The day after an un-matching was always hard. That she was working a half day from home on a Sunday made it even harder, but she preferred not using her tiny amount of accrued PTO if she could help it. Luckily, her work was mostly rote and repetitive, so she could drink a lot of coffee and turn on an audiobook.
The day after an un-matching, she usually read or listened to romance, mostly to remind herself that the world wasn’t as bleak as the love lives of the people whom she’d saved. 
She had to think of it as saving them and remind herself they would have been worse off if they’d stayed with a horrible human being, because in the moment, the people she’d saved were angry or devastated or desperately trying to find a place to live or all of the above. 
The ones she hated dealing with, though, were the repeats. Some people seemed to have a sixth sense for “falling in love” with the cheaters and beaters and soul-eaters of the world and their families paid over and over to extricate them instead of seeing them hurt. Like, holy shit, there are nice people in this world, including the guy in the nearby city who was recently dragged out of a bad relationship, would you like to be introduced? 
But Genevra’s talent wasn’t for getting people together, it was for applying pressure on the sore spots to cause a public uproar and/or rip off the rose-colored glasses.
No, the ones she really hated dealing with were the ones who repeated their attachment with the same lowlife. 
“Oh but he said he’s sorry and he’s changed his ways and he can’t live without me.” 
Yeah right.
It always annoyed her a little that she had to charge for her services and to make it worth it, she had to charge a substantial fee, and therefore she was only helping relatively rich people who knew there was a problem. But her debts weren’t going to pay themselves. Ever since her work had cut overtime hours and started downsizing, she was on a knife’s edge of finances. 
She was currently trying to figure out how to advertise her services instead of relying on word of mouth. And not end up with the crazies or the snobs who wanted to break their darling rich child up from a perfectly acceptable poorer person. There’d been too many jobs where she ended up pushing sore spots that revealed the people involved were truly good at heart and suddenly the relationship was stronger than ever. She’d caused a few families to break ties with their kids who chose their partner over them. 
She’d refused to return quite a few deposits and barely broken even on too many jobs where they refused to pay the remainder.
And even if her day job was boring and she could do it with half of her brain listening to romantic suspense with Navy SEALS, she needed to focus better than she was doing at that exact moment.
She thought of the woman who’d confronted her at the wedding reception the previous day and wished again she’d at least gotten her name. Obviously, she wasn’t going to go on any dates with Ms. I Know My Family and You’re Not In It, but she’d been cute. 
Gen got up and stretched, accelerated her audiobook to keep the rest of her brain busy, then went back to work.
***
She got her next un-matching booked for Friday evening two weeks later. This one was local and not as high stakes as the day of the wedding, so if needed, she could meet the unhappy couple more than once. She charged the same deposit minus transportation and hotel, but the total was lower. She was thinking about raising her prices.
This time, her cover story was that she was the friend’s new girlfriend. They were trying to peel Jordan away from a woman who was ten years older and only wanted to marry him to get a Green Card and access to his bank accounts. This, according the man’s parents and this friend, who’d pooled their intel and the parents’ money to hire her.
She had the gut feeling they were racists, but for all she knew until she met this woman and poked at the pressure points, they could be right. Hadn’t the real-life younger husband from Waiting to Exhale been in it for a Green Card and not really madly in love with the author? 
Genevra needed to update her references and maybe find real-life romance stories with real-life happy endings. She’d been jaded for a long time, but her cynicism was getting out of control.
So according to the cover story she and Ben-the-best-friend had concocted over a video call, they’d been sleeping together for a few weeks and he wanted to introduce her to his best friend, so they were going for drinks after work. 
Ben picked her up from a coffee shop near his work, because she had no desire to give a stranger her home address. His vibes were OK. Not the sort of person she’d want to date, even if she were not a lesbian, because his self-assurance leaned toward an overly cocky, I-can-do-no-wrong personality and she wasn’t a fan. 
“Jordan is suspicious,” Ben said. “He wants to know why I hadn’t mentioned you before this week.”
“Because until this week, we didn’t feel like it was serious. After our date last weekend –”
He shook his head. “I was with Jordan last Saturday all day. We went snowboarding.”
Posh bros on small boards, paying a lot to fall down in snow. Fine. “OK, as long as either you didn’t hook up with anyone in the last three or so weeks, or Jordan doesn’t know about those hookups, it’ll be fine. Say we got together on Sunday and spent the whole day together. Doing...what do you like to do?”
