Matchmaker

by Lauren Landish

  I laugh, shaking my head. “You know I read somewhere that Holmes and Watson probably did the dirty in Arthur Conan Doyle’s private notebooks?”

  “It ain’t dirty. Well, not too dirty,” Brad says with a smirk. “So, about your boyfriend-”

  I glower at Brad, elbowing him in the side. “He’s not my boyfriend. But he’s damn sure gonna take me for a ride. On that bike or otherwise.”

  A timer chimes softly and I walk back towards my second favorite chair, where I can still get a view of Evan at work, but not as good a view. I’ve got another client in it, chilling out with her earbuds in while a heat activated conditioner soaks into her scalp. I pat her shoulder and she opens an eye, popping out an earbud. “Hey Rose, your conditioning treatment is done. Ready to wash up?”

  Rose sighs, taking out the other earbud, looking disappointed. “Already time? Damn, my audiobook was just getting to the good stuff.”

  “Good stuff like goooood stuff? Well, don’t let me stop you. Just let it play out loud while I rinse your hair and maybe we’ll all enjoy the good stuff for a minute. Lord knows, I’m not getting any otherwise.”

  Rose, who’s a little younger than me and totally the good girl with a deep-seated naughty streak that will rock some guy’s world some day, laughs, popping the earbud jack out of her tablet to let the audiobook play. “...throwing her onto the bed, the pirate captain growls as he rips her bodice clean up the front, leaving her breasts heaving into the chilled air. Diving in, he suckles her nipple, her wanton body writhing in need for the long, hard sword she felt pressing against her through his tight breeches. ‘Please, Captain… please…’ she begs. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘Aye,’ the captain says, leering at her. ‘I’ll make you shiver on me timber.’”

  I bust out in raucous laughter, unable to take any more. “What the hell are you listening to, Rose? Some pirate porn shit? It’s literally a bodice ripper!”

  She’s laughing now too and Brad just stares at us like we’re from an alien species before he gripes. “Is that really what women read? Long, hard sword. Shiver on me timber. Seriously? It’s not that difficult.”

  “Oh?” Rose asks, grinning at Brad. “And what does it take then, oh expert on all things concerning male seduction?”

  Brad shrugs. “Girls, take it from me, just tell the man you want his cock and he’ll be ready to go nine times out of ten. Hell, they’ll be breaking down your door.”

  “Yeah well, gotta worry about our reputations,” Rose counters, making Brad shrug, unconcerned. “What?”

  “You know what a reputation is? It’s what you use to console yourself when you’re using a vibrator instead of the real thing.” He presses his lips together as he snaps his fingers and hums his agreement with his own statement. “And on that sage advice, I’m outtie for lunch. You bitches want me to grab you anything from the diner?”

  He points at each of us, waiting for us to shake our head before swooshing out the door. Brad’s relaxed more, being his fabulous self more in public and I’m glad. For now though, Rose and I look at each other and dissolve into giggles again. I wipe a tear from eye, “So… pirate porn, huh? Wouldn’t have pegged for that. Get it… pegged?”

  She groans and rolls her eyes at my bad pun, but sobers up. “Yeah, well, I’ve been so busy with the boutique, starting it on my own and working the B shift. I’ll be there when it opens, and I’ll be there when it closes, that I haven’t had time to date or have a personal life at all really.”

  “Hire some help,” I comment, but Rose shakes her head. “Why not?”

  “The boutique isn’t quite as popular as this place. And while I’m not worried about living the high life, I’d like to be able to afford to eat more than ramen noodles and box mac n’ cheese.”

  “Good point,” I joke. “All that MSG and shit’ll kill you.”

  Rose sighs, looking a little forlorn. “I’m probably gonna end up the cat lady who yells at customers to close the door when they try to come in and shop so my horde of cats don’t escape.”

