emily Ann original. Her mother is nothing if not her number-one fan.
“I can’t believe Mom’s onWake Up, America!”
“Em—”
“This is her dream!”