He grinned and twitched his eyebrows. “I’m very good in bed.”
“That’s not why I’m here, but OK, we did some non-bed activity as well. Something we can say deepened our relationship. What will they believe?”
He pursed his lips in thought. 
“OK, what’s something you do with your bros that you could impress me with? That I possibly have an interest in, too? Sunday was sunny. Hiking? Bike ride? Wandering through the botanical garden? Cooking class?  Yoga? Give me something to work with.”
“I don’t usually have anything in common with women.” He shrugged. “Look, we’re almost there.”
“Do you have girlfriends? Or only women you sleep with?” Because he was giving off vibes of not considering women interesting, except for sex.
“Uh...” He swallowed.
She realized she was pressing magically on a sore spot. She didn’t ease up.
“Well, I got my heart broken a few times, so now I have friends and women and I keep them in separate categories, you know?”
“That’s legit,” she said. It was not legit. “If you want to find true love and a long-term, stable relationship, you might have to open up and make friends with women. You don’t have to snowboard with them instead of with Jordan, though that’s a good start.”
He sighed. “Yeah, that’s what my mom says. ‘Woman are people, Ben. Women do stuff other than wait around for you to show up.’”
She laughed. “Yes, we do. Maybe take that to heart. Your first job is to develop friendships that aren’t about sex. And if they lead to sex, that’s fine. Or you can start with sex and then find out if you have things in common.”
“Yeah, well. I’m only twenty-eight and I’m enjoying my life.” 
He was getting angry, so she eased off the sore spots and went into soothing mode. They were pulling into a parking garage next to the high-end brew pub they were meeting Jordan and Esperanza in, so they needed to put on a united front.
“Of course you are. But what we need right now is the rest of the cover story. We’re over the moon about each other, right? Jordan knows you well and won’t believe if I say we did yoga in the park and then walked dogs at the animal shelter. Or will he? We’ve had sex several times and recently discovered we have things in common. Now what is that thing?”
“OK, go back. You can walk dogs at the animal shelter? Because I can’t have a dog in my apartment and I want a dog.”
She laughed again. She wasn’t sure this guy was stable enough to care for a dog, especially because it sounded like he was never home. “OK, so here’s what we’re going to say.”
She pulled out her phone and asked pointed questions until they got to the front door of the pub.
“Ready?” she asked.
He was.
***
It went like clockwork for the first hour. 
She shook hands with that weak grip many straight women affected. Everyone talked about what work they did and where they were originally from and how nice that is and how Ben had once taken a sailing vacation in Baja, was that close to where Esperanza was from? (Not really. Like two thousand miles, though she was from a city closer to Cancun, which he’d also visited in college. Mexico’s big, Ben was surprised to learn.)
Gen and Ben – wasn’t that cute? – had gone out for a short walk to get groceries to make dinner (hinting it had been after they’d had sex) and met a friend of hers who had his dogs out for a walk, so they’d talked about how they wanted a dog and about great dogs of their lives (Ben had a German Shepherd when he was a teenager and missed that dog) and made plans to volunteer at the shelter. And then one thing led to another and they were spilling their life stories.
Which was the cute tale built from the bullet points. Ben was surprisingly good at improv, though he was more interested in Genevra than when they first met, which was worrying. He was turning out to have depths.
Esperanza and Jordan told about a similar time when they realized they were falling in love and Gen got actual tears hearing it.
It was only at the one hour point, when she asked Esperanza to go to the bathroom with her because the pub was full of loud groups of half-drunk men, that things started to fray. 
They were washing their hands and checking their makeup when Esperanza said with her barely-there accent, “Look, tonight is going great, but I have to mention that until today, it felt like Ben was trying to get Jordan to break up with me. Last Saturday, Jordan was supposed to come to dinner with my family, which is a really big deal, but when Ben heard, he suddenly had lift tickets and he could only use them that day and he didn’t know who else to invite.”
“Oh. I don’t do sports where I could break all the bones in my body,” Gen said, truthfully.
But she’d misread the problem and it wasn’t about how Ben hadn’t invited her to go snowboarding with him. It was because Jordan declined to take this important next step and meet Esperanza’s family.
“Me neither. I try to avoid the snow. Cold and wet and miserable. Blah. But Ben dropped everything to keep Jordan from spending the day with my family. It’s like he’s jealous.”