  I start with the obvious, wanting to cheer her up. She’s the closest thing I’ve made to a new friend in this town, and I hate seeing her looking this way. “If you have so many cats that they’re gonna escape, your store is gonna close in a hot flash of a minute, Spinster Rose. So there, then you’ll have time to date. Problem solved.” I give her a pointed look. “Or you know, you could date now and bypass the cat scratch fever and Fancy Feast.”

  Rose nods her agreement. “I know. It’s just hard, even in a town this size and with tourists coming through. I thought I’d be a successful entrepreneur with a husband and a kid or two by now. But that’s just not in the cards, so my boutique is my baby and I’m so hard up that I listen to pirate porn instead of dating a decent guy with an actual cock. And no, I won’t let you look at my browser history.”

  I chuckle, and start rinsing out her conditioner. “It’s okay, honey. Maybe your ship will come in. Hell, maybe he’ll be the one who likes pegging.”

  “Huh?”

  I shake my head, remembering that I’m not in Hollywood anymore and things aren’t quite as adventurous. “Never mind. Just one word of caution, Rose. If that boat’s named Titanic, don’t get on the damn thing.”

  She giggles at me, finally relaxing some again. “How about you? New in town, anybody caught your attention?”

  I sigh dreamily, and resist the urge to look through the front window again. “Maybe. Do you know Evan across the street at the garage?”

  She recoils in horror, jerking so hard she nearly bonks her head on the porcelain edge of the rinse sink if it isn’t for my quick hand. “The asshole that barely speaks, just grunts at people and revs his death machine motorcycle up and down the street at all hours of the night? That Evan?”

  I nod, feeling a light blush creep up my neck. “That’s the one. What can I say? I’ve got good taste in men.” I purse my lips as I turn her head and get more of the conditioner. “And it’s not a death machine. It’s a pretty sweet bike.”

  Rose sighs. “Have you actually talked to him? I think the boutique was open for almost a year before he said one word to me and that was only because I took my car in for service and TJ wasn’t working that day. I told him what I needed and he grunted, said ‘3 o’clock’ and walked off. Customer service at its finest.”

  I shrug, she’s dead on even to the way she drops her voice to make it grunt a little. “Sounds about right. First thing he ever said to me was a volume ten as he charged me like a damn bull…” I lower my voice into an imitation of Evan, growling. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Rose’s eyes widen and her jaw drops, and she sits up, gaping at me while I work on drying her hair. “And then what?”

  I smile, working the towel through her hair before squeezing it out. I spin her chair around and pick up my scissors, knowing Rose doesn’t need much, but I do want to even her out in the back. “Well, after that great introduction, we had a big screaming match in the middle of Main Street. And a week later, I kissed the shit out of him before he ran. But he won’t be scared for long. He’ll be back.”

  “How do you know?”

  I grin, catching Rose’s eyes in the mirror. “Because now I’m a fear he has to conquer.” I kiss the air, smacking my lips, certain I know how this is going to play out. “And he might find that conquering me… well, I like to conquer myself.”

  Rose chuckles. “Is that so?”

  “Shiver me timbers.”

  Chapter 8 - Evan

  Lunchtime in the shop is always a bit awkward as my brother, TJ, and I try to make conversation like I’m not a bastard thorn in his side. We don’t even eat the same things. He’s all about the burgers and enjoying his food while I seem to take bitter comfort in eating shit that would make more sense in field rations.

  So here we sit, day after day unless he escapes to the diner, making small talk about the various cars we’re working on or flipping through car magazines scattered across
the table. I don’t even think we’re keeping track of what we’re saying, I know at least twice a week where one of us will go to the other about something we just talked about at lunch and it devolves into a shouting match because we’ve already discussed it, but we keep doing it. I guess it’s what brothers do.

  I’m damn grateful he’s willing to even work with me, but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable to chit-chat with a guy who knew you before you were fucked in the head with an alphabet diagnosis of PTSD that basically just warns folks that I’m always a breath away from losing it.

