You Have a Match

by Emma Lord

  “Thanks, babe,” she says, pulling it into her own hair and making a messy bun.

  “Hey.”

  Mickey arches up a little to mess up Savvy’s hair. “See you after lunch?”

  “What color should I make the Gcal invite?”

  “Too soon!” Mickey calls, already dragging Leo by the arm up the path. He stops long enough to kiss me, half mouth and half cheek, the gesture fast but the big sloppy smile on our faces lasting way longer than they probably should.

  Savvy knocks her shoulder into mine. “So…”

  I clear my throat, meeting her eye. “So.”

  “I’m proud of us,” says Savvy.

  “Yeah. We waited six full minutes after solving our parents’ drama to stick our tongues down Mickey’s and Leo’s throats.” Savvy doesn’t say anything right away, and there’s this twinge that sneaks its way through the bubble, a reminder of what’s beyond the thick of these trees and the morning haze. “If we solved our parents’ drama.”

  Savvy slows her pace, watching Leo and Mickey and deliberately putting space between us and them. When I look over at her, there’s a lightness in her expression, a gleam in her eyes—I think of that first day we met, of Queen Quack and the brief hint of this girl I saw then that I am starting to see more of every day.

  “We did a better job than you think.”

  I smile back, mostly because I don’t know how to stop. “Yeah?” It’s a nice thought. One that I could spend an hour poking holes in, except I’m happy right now. Happy enough to hope. “Do you think they’ll ever … I don’t know … talk again?”

  “Well, they’re going to have to talk logistics, at least,” she says matter-of-factly. Her words are all business, but her tone is light.

  I peer at her. “You mean with us?”

  “That,” says Savvy. “And, well—my dad called this morning.”

  The grin on her face is brimming, threatening to burst. Before she even says anything I can feel it flowing through me—the feeling of knowing the magnitude of something without knowing the shape of it, of catching someone else’s joy before you even know why.

  “He and my mom bought Bean Well.”

  I don’t think she’s even fully finished the sentence before I let out the kind of squeal that would make Rufus howl, launching myself at her. The two of us hug each other so tightly that we almost add some broken ribs into the mix. We pull apart just as fast, just as breathlessly, like we need to look at each other to believe it. Our eyes meet and the moment stamps itself to my heart, taking up a permanent place in me before it’s over, and I hear Poppy’s voice in my head—If you learn to capture a feeling, it’ll always be louder than words.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel one louder than this.

  one year later

  I’m late, but knowing Savvy, I’m early—because knowing Savvy, she told me the meeting was at half past noon when it’s at one. Sure enough, when I stumble into Magpie, the bell jangling so loudly that Ellie the barista looks up in alarm and one of the writer types who hangs out by the window nearly drops her latte, I see her and Mickey camped out in our usual spot in the back, without the other dozen people in our budding little Instagram community.

  “Mickey, that’s enough emojis to make someone black out,” I can hear Savvy say, kneeling on the couch so she can look at whatever Mickey is typing into her phone over her shoulder.

  “I’m not an influencer, I can afford to break a brain or two.”

  “Yes, but do you need six rainbows and a knife?”

  “It’s my Tuesday mood.”

  Before I announce myself I wave over at Ellie, and she starts making me the hot chocolate I always order and pulling one of Leo’s legendary Nutella-stuffed, parmesan-topped ensaymadas out of the display case—one of the many creations of his that have been rotating in and out of Magpie’s seasonal offerings, whenever he’s home for a few days and wants to test something outside the confines of culinary school. I wonder who he taught to make them, since he’s not supposed to be back from his family’s trip to the Philippines for another few days.

  “My stars,” says Mickey, clutching a hand to an invisible string of pearls. “Is it—can it be? In the flesh? Star photographer Abigail Day, gracing us with her esteemed presence—”

  “Hey, you,” says Savvy, getting up and squeezing me into a hug. “Long time, no see.”

