Perfect Match

by J. Minter

  We filed down the tranquil hallway into the lavender candlelit group massage room. Five beds were set up like lotus petals, with all the heads facing one another so we could chat while the spa technicians worked their magic. We all lay down on our stomachs and grinned.

  “It’s been too long since we’ve done this,” Harper said.

  “Waaaay too long,” Morgan agreed, closing her eyes. “The last time we were here, they were playing Carrie Underwood on satellite radio.”

  Leave it to Morgan to categorize time according to what music was in or on its way out.

  “Maybe I should get dumped more often,” Camille said. “You know, to give us a reason to indulge.”

  When everyone’s face fell, she added, “I’m kidding, you guys. I don’t want us all to feel like we have to tiptoe around it. Xander broke up with me. Life goes on, right?”

  “Right,” we all agreed, looking down at our beds.

  In a rare moment of chattiness, Georgio leaned down to Camille and said, “Whoever hurt you is an idiot, Princess. A beautiful flower like you should have any man she chooses.”

  Even in the dimly lit room, I could tell Camille was bright red. But Georgio was right: Camille was a total catch. Maybe what she needed now was a guy who wasn’t afraid to remind her of that. It was a shame Georgio wasn’t a viable option.

  Camille sighed. “Maybe I just need to, you know, put the whole thing out of my mind.”

  Exactly! I thought. Put Xander out of her mind with the help of an older, more mature, more Georgio-like guy.

  “Exactly,” Morgan said. “Which is why the rest of us have sworn off boys indefinitely to support you. Right, girls?”

  “Right,” Harper chimed in evenly, and Amory nodded in agreement.

  “Right,” I added. Sigh.

  I looked up at the other girls to see if I could gauge what they thought of Morgan’s guy-ditching doctrine. Harper looked stoic as usual. In fact, something about the way she was lying there, sheet-clad, reminded me of someone. …

  It struck me out of nowhere. She looked exactly like the subject of a painting in our country house in Connecticut! Patch’s artist friend Trevor had painted it last summer when he was studying at Julliard, and my mother thought he was so talented that she’d bought it to hang over our fireplace. I remembered my mother grilling Trevor about his blossoming talent, but when she’d asked him who his muse was, he’d blushed and stammered that he hadn’t met her yet. He had just painted his ideal beauty.

  I wondered if Trevor was still painting in New York. And I wondered how quickly I could arrange to introduce him to his future muse. …

  “Flip,” my decidedly un-Georgio-like masseuse commanded. I turned over onto my back so the hefty Swedish woman could slather the cool green seaweed mask on my other side.

  I closed my eyes and continued to let SBB’s matchmaking advice marinate in my thoughts. Where was I? I’d already come up with a type of guy for Camille—now I just had to think of the right older, handsome man for her. And Harper would be totally excited when I told her about my plot to make her an artist’s muse. I craned my neck to the side to look at Amory to see if inspiration would strike a third time. She caught my gaze, winked, and stuck out her tongue at me.

  Good, now what guy did I know who was as much of a ham as Amory? He would have to have the same stylish exterior and goofball interior—ooh! What about Alex’s actor friend, Phil, from the movie premiere? He’d looked pretty amazing in his Kenneth Cole pin-striped suit. And he had been cracking jokes all night. I’d have to ask Alex if he was single. …

  “Flan? Are you in?” Morgan’s voice brought me back to reality.

  I looked around the lotus of friends’ heads around me. “Of course,” I said, without having any idea what I was agreeing to. “Yeah, I’m in.”

  “Good,” Morgan said. “I’ll double-check with my parents that our cabin’s free next weekend. We’ll ski and drink hot chocolate and Jacuzzi and we won’t even miss the Valentine’s Day Dance at all!”

  Wait—what? The Valentine’s Day Dance was one thing, but had I just agreed to skip town with the girls the entire Valentine’s Day weekend? How was I going to explain that to Alex?

  As Morgan went on and on about how much fun we were going to have rejecting boys forever, I could feel my matchmaking plans slipping away from me. And I realized how fast I was going to have to act if I were to have any hope of salvaging the romance of Valentine’s Day for my girls—and myself.