  I can see it in TJ’s face too sometimes. He remembers when we’d spend hours tinkering with our dad’s car, or with the bikes and cars our friends brought us. Hell, our wrench skills are what paid for what had to be one of the most epic Spring Break trips of all time, a four day trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona. I don’t think TJ and I slept in the same bed twice those whole four days, and I know for damn sure I never woke up with the same bedmate I did the night before. Thank god for condoms and Lady Luck favoring the young and foolish.

  Maybe that’s what TJ is looking for, the big brother who was fun-loving and maybe a bit crazy, but was the rock that helped him out when our parents died soon afterwards. TJ was ready to give up his dream for this shop and just get a regular job when I, on leave before my first deployment, pulled him aside and told him in no way, shape or form was I going to let him do that. Instead I made him sign up at tech college so he’d have the business skills to go with being a grease monkey, and then sent him a big chunk of my paycheck each month to make sure he was taken care of.

  He doesn’t know where that guy’s gone, or why. Sometimes, I wonder too. Lots of guys from my unit are doing well, settled stateside with wives and kids and I always wonder if they’re stronger than me for being able to handle the shit we saw overseas better than I can. Or maybe they’re less affected because there’s something wrong with them, and I’m the normal one.

  I don’t know, I just know that there’s always a little kernel of something black at my core and it swirls, rising and falling outside my control sometimes, no matter how many stupid fucking breathing exercises I try from the VA doc. Maybe it’s just what the one guy told me, there’s people who are made for war, and people who aren’t. Sometimes, the people who aren’t are forced into war, and it changes them, sometimes breaks them.

  I feel eyes on me and look up from the new bike magazine spread out in front of my microwaved tray of Salisbury steak, grainy mashed potatoes, and dark greenish shit that’s supposed to be either spinach or beans, I’m not sure which. I look up to see TJ giving me a look. My mouth’s, so I just grunt. “Wha?”

  He leans over from his lunch of a club sandwich on whole wheat, guess he’s trying to clean up for some reason he’s not telling me, to slap me on the shoulder. “How you doin’, brother?”

  I give him a what the fuck look. Normally, if TJ has something he wants to ask me, or to offer me, he just comes out and says it. This is something new, and new tends to make me put my guard up. New hurts, or at least hurts more than the old. “Same as always, just eating my damn lunch.”

  I don’t ask what he’s up to, like I said I really don’t want to know. But he is in full on fairy-flew-up-his-ass-mode, so he keeps going. “Well, I’m doing well. Very well, in fact. Thanks for asking.” He gives me a shit-eating grin, and I growl lightly. Great, fairy dust and unicorn rainbows. Someone get him a My Little Pony. “Ask me why?”

  I set my spoon down, wiping my greasy fingers on my jeans and rock the chair back on two legs as I look at him, trying to see if there’s something different I’m missing. Not seeing anything, I decide the easiest way to get through this is to just let him talk. “Alright fucker, why are you doing so damn well today?”

  I see the excitement behind his eyes and I flash back again to when we were boys, both whole and happy and full of life. He still looks the same, a wholesome innocence grown into a man who is solid, a brother in every sense of the word. For him, danger is the spice of life, like chili salsa on top of your tacos. You decide how much you get.

  Me, on the other hand, lost that shine a long time ago. I know that sometimes, the world will pry your jaws open, jam a funnel in between your lips, and pour fiery hot habanero down your throat and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. I don’t want to piss on his parade though and let him enjoy his innocence.

  He claps his hands once, nice and loud, the grin on his face spreading. “I met the one, man. Remember that car I delivered up to the resort for that tourist? Well, I’m sitting in the lobby waiting for him to come down for his keys and pay the bill, when a vision walks in front of me. Her name’s Alice and she works at the resort.”

  “Why haven’t you seen her before?”

  “She’s not a local,” TJ explains. “She just wrapped up a degree in hotel and hospitality management and moved down here. The resort’s nice enough to let her stay there, she’s got an apartment she said.”

  “She said, huh? So she actually talked to your ugly ass?” I ask, feeling a hint of amusement. “Does she happen to be blind?”

