Chapter 3
A MATCH OR A MISTAKE?
VIOLET
Which part of a book are you—the prologue, the climax, or the quiet chapters in between?
SilenceInMidnight: The quiet chapters.
I haven’t slept.
Actually, I haven’t really slept in three days, not since the email from FYS landed in my inbox with the subject line: You’ve been matched!
Three months. That’s how long I’ve been on the website. Ninety-three days of waiting, wondering, hoping, and answering every single one of those deep, soul-prodding questions that gave me pause and made me feel like I was peeling back layers of myself.
And finally they did it. They found him!
My cheeks ache from smiling. It’s not that I didn’t believe FYS would work. I mean, why else would I have signed up and spent four full days perfecting my answer to every question?
I knew what was at stake.
But still… I didn’t realize I’d feel this rush, this full-body buzz.
I’ve always believed he was out there. My person.
It never mattered to me if he lived oceans away, because Cherrywood, my darling hometown, is basically a slice of heaven.
If he’s truly mine, I know he’ll immediately see that there’s no prettier place to live and grow a family than here.
This town has everything—jobs, charm, and a slow, meaningful way of life.
But above all, it will have me. For him.
I tap the power button on my laptop, and the screen flares to life.
Six hundred fifty-three unread emails.
My chaotic disaster of an inbox is a perfect reflection of my own unfiltered, messy personality.
Every day I receive half a dozen emails from online pet stores about sale offers, even though I don’t own a single pet.
And let’s not forget banks urging me to “act now” on investment plans, despite the fact that I don’t exactly have a vault of gold coins hidden under my bed.
I’m not broke, per se. I have a job I love. I can’t imagine myself doing anything other than writing gossip columns for the Cherrywood Gazette, where I get to tell stories, share secrets, and spill tea. I was basically born for this thing.
So yeah, my life is good.
I stare at the inbox again. Focus, Violet.
That’s the other thing. My brain is basically a carousel that never stops spinning. At any given moment, I’m thinking about breakfast, dirty laundry, the rumor I’m chasing down for Thursday’s column, and whether I left my straightener plugged in.
I’m unapologetic chaos.
But I like me. I really do. And if I’m being honest, the only thing missing from my perfect world right now is someone to share it with.
I crave a love I can grow roots into, the kind I can breathe in and out of like air.
I was barely a toddler when my parents died in a car crash.
My grandparents, already in their seventies, took me in and poured everything they had left into raising me, their daughter’s daughter, like their own.
They made my childhood feel safe and whole.
But just when things started to feel normal again, we lost Grandma.
I remember praying that God wouldn’t take Pop from me too.
I’d overheard my grandparents whispering in the dark nights, mourning the daughter they lost, and I wondered how I’d live without any parents. Yet every time, I came to the same quiet, unshakable truth—neither of my parents would’ve survived without the other.
That’s how I first understood how legendary love could be, and I want that for myself.
Pop used to tell me that the women in our family have hearts so big we could love the entire world if we tried.
He’d press his wrinkled hand to my chest and say, “Love starts here, kiddo. You can’t give it to someone else until you’ve learned to give it to yourself first.”
So I did.
Since I was going to love this whole world one heartbeat at a time, I started with my own messy, too-loud, scatterbrained self first. Now I’m ready to love someone else just as wildly.
And today might be the beginning of that journey.
I scroll until I finally find the email buried under a landslide of spam and newsletters I swear I unsubscribed from.
Dear ChaosInPurple,
Congratulations!
Your perfect match, SilenceInMidnight, has agreed to proceed to the next step.
Using the link below, you can now view his answers to the FYS Compatibility Questionnaire.
We hope your story becomes one of our most magical matches, and maybe even one that ends at the altar.
Love always,
The FYS Team
SilenceInMidnight.
The name makes my chest flutter. It’s not what I expected, not even close. It’s the total opposite of mine—ChaosInPurple.
Does it describe him the way my name describes me? And if it does, what does it really mean?
FYS has matched us, after all. There must have been something in his answers to indicate he was my perfect match. Does it mean I’m meant to shake up his silence and he’s meant to anchor my chaos?
My hands tremble as I log in to the portal. There it is, a golden tab on my profile: Your Soulmate. I click it and read his first answer.
What’s your idea of a perfect date?
SilenceInMidnight: No words. No pressure. Just being.
That’s it. Six words. I stare at them for a long moment, as if they might bloom into something more if I just keep looking. But of course they don’t change.
Six tiny words… for a question I practically wrote a novel answering. I had to edit mine down three times just to make it under the word-count limit, but this man, allegedly my perfect match, didn’t have that problem.
My smile falters.
Did FYS make a mistake?
How else can I explain that my soulmate could describe something as sacred as a first date in a mere six words?
But even as doubt creeps in, there’s something about his answer that sticks with me.
So, I keep reading, one response after another, each crafted with the same perfection and surgical precision. There’s no fluff, no exaggeration, just the truth, plainly told.
By the time I reach the last question, my pulse has slowed and I’m almost nervous to hit Next.
Still, I click the golden button and the screen refreshes.
Dear ChaosInPurple,
It’s time for you to pick your preferred mode of communication with SilenceInMidnight. You have the choice of texts, emails, calls, or all three. All communication will be exclusively conducted via the FYS portal.
Love always,
The FYS Team
I lean back in my chair, heart knocking against my ribs, not with fear, but also not quite with the excitement I’d hoped to feel when I finally got matched.
It’s that strange in-between, where something is about to begin and I don’t know how to feel about it.