  Chapter 8

  MUSIC TO HER EARS

  The next day after school, Morgan and I grabbed a cab and headed to SoHo, to the classy French bistro Balthazar. We were taking a photography class together and had to do a partners photo shoot where the focus was on food. Since Balthazar has some of the most gorgeous (and incredibly delicious) pastries in the universe, we figured there was no better excuse for a field trip.

  “Oh my God, I love this song. Can we turn it up?” Morgan asked the cabdriver on the way downtown. She turned to me. “They never play the Kinks on the radio, can you believe this?” She grinned, singing along to the funky rock music.

  I nodded in agreement, even though most of the time Morgan’s music references were sort of over my head.

  “My parent’s have the best Kinks vinyl collection at our cabin,” she said. “I’ll have to play some for you when we go up there next weekend.”

  “About next weekend,” I started to say. I knew I had to come clean to Morgan that I wasn’t as gung-ho as she was about abandoning Valentine’s Day, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

  “Oh, here we are!” Morgan told the cabdriver as we paused on Spring Street to pay the fare. “Let’s just hope Balthazar has enough taste to spare us the Valentine overload.”

  “A romantic French café?” I joked. “That’s likely.”

  Inside the restaurant, the red leather banquettes were packed with cappuccino-sipping power-lunchers, miniature poodles tucked into handbags, and a few saliva-swapping newlyweds. I thought the Valentine’s decorations hanging from the ceiling were totally tasteful, but Morgan looked at me and made a gagging motion with her finger.

  We decided to eat before we worked, and slid into a booth as far away from the Cupid’s arrows and groping couples as possible.

  Morgan had just ordered a palmier and a latte, and I was looking forward to my linzertorte and Earl Grey tea, when I felt a strong hand grip my knee under the table.

  “Flan, OMG.” Morgan’s face was white. “Random Exeter Boy is over there.”

  She pointed at a couple two tables down, though I could barely see the guy because his face was being swallowed by a waif girl with dyed red hair. I’d actually never had a chance to meet Random Exeter Boy back during his short-lived romance with Morgan, so I didn’t know what to expect. I did know that Morgan was way cuter than the girl he was with today. I looked at Morgan to see how she was taking it, and to my surprise, the color seemed to be coming back into her cheeks.

  “Hey.” I grabbed her hand under the table. “How you doing? Do you want to leave?”

  “You know what,” she said. “I never liked the way he parted his hair. And look at how he kisses. It’s all wrong. Yuck. He hated the Kinks too, if you can believe that! Plus, he does this really weird impersonation of his pet turtle that I just don’t think I could ever be cool with.”

  “I’m gonna need a visual on that,” I said.

  Morgan scrunched up her lips and retracted her head back into her neck and started speaking in this really slow, hilarious, if-turtles-could-talk voice.

  I started cracking up, and when Morgan saw my face, she started laughing too. By the time the waitress arrived with our snacks, we were practically rolling out of the booth.

  “So yeah, enough said.” I laughed, raising my mug of tea to cheers Morgan. “Looks like it’s a good thing Random Exeter Boy didn’t exactly come out of his shell. You should never be with someone who doesn’t appreciate the Kinks.”

  When Morgan
finally stopped laughing, she sighed. “You know, in a city this big, sometimes I think it really is fate when you run into someone you’ve been avoiding. Here I’ve been beating myself up for weeks imagining Random Exeter making out with someone else. Now that I’ve seen it up close, I’m so not worried about what I’m missing.”

  “Good,” I said, offering her a bite of my linzertorte—and instead of disdaining the heart-shaped, red jelly–filled cookie, she took it.

  “This is amazing,” she said, wide-eyed. “I can’t believe I’ve never tried one of these before.”

  “Wait—hold that pose,” I said, pulling out the battered old camera I’d gotten for my birthday in sixth grade. “I think this could be just the look I’ve been trying to get.” As Camille posed for delicate bites of the most Valentine’s-y of cookies, I took almost a whole roll of film. With all the votives on the tables and the dusk outside, the lighting was perfect, and even more noticeably, something in Morgan’s face looked lighter than it had just minutes before. I wondered if now was the right time to bring up the dance.