  It really has been—well, long for us, at least. These days Savvy and I see each other a few times a week, between meetups for this Instagram community (fittingly called “Savvy About Instagram”), study sessions when she sneaks me and Connie into the University of Washington’s ridiculously beautiful undergraduate library, and the occasional times she’s babysat for my brothers. (Unlike me, they took the whole “surprise sister” thing in stride—and also unlike me, decided to blow up my parents’ spots by immediately telling their teachers, most of our neighbors, and the woman who writes “Happy Birthday” on the cakes at the grocery store, so the cat’s extremely out of the bag.)

  But I’ve been in Alaska for the last three weeks, stalking moose and whales and bears, taking the terrifying winding bus through the thin mountain roads of Denali and kayaking in the endless summer sunlight. I have so many photos that trying to choose the ones to highlight for the ambassador program feels like choosing which of my organs to keep. But even with the hum of the adventure still in my bones, it’s a relief to be back.

  Before I can ask what they’ve been up to, Mickey hands me a flower—a red rose, identical to the one Savvy has tucked behind her ear.

  “Oh—uh—thank you?” I say, pleased and confused.

  “It’s from Leo,” she says. “It’s our one-year anniversary, you know. Yours and Leo’s, too. If we’re counting from the day we all started making out.”

  I blink at her. “It’s been a whole year?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, since Leo isn’t back yet, I told him I’d chuck a flower at you in his stead.”

  “I believe you called it ‘Tuxedo Masking,’” Savvy chimes in, grazing the petals of her own flower with her fingers.

  “To possess even one iota of his dramatic flair,” says Mickey, flinging herself on the plush pink couch.

  I hold the rose up to my face, feeling the flutter of it against my skin. There’s that same dopey, happy lift in my heart that I’m not quite used to—the little ways that I’m still surprised by the Leo I knew then versus the Leo I know now. The Leo I grew up with versus the one who tucks my hair behind my ear, who falls asleep on movie nights with his head in my lap, who sometimes tugs me by the hand while we’re walking for a sneaky kiss. It’s the same Leo as before, but it’s as if I’ve tapped into some other dimension of him, one that I must have known somewhere deep down was there even when I wasn’t capable of seeing it on my own.

  Or maybe it’s not Leo who changed, but me. I feel like in the last year a part of me has opened up, as if it was just waiting until there was someone worth making space for. A lot of it is Leo, but there was more room to fill than I ever realized—room for Savvy and Pietra and Dale. For Mickey and Finn. For the parents I thought I knew but understand so much more of now.

  “Speaking of dramatic flair, is this supposed to be a unicorn cow? Or just a cow that is dressed up as a unicorn?” I ask, squinting at one of the new fixtures by the couch.

  “Its origins remain a mystery, as do all of its fellow ceramic cow brethren,” says Mickey, gesturing to the rest of the space.

  I glance around and see what else changed in the two weeks I’ve been gone—the local art on display sells and rotates so quickly that the place is essentially transformed from one day to the next. One week will be splashy slashes of primary colors on giant canvas, the next will be delicate pastel watercolors of views of the Puget Sound, and right now the place is cows on cows on cows—a doctor cow by the window, an astronaut cow on the barista station, a cow in a Seahawks jersey by the window. The only constants are the big, plush, cozy couches and chairs, the giant
framed photos I’ve taken all over Shoreline and Seattle (including my favorite, one of a very haughty-looking duck on Green Lake labeled “Queen Quack”), and a table from the original Bean Well with Poppy’s and Gammy’s names inscribed in the wood.

  “So?” says Savvy. “I got bare-bones details, but I gotta hear about the rest of your trip. Did you see anything cool?”

  “Did anything try to eat you?” Mickey cuts in, leaning forward. On the inside of her wrist is the newest of her tattoos, the first one in permanent ink—a miniheart that says Mick + Sav on the inside, identical to the one on the tree back at Camp Reynolds. It’s the first year none of their little crew will be spending the summer there, but with Mickey starting a bachelor’s in education in the fall, it will probably only be a matter of time before she’s back.