  “Fuck you, man,” TJ laughs. “We got to talking, I waited for her break time and we got coffee, and I asked her out. She said yes, and we’re going to dinner this weekend. That’s it, I’m done for bro.”

  He flops back in his chair, a fascinated, dreamy look on his face as he stares to the ceiling. Yep, I can see the kittens, unicorns, and rainbows falling out of his ears.

  I laugh a little, full of sarcasm. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but still, I think TJ needs a reality check. “Lemme get this straight, you met this chick, had coffee for a few minutes and you’re already planning the wedding? Yeah, sounds serious.” I snort through my nose, picking up my spoon again. “And everyone says I’m the crazy one.”

  TJ gives me a dirty look and I swear he’s about to stick his tongue out at me like we’re six years old again, but he reels it in. “Nah man, when you know, you know. And this one, I just know. She’s it. You’ll see.”

  He goes on, telling me practically verbatim every word they said while they drank coffee and I can feel his excitement and joy at the happy road spread out before him. As he does, I’m torn between darkness and light, which just makes me more miserable.

  I’m happy for my kid brother, truly, I am. He’s a good guy and while I harass him about it, he’s not ugly or anything. He keeps his shit together. But somewhere deep inside, in a place I don’t want to admit even exists, I’m fucking jealous.

  How come he gets the happy ever after and I’m stuck in purgatory, paying for sins I committed long ago on someone else’s orders. How come he gets to smile and sleep through the night and look out on the morning with hope, while I only look at the sunrise and wonder if it’s the last one I see before I go over the edge and get myself killed?

  I’d love for just a minute of the peace he feels, but that’s not my path. I’m never gonna have a happy ever after. There’s no woman that would put up with my shit, and I know why. It sounds like new age bullshit, but it’s true, I can’t be loved until I can love myself. It’s hard to love a monster like me though, and honestly I don’t want to inflict my damage on anyone else. I just need to keep the lid on the Pandora’s Box inside me and hope that motherfucker stays shut tight.

  I push back from the table, offering a hand to TJ as I school my face into a smile I know is only mildly reminiscent of my real one.

  “I’m happy for you. Make sure you invite me to the wedding. I’m uh… I’m gonna go for a ride. I’ll be back later this afternoon, but I’ll finish that brake realignment before I head out tonight.”

  I keep the smile just long enough for him to inspect me, make sure I’m okay and not about to crumble. I hate it when he does that, makes me feel like he’s just waiting for the moment I can’t take it anymore.

  Finally, he nods “Sure, bro. It’s a beautiful day, and they said they wouldn’t be back to pick it up until Wednesday anyway.
Get out there and ride a few miles for me too.”

  I know he’s full of shit now, he’s never ridden a motorcycle in his life. It’s another one of the differences between us. I’ve always been the one who pushed the line, from the time we were kids. He was the one who kept his bicycle on the sidewalk while I was the one seeing if that rocky hill was really as dangerous as the other kids said it was. When I built my bike, I offered TJ a ride. His comment was he had no need to strap himself to a death trap.

  But maybe that’s exactly why I do it. I’m not the suicidal type, but maybe there’s a part of me that wants to be taken out of this whole equation that is the world. Tempt fate a little bit, dare the Grim Reaper to catch me. After all, if he does it, I didn’t really do anything wrong.

  I stalk out to my bike, throwing a leg over the seat and settling my old combat boots on the ground on either side, straddling the machine as I start her up and listen to the grumbling purr. It’s another one of the things I can’t let go of. I always wear combat boots for work or riding.

  I look left and right, pulling a big turn across Main Street and pointing my bike towards the mountains. Right as I’m about to twist the throttle and blare out of town, I hear a loud-ass whistle. I jerk my head around, looking for the source and see McKayla standing outside the salon, her eyes locked on me.

  I pull over to the curb, pissed at myself for doing it like I’m some damn taxi she just beckoned with that ear-drum busting shrillness. Still, I’ve heard Drill Sergeants that were quieter than that whistle. That’s impressive.

  She pops a hip out, one hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun. “Where you heading, cowboy?”