  “Morgan,” I said hesitantly, “I know we all agreed to go to your cabin next weekend, and it sounds really great, but—”

  “But you want to go to the Valentine’s Dance with Alex,” she filled in. I nodded. “I know,” she said. “I thought about that last night. Maybe I was a little too forceful with my whole solidarity thing. You shouldn’t be punished for having a cool boyfriend.”

  “But I do want to be there for Camille,” I said.

  “Listen,” Morgan said, taking a final shuddering glance at Random Exeter. “Next Tuesday is our pre– Valentine’s Day Girls’ Night Out. Camille was telling me all about how the two of you used to celebrate in middle school, and she wants to reinstate it this year.”

  I’d forgotten how much fun those nights used to be—no boy pressure, just exchanging valentines with your friends and doing the gushy stuff guys usually only pretend to like on Valentine’s Day.

  “We’ll go all out for Camille that night and see how she’s doing. We can adjust our plans for the weekend based on her needs.”

  That sounded fair. The bottom line was that we both did really care about Camille—we were just showing it in slightly different (and, well, personally gratifying) ways.

  As we paid for our pastries and grabbed our coats, I said, “You know, it might cheer Camille up to go to the dance. What if I could find her a really amazing date? Doesn’t any part of you want to go too? Especially now that you’ve got proof positive that you’re over Turtle Man in there?” I stuck my thumb in the direction of the still-making-out prep school boy.

  Morgan bit her lip. “Yeah, right, who would I even go with? I’m so sick of these private school boys who think they’re so great. All they want to do is trade up. It’s like, just pick a nice girl and stick with her—”

  “Morgan,” I called, “look out!”

  Her tirade was cut abruptly off when she ran smack into a tall, dark-haired guy in a red ski cap who was turning the corner from Broadway.

  “Whoops!” Morgan said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” the guy said, “I’m sorry.” He looked at me. “Flan?”

  Huh? I looked more closely under the ski cap and noticed that the tall stranger was Rob Zumberg—Terrick Zumberg’s cousin, whom I’d hung out with last fall in Nevis.

  “Hey Rob!” I said. “Long time no see.” I looked at Morgan, who was eyeing her collision victim pretty closely. “This is my good friend Morgan. We go to Thoney together. Morgan, this is Rob. He was our resident brilliant musician in Nevis over Thanksgiving break.”

  “What do you play?” Morgan asked, looking super interested.

  “Guitar mostly, but I can also play the saxophone and the accordion,” Rob said. He was shifting back and forth on his feet and stammering a little bit. I’d forgotten how shy he was.

  “Oh my God, I’ve always wanted to learn to play the accordion,” Morgan said. At least she was giving him some positive reinforcement!

  “It’s really easy to learn,” Rob said. “I could show you sometime.”

  Then both of them looked at me, either to seek my permission to hang out with each other … or maybe because I was getting in the way?

  “You know what?” I said, catching the vibe. “I’ve got to head home and read up on how to develop these pictures tomorrow—”

  “Oh no,” Morgan said, looking stricken. “I completely forgot to take any pictures at Balthazar.” She turned to Rob and laughed. “We were supposed to do a food photo shoot and Flan came all the way down to my neighborhood to go to Balthazar and then we started talking and—wow, that was dumb.”

  “You live around here?” Rob asked. “I’m two blocks up. Well, if you need another food subject for your shoot, I could show you my favorite French café. It’s not as over-the-top as Balthazar, but—”

  “Sounds perfect!” Morgan practically exclaimed.

  “Okay, I’ll just—” I started to say.

  “Okay, ’bye, Flan.” Morgan waved, grinning. “I had so much fun!”

  I laughed and waved good-bye to both of them. I could tell Morgan was having even more fun since she literally ran into Rob.

  Rob Zumberg! Why hadn’t I thought of him before? I mean, he was a little on the quiet side, but he was sooo into music. He was such an obvious choice for Morgan. Everything about this afternoon seemed so serendipitous. Meeting Rob right on the heels of seeing Random Exeter boy? You couldn’t write that kind of stuff! As I started walking up Broadway toward my house, I had to smile. My first real match had basically fallen into my lap.