  I set the rose down on the table, leaning in. “Actually, at one point, right after we got on, a bear wandered right up to the bus—”

  “Uh, this is the first time I’m hearing that story.” It’s my mom, coming out from the back room, where we hold classes and let meetup groups rent the space. I hadn’t realized she was here.

  “Did I say a bear? I meant a deer. A tiny baby one about yea high.”

  My mom shoots me a don’t think I won’t be bringing this up later look, right as Pietra wanders out behind her, her face streaked with paint. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure I cleaned up the last of the finger paint from the Mommy and Me group, but the lot of you should watch your butts just in case,” she informs us, giving my shoulder a quick squeeze in greeting. “Maggie sent me some of the pictures from your trip. Stunning as usual.”

  I flush.

  “We’re gonna have to open a second shop to display them all,” says my mom.

  This is only half a joke, especially now that my mom is so involved. She’s shifted from full-time lawyering to part-time, and every hour she isn’t working or wrangling my three brothers in line is spent here. She’s either meeting with families who come here for legal help pro bono, just as she envisioned for the original Magpie, or helping Pietra run the business—which is ridiculously booming. We got a few write-ups in newspapers and artist blogs that led to us getting put into a “13 Underrated Gems in the Seattle Area” article that went viral last year, and the word-of-mouth from the meetup groups that come here has certainly helped. The place is usually so packed that it’s hard to find a seat. I heard murmurs of her and Pietra looking into a second location, one closer to Shoreline. Savvy and I have already been brainstorming coordinating color schemes.

  “Hi hi hi,” comes a voice from the front, and in comes Connie, beelining for me and squishing me into a hug. We’ve been in near constant touch even during my Alaska trip so we can coordinate our apartment in the U District we’re moving into next month—Connie’s starting at the UW, and I’ll be taking classes at the community college while I throw more time into my photography and the whopping hundred thousand followers on the @savingtheabbyday Instagram account.

  “Did I miss it?” she asks, her eyes wide. “Have you already spilled all the beans about your trip?”

  “Just the terrifying ones,” says my mom wryly, making her way to the kitchen.

  “Sorry I’m late,” says Connie, directing it at Savvy and Mickey. “I was using that Pomodoro Technique for productivity you were telling me about, breaking up tasks into twenty-five minutes, and—”

  “Yes!” Savvy exclaims. “And you love it, right?”

  “I love it so much I got obsessed with like, little time but forgot about big, actual time— I got so much done today, though—”

  “I told you! It’s one of my favorites. A lifesaver during finals week.”

  While Savvy has eased up a lot in the last year—her Insta, @howtostaysavvy, now regularly features frizzy post-rain hair, the unspeakably ugly highlighted study guides Savvy makes for her classes, goofy selfies with Mickey, and even my grimy brothers on a few occasions—she is still the kind of productive that puts mere mortals to shame. And in a not-so-plot-twist that anyone in the world could have seen coming, putting Connie and her in the same room together is dangerous enough that they’ve come up with designs for entire full-blown business concepts while I was peeing.

  “Think you can spare one of your precious Pomo-whatsit minutes to help us set up in there?” Mickey asks, helping me drag the two of them over to the barista station so we can stock up on treats for the group.

  As we’re setting up, people start spilling in. First it’s Jemmy and Izzy, who carpooled; then Finn and Cam, who have been pseudoflirting with each other so bashfully for so long that the rest of us have bets on when they’ll finally make it Instagram official; then a few other people trickling in around or slightly after the official start time, giving a loose feeling to the whole thing. To be fair, in the last few months the group has become less about Instagram strategies and more about eating dessert and filling everyone in on each other’s lives.

  “Hey, Bubbles.” Finn reaches out and plucks the rose from my hand. “What’s this for?” he asks, holding it upside down to examine it.

  I pry it out of his hands. “Leo sent it.”

  Finn frowns, looking back at the parking lot. “But why would he bother sending it if he’s—”

  Cam dives forward and claps a hand over Finn’s mouth. His eyes bulge, whatever he was going to say muffled incomprehensibly into Cam’s palm until she pulls it away, cackling. “Did you just lick me?”