Or he didn’t like Esperanza. Oh. Hmmm. Yes, that would explain the vibes between Ben and Jordan when they touched, which was rarely. “He talks about Jordan a lot. Maybe he’s worried about losing his time with his friend? It sounds like they do a lot together.” 
Esperanza shrugged. “Maybe. I was worried when we started dating that he’d think of me like his mommy because I’m so much older, but he’s always been great about the age difference. I joke he’s my boy toy.”
And Gen saw everything. This wasn’t about a Green Card, this was about Jordan trying desperately to be hetero, wasn’t it? “Where do you see this relationship going?”
Esperanza shook her head. “I was hoping for marriage and babies, because I really am reaching, what do they call it? Advanced maternal age. Not reaching it, I’m in it. But I’m not sure Jordan’s the right one for me. He gets secretive and he drops things like a family dinner so he can hang out with Ben.”
“I’m sorry. It sounds like you two have things to talk about.” Genevra sighed. “Maybe I can get Ben to stop being difficult, now we’re really dating.”
“You think he’ll stop being jealous because now he’s sleeping with you?” Esperanza grinned hugely. “I hope that’s true.”
Genevra laughed at the thought that she had the magic hoo-ha or whatever it was that could tame Ben. “OK, so it’s bugging me, and I don’t want to sound racist. How long have you been speaking English? Because it’s flawless.”
“Since I was ten,” she replied. “We’ve lived here since then. I’ve had my Green Card for almost twenty years now.”
“Wow. That’s not always easy to get.” Gen tried to act cool. Either Jordan’s family and/or Ben were misinformed or, yeah, they were racist. Or Ben was jealous and Jordan’s parents believed whatever he said.
This un-match might happen, but not because Esperanza was the problem. Or it might not, if Jordan never managed to come clean with her.
They went back to the tiny, high table and their respective stools across from each other. 
Soon, Gen pleaded tiredness after a long work week, which was true. There’d been more layoffs and their data entry division was now completely AI with offshore subcontractors doing the details. If they could expand the AI, there would be more layoffs. But for now, they were increasing the work expected from everyone and still not allowing overtime.
Ben helped her with her coat and kissed the back of her neck, which she had to pretend to like. Out on the sidewalk, she told Ben to kiss her, because Jordan and Esperanza were about to come out the door.
He was a good kisser, she had to give him that. 
They said good night again and headed for the parking garage, holding hands. When they were definitely out of sight of the other couple, Gen pulled her hand away, though Ben tried to hold on.
“OK, so here’s my read,” she said. “She doesn’t need a Green Card because she already has one. She’s confused why you keep trying to break them up. I think she would be disappointed, but not heartbroken, not really, if it happened.”
“Oh? I was sure she needed a Green Card.”
“Did you ask?”
He said no, he just assumed.
“OK, here’s another life lesson: don’t assume. As they say, it makes an ass out of you and me. She’s lived in this country for most of her life, has a great job and a supportive family, and she wants to have babies before her body decides it’s too late. She thought Jordan was the right guy, but she might be changing her mind.”
They stopped by Ben’s SUV. 
“So you think they’ll break up?” Ben asked and hope burned bright in him.
“Maybe, maybe not. I think you and Jordan should admit you’re in love with each other and save everyone a lot of trouble.”
Which was a mistake, because when she went to get in, he didn’t unlock her door. He backed out, nearly running over her toes, and left the parking garage with a great squealing of tires.
She didn’t get a chance to suggest another double date so she could prod the other two apart.
She did call Jordan’s parents while she took a cab home and told them her findings about Esperanza. Not just because she had to get her side of the story in before Ben told them, but yeah, mostly for that. She let them know that she thought Jordan wasn’t done being a bachelor and if he did marry Esperanza, they’d be getting a wonderful daughter-in-law and beautiful grandchildren, so they didn’t have much to worry about. 
In spite of their disappointment and anti-immigrant bias, they transferred the money into her Life Coach Gen account. “Life Coach” because that was a vague job title with no official requirements.
She texted her new bestie Esperanza, saying she and Ben had an argument and they might not be hanging out again. 
Esperanza texted back saying she was sorry to hear it, could she help? 
Genevra replied that well, it was a disappointment, but they’d been dating for only a few weeks, so her heart wasn’t broken.
Live and learn, right?

​

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