by MJ Monroe
“You’re right!” Ella pulled me into a bear hug. Somehow we ended up jumping up and down in celebration. I wondered if she knew why I was so happy, and if she did I wondered if she was cool with it. This would be the one time that her matchmaking would be really welcome, hell I’d even ask her to do it for me. “I have the perfect girl in mind for him!”
“Let’s order the food and then dig into some cheesecake! While we’re eating we can talk about it and all of the exercise that we’ll have to do to keep the weight off of our bodies after we gorge ourselves.”
Excitement was flooding my body, for the first time ever, Ella was going to set me up with a man who I actually wanted to be paired with. Another positive was that my best friend was going to be my sister-in-law; there was something very comforting in knowing that we would be related. OK, maybe I am getting ahead of myself now.
Ella found the takeout menu and dialed the number. As she ordered the food, my mind went to what it would be like to be with a man like Aaron. He was a bit younger than me but he seemed to be very mature, except when he was with his friends. But isn’t that the case with all guys? He seemed like the type that would be very loving with a girlfriend, like he would cuddle her when it was cold or they were watching some cheesy chick flick. Afterward the sex would be amazing and mind blowing. Man I was thinking about sex a lot, I probably just needed some time alone with my B.O.B. When she hung up the phone, I asked her “Do you want chocolate syrup for the cheesecake?”
“Tam, you know me better than that. It’s already on there; the bakery had a chocolate and a strawberry cheesecake so I bought them both.” We both giggled and I pulled out the goods and set it on the counter. It was pre-sliced so all we had to do was grab a piece and start eating it. “The food will be here in about a half an hour or so. Now what to do about Aaron? I mean I know that he thinks that being single is cool, and that it’s normal for a guy his age to not be tied down but come on, he’s not getting any younger.”
I bit back a retort; it felt like it a bubble in my stomach. He seemed to be getting better with age, like a very fine wine. My eyes shot to the wine cabinet and I was tempted to pull out a white wine that I knew was in there. Yet it didn’t feel right to drink while eating the cheesecake, almost like it was sacrilegious or something.
“Maybe he’s just holding out for the right girl. I mean he probably sees how happy you and Eric are, and he doesn’t want to settle for anything less than that. I know that I feel that way, that’s why I was surprised when you picked Brandon for me. We have nothing in common.”
“Yeah that was a horrible mistake on my part. He was totally into you but I knew that you weren’t into him right off the bat. I have another guy in mind for you though, someone who will turn your head and make you very happy.” I forked some cheesecake into my mouth, and let my mind wander to Aaron. Ella knew that I didn’t like Brandon because I had the hots for her brother and she was going to hook us up. This is what happens when you have such a special connection with your best friend!
“I’ll work on that but in the meantime I do have the perfect girl for Aaron! She asked if he was single at his homecoming party last weekend and has been hounding me for his number all week. Never in a million years would I have paired them together but they might work as a couple I suppose.”
“Who?” It was the only thing that I could say because I was in such shock. Ella had not been talking about me at all during this time, and a sadness rolled within me. A blind person would have seen how great of a match Aaron and I would make and yet the person who was supposed to know us better than anyone else could not see how great we would be together. “I didn’t see anyone from work at the party. So who else could it have been?”
“Jennifer. She came by when you were huddled with Eric. One look at my brother and it was love at first sight. She seems to be really into him, they talked for a couple of minutes but I couldn’t tell if he liked her or not because his buddies kept making comments about her being hot and the low cut dress she was wearing.”
The name made my blood run cold. If Ella went through with pairing Aaron with Jennifer then there would be no hope for me, like ever. Jennifer had long brown hair that stopped just above her butt, and these deep hazel colored eyes that made men fall in love with her. Her hour glass figure was something that I thought only existed in Hollywood or in the porn movies that my ex was so fond of. What worried me more was that Ella didn’t think that they would make a good pair, which meant that they were probably soul mates. If one believed in such a thing, which I didn’t. OK I did but since my break up I had put on hold finding the man that I would spend the rest of my life with.
“What do you think of her? Is she good enough for my baby brother?”
I’m not sure what made me say this, other than me not wanting to see Aaron with any other woman but me. I sucked in a deep breath and cleared my throat, it was my sign to her that I was about to talk shit about another woman, and that she couldn’t tell anyone else. This sort of language was the result of having the same best friend since college and knowing one another well enough to know what the other person saying was ‘confidential’ information. This was also known as gossip but that just sounds bad, “You know I’m not sure that she is the type of girl that you want your brother spending time with.”
“Why not?” Ella leaned in, pushing her cheesecake away from her. This was a sign that I knew something that she didn’t or she was about to get confirmation on something that she had suspected. “What do you know that I don’t? Come on Tam, you are going to tell me one way or another and I really don’t want to have to withhold food from you.”