  Chapter 9

  WANDERING EYES

  I was halfway home when my phone started ringing and the very adorable picture I’d snapped of Alex at Wollman Rink popped up on my screen.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Alex said when I answered.

  I froze in the middle of Washington Square Park South, nearly colliding with a pedicab full of tourists.

  “What is it?” I asked, feeling my heart climb into my throat. “Is something wrong?” Had Alex found out about my friends wanting to ditch the dance?

  “Yes,” he said, sounding serious. “Something is very wrong. We’ve been dating for almost a month and I just realized that I have no idea whether or not you can bowl.”

  He was joking. My heart resumed its normal pattern as I mime-apologized to the red-faced pedicab driver.

  “The thing is,” Alex continued, “I’m kind of unstoppable on the lanes. So you have to be able to hold your own. I think you should probably come meet me at Bowlmor ASAP so we can resolve this.”

  “You only think you’re unstoppable because you haven’t seen my skills,” I quipped back, regaining composure. “So wait, you’re at Bowlmor right now?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “I’m with Saxton and Phil. And it’d be a whole lot more fun if you were here.”

  Hmmm, if Harper had been standing over my shoulder, she’d have told me that a boy is supposed to give you at least forty-eight hours advance notice if he’d like to take you out. But Alex had always chosen spontaneity over relationship rules. And I really did want to see him—not to mention destroy him at bowling in front of his friends.

  “I’m on my way,” I said, hooking a right on Eighth Street.

  When I hung up the phone, I was grinning as I replayed the conversation in my head. It was cool that he was out with the guys and still wanted me to crash. And Phil was the exact friend I’d decided on fixing up with Amory! And Saxton, with his model frame and deep green eyes, might be just the thing to take Camille’s mind off her Xander woes for a little while. But how to phrase this to make sure my friends wouldn’t see this as a violation of their boy boycott?

  NERVOUS TO MEET ALEX AND HIS FRIENDS AT BOWLMOR TONITE. COME BOWL BADLY WITH ME FOR MORAL SUPPORT?

  Luckily, within minutes I had an affirmative from Amory, who wrote: I’M DOWN, BUT CAN’T PROMISE I’LL BOWL BADLY—BOWLING TEAM CAPTAIN SEVENTH G
RADE!

  Two minutes later, Camille said: BEATS STUDYING FOR MY ART HISTORY EXAM ANY DAY. C U SOON. …

  Perfect! And I’d thought the Morgan/Rob connection had fallen into my lap. Something in the cosmos must have wanted me to be a matchmaker. I should probably start my own business, get a Web site—

  “Flan.” Amory interrupted my thoughts at the swinging door to Bowlmor. “Think I can bowl in these?” She pointed at some truly amazing hot pink patent leather Betsey Johnson platforms. “I’m not so into the eyesore of the bowling shoe.”

  “If you can bowl in those, you might become my fashion idol,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up. “Good timing,” I said. “There’s Camille.”

  Both of us leaned in to tag-team air-kiss Camille, whose hazel eyes looked bright under her lavender velvet hat. “So I haven’t cried yet today,” Camille said. “That’s good, right?”

  “Good! Great!” Amory and I cooed as we stepped inside the jerky red elevator that would spit us out at the lanes. Having a brokenhearted friend, I realized, was kind of like raising a small child. It took a village. And every minor moving-on achievement felt like a giant leap for womankind.

  Once inside Bowlmor, we were bombarded by flashing disco lights, pumping eighties music, and the strangely pleasant scent of old leather shoes. As Camille and I ordered matching size-eight red-and-blue bowling kicks, Amory impressively avoided the shoe exchange altogether.

  We grabbed a round of diet cherry Cokes from the bar and scoped out the scene for Alex and his friends.

  “There they are,” I said, pointing to the far lane, where Alex was programming the computer with names.

  “Whoa,” Amory said, fanning herself. “Who’s the Adonis? He’s almost as amazing looking as my shoes.” She nudged Camille. “Do you see that guy?”

  Camille nodded, though she wasn’t even looking at Saxton. “Mmm,” she mumbled without conviction. “He’s cute.”

  “Hey guys,” I called out to Alex and his friends. “I brought company.”