  The door opens again, the bell jangling. My heart leaps before the rest of me does—there in the doorway is Leo, grinning broadly, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a bouquet of roses in his hand. He has to abruptly deposit them both on the empty table by the window, though, when I start running for him with the kind of speed that would incite terror in anyone else.

  I collide with him so forcefully that he ends up lifting me up from the ground and spinning me to absorb it, my legs wrapping around his torso and my arms so tight around his shoulders that I’m probably about to suffocate him. I lean back, grinning into his grin—the kiss tastes like cinnamon and warmth and Leo.

  He sets me down, his hands on my shoulders, my whole body dizzy with joy.

  “You’re here,” I say, grabbing his face between my hands to anchor myself. I kiss him again, ignoring the catcalls from Jemmy and Izzy and the throat clearing that sounds suspiciously like my mom. “How are you here? I thought—”

  “We ended up shifting everything a week earlier so Carla could get back in time for cheer conditioning,” he says, his hands moving down to my waist. “We got in this morning.”

  He pulls me in closer, and I rest my head against his chest, hiding the most ridiculous smile I’ve ever had. It isn’t the first time we’ve surprised each other like this, with him coming home for an unexpected weekend or me flying out to New York for spring break, but somehow the thrill of it never wears off.

  “Happy one-year anniversary, you dweebs,” says Connie, pulling me and Leo into another hug, one just as sloppy and silly as the hugs we were giving each other ten years before.

  When we pull away I look around the room, and I feel the full force of what happened a year ago, and a staggering appreciation for everything that has happened since. For the way my days then look almost nothing like my days now; for the little things that snowballed into big things that gave me the life I have today.

  It’s been a year of wandering all over Seattle with Leo on the weekends he comes to visit and cinnamon-soaked kisses in the rain. A year of our parents leaving me and Savvy to babysit my brothers during their monthly double-date nights, and my brothers essentially declaring shared custody of Rufus. A year of watching this place slowly come to life, shifting from Bean Well to Magpie with every new installation, every new couch one of us found at a thrift shop, every light fixture Mom and Pietra chose. A year of hearing all these stories spill out of my parents—from my dad’s illness to law school mishaps, from the years they were inseparable from Dale and Pietra to the new memor
ies they’re making with them now.

  A year of making memories of my own—the thousands I have saved in my camera roll, and more stamped into my heart than I could ever count. I glance around the room, drinking in the sight of my friends, old and new, gathered around the table; my sister, catching my eye with a smile; the sound of my mom and Pietra, cackling about something on their phones across the café; the velvety petal of Leo’s rose between my thumb and my finger. I close my eyes, breathe it in, and make one more.

  acknowledgments

  First of all, thank you to my little sisters, Maddie and Lily, the Blossom and Buttercup to my Bubbles, the keepers of my heart. I’ve loved getting older and seeing all the magical ways being a sister changes with time. I’ve gone from bossing the two of you around like it’s my job to learning more from the two of you than I’ll ever learn from anybody else. It is a unique privilege to have sisters, and I am endlessly grateful to be yours.

  Thank you also to our big brother, Evan, who is the best brother of them all (and you can fight three of his sisters and also two Shih Tzus on that).

  This book was written before the pandemic, but all of the efforts to bring it into the world were made during it. Even as I’m writing these acknowledgments we’re still living in it, and like everyone else, I have no idea what the world is going to look like in the next few months and years, let alone when You Have a Match is out. But one thing I never had to worry about was what would happen with it—everyone at Wednesday Books has worked so tirelessly and creatively to bring stories to life during these uncertain times and kept us a part of the process every step of the way, and for that I don’t know if a “thank you” will ever cut it. So while I can’t adequately express my gratitude for something that big, I will aggressively thank everyone there for the things I can. Thank you to Alex and Vicki for your support and the kind of edits that made me go “GALAXY BRAIN!!” a hundred times over. Thank you to Mara, for keeping my human self on track, and to Meghan and DJ for shouting “Book!” from the mountaintops. I am the luckiest human to get to work with y’all.