“She is a little slutty.” I squinted my eyes at her and furrowed my brow. It was the same look that I gave her at work when we had work to do and all she wanted to do was gossip about our coworkers. She reached over and moved my cheesecake away from me, until I grabbed the plate. “Come you haven’t heard the rumors about Jennifer at work? I can’t believe that, everyone tells you everything.”
“I want to know what you’ve heard before telling you what I’ve heard.”
“Well I’ve heard that her legs open faster than Kim Kardashian gets divorced. Shelly told me that she caught Jennifer in the maintenance closet with one of the mail room guys and then after lunch with the janitor!”
“Is that true? I mean I’ve heard that she wasn’t discriminating when it came to men but that seems to be a little much don’t you think?”
“Why would Shelly lie?” The truth was, I didn’t necessarily believe that this piece of gossip was true but there was no way that I could let Ella play matchmaker and actually have be successful for the first time in her life. Another bite of cheesecake went into my mouth as I assessed Ella, her mind was turning fast. After I swallowed my bite, “You don’t want someone who would do that to Aaron do you? I mean he would be devastated if he got cheated on.”
“I’ve heard the same thing. I mean not to the extent of what you’re saying but it does make a certain amount of sense,” There was a knock on the door and she answered it. She handed the person on the other side of the door money and was given brown paper bags full of food. The smell wafted into the kitchen and I heard my stomach growl. She came back into the kitchen and unpacked the bags of food, very fast. She piled food very high on two paper plates and slid one in front of me.
“OK so Jennifer the slut is out. There is no way in hell that I am going to set my brother up with someone who has sex twice during the work day. I mean once is bad enough but twice is just a shame, it’s like get a room and a red light.”
“Ella!” I said with fake shock, laughing. There was nothing funnier than Ella making whore jokes about other women. Her go to joke always had something to do with the red light district, especially after she heard what TLC sang about it with their hit song Red Light Special. She always bounced between being a super prude and being super sexy; lately she had been slightly more prudish than usual. “There is no reason to be cr
ude. She is still our co-worker after all.”
“When it comes to my brother only the best will do! Someone like her does not need to be anywhere near my brother. I mean my goodness what if I had hooked them up and they ended up married or something? Can you imagine what would happen if I heard that she was sleeping around on him? No, no it’s better that I heard this now! I’ll just lie and tell her that Aaron is with someone already!. Thank you Tam, you are a true good friend.”
“Tell her he’s with me! I mean we’re best friends and it would be believable that I would be dating your brother,” I lifted my fork to her. She looked up at me; her eyes were not as warm as they normally are. A chill ran down my spine and I knew that something bad was about to happen. There were only a few times that I had seen Ella give me the look that she was giving me now. One time was when I tried eating the last piece of chocolate cake that was in our mini-fridge in the dorm, and another time was when I began dating my ex. “Don’t give me that look, it’s not like I’m actually asking you to hook me up with him.”
“Tam, don’t play with me. I watched you at his party and I know that you think he’s hot. It’s just I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the two of you thinking of each other like that,” I held onto the counter, she wasn’t saying anything mean but I still felt very hurt. It was as if someone had stuck a knife into my heart and pulled it out. “I could not handle my best friend being with my brother that would be awkward.”
“Why would it be awkward?” The answer that she gave would tell me why she didn’t want to pair me up with a man who seemed to be a Greek God. Maybe she actually had a good reason, like he only liked prostitutes or we would never be married because he married his high school sweetheart and didn’t bother with a pesky, time consuming divorce. “Please tell me. This must be a really good reason.”
“Think about it Tam. If you guys were to break up, then you wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I couldn’t handle that, I love you like a sister and want you to be my maid of honor, when Eric and I get married.” Hearing that made me all emotional, so I did something that I never did, I put down my fork and gave her a big hug. It was a big deal because food always came before emotions in my book. Always. There was never any room for doubt on that matter. “Plus when you talk about your sex life, I would have to imagine you doing it with my brother and that is just something that no one should ever have to deal with. Yuck. Don't worry, I will find someone for you..”
Chapter3
After our dinner conversation, Ella and I decided that we would table the discussion of Aaron’s love life for a while. We talked about everything else under the sun but Eric and Aaron. There was a bit of relief that at least one of the secrets I had been harboring had come out but she was starting to get suspicious about why Eric was working so much. So far she hadn’t mentioned him cheating or anything but I could tell that she was started to think it.
“How much longer, do we have to stay quiet?” I asked him in a text. Ella had already had lunch, so I had to go by myself. She had a meeting with a couple of clients, otherwise I would have left my stuff in her office. Something caught my foot and my purse, phone, and some files fell out of my hands. I groaned loudly but no one in the office seemed to hear me.
“Let me help you with that,” The voice sounded very familiar but it was too much for me to hope for. There was no way that it belonged to Aaron that would be far too ironic since he was the one man that was currently forbidden to me. I looked up and sure enough the hottest man that I had ever seen was looking at me, his cheeks dimpled. Ryan Gosling has nothing on this man, hell Ryan Reynolds had nothing on him. He gathered up some of the paperwork that had fallen out of the folder. “Do you know where my sister is, by chance? We’re supposed to have lunch together.”
How do you tell someone so good looking bad news? I tried to search my brain for the answer but all I came up with was to be blunt with him. That didn’t seem to be the right way to go but then again I had no other choice, “Aaron, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this but uh,”
“Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. You can tell me anything but what I know that you are about to say.”
“If you know what I’m about to say, then do I need to say it? Or are you going to force me to say it?”
“Say it. I need you to be the one to tell me,”
“Ella took her lunch earlier, she’s in a meeting with a client right now.” His jaw went tight, and his eyes rolled. “Typical, all she had to do was send me a text message to let me know.” He handed me the folder a little too roughly, but then gave me a cute little smile. It seemed to soften him a bit. “Look, I am starving. I’m heading out to Marybell’s for a hamburger.” I said.
“Do you mind if I join you? That’s where Ella and I were going to go before she screwed up the time that she was going to lunch and forgot to tell me.”
Here was my chance to spend time alone with the man of my dreams but it would also mean going against my best friend’s wishes. Though I didn’t think that she would mind, in fact she might be grateful that I had lunch with him, and kept him from getting mad at her. Also I was getting him out of the office before Jennifer came down and got her claws into him. “I’d really like it if you had lunch with me. I was just going to work through my lunch but hanging out with you seems like so much more fun.”
“Cool. Thanks! I mean I was looking forward to hanging out with my sister but since she doesn’t know how to pick up a phone and let me know that she can’t make our lunch date, at least there’s another pretty girl who wants to be seen in public with me.” If only he knew how many women would give up everything that they had to be seen in public with him just once. He had to know how hot he was, there was no way that he didn’t know. It was like if the President Of The United States didn’t know that he was the most powerful man in the world.
**
He called me pretty.
I felt the heat on my cheeks and was thankful that the red didn’t show on my face. Once again his smile took me out of the moment and placed me somewhere else entirely, somewhere that only he and I existed. I couldn’t think of anything more clever to say, so I spit the bon Monet out of my mouth, “So um, I guess that we should head out now. I’m starving.”
“Me too.” He opened and held the door for me, like a gentleman. No boyfriend of mine had ever done something so sweet, they all thought that it was too old fashioned and beneath them. We set off for the diner, the silence was killing me. Luckily it wasn’t long before he started talking, “So, what exactly do you do? I mean I know that you guys look over the ratings for each TV show but what do you do with them?”
Explaining my job was never an easy task. We crunched numbers and then told the advertisers which shows would be the best fit for them to buy ad space on. Our company was paid a lot of money to analyze these numbers and in return they paid us a ton of money to give the best findings that we could. “We suggest shows and times for advertisers to buy ad time on, and we have to have solid reasoning for everything. One girl told a makeup company to buy ad space during a wrestling match. As dumb as it sounds, she backed it up with solid reasoning; she said that girlfriends would be watching with their boyfriends and it would stick with them since they were being inundated with all of the testosterone and manly ads.”
“That does seem to be weird. I mean no guy wants to watch a make-up ad during a wrestling match or a football game for that matter.” Aaron might have seemed like a sweetheart but there was no doubt that he had a Y chromosome. Though maybe that was his one flaw in an otherwise perfect package, I mean there had to be one right? Were all guys jerks, did they all think that females shouldn’t intrude upon their sports and what not? “I mean come on think about it, would you all want men to start advertising guy stuff during soap operas?”
“Aaron, that’s terribly offensive.” I mock yelled at him. The truth was I was a fan of General Hospital and it irritated me when they promoted the football game or w
hatever during it. I was trying to follow the complicated storylines and not think about men for a little bit. “She did make a good point and another cosmetics company actually took her suggestion and their sales shot up. Maybe it wasn’t a traditional suggestion but it worked out well for the company that listened to her.”
“I can see that I guess,” He admitted, his voice lowered a bit. He looked at me and gave me a big smile that made everything else seem trivial. I had to remind myself that nothing could happen with this man because he was Ella’s brother and my friendship with her was more important than any man, even if he did have the body of an action movie star and the looks of Prince Charming. “The truth is, I’m not as traditional as everybody thinks I am. They think that just because I’m in the military it means that I’m a die hard Conservative but the truth is I’m not. Maybe I should open my eyes a little more and see the potential in everything. Like this book that I’m reading, it’s called Stories of The Town.”
My heart dropped because I had already read the book many years back and loved the entire series. It was about four people who lived in a mansion with an older woman, who used to be a man. The main characters were involved in each other’s love lives and two of them Brandon and Alice Mary end up falling in love with the help of their landlord Anna Mae. I tried to keep my excitement in check but there was no way that I would be able to hold back if he said that he loved the same character that I had for so many years. “What do you think of it? I have read it a few times, and find something new in every read through.”