Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Iris
I stare at Matteo, mouth full, mid-bite.
I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.
Did he actually just tell me—out loud—that our building is magic?
I’m not sure what surprises me more—the fact that he admitted it or the fact that he’s willing to talk to me at all.
I swallow my bite and wait for him to continue. When he doesn’t, I say, “What do you mean? Like, for real magic? As in Merlin and casting spells and?—”
“No, it’s not exactly?—”
I keep talking. “Who started it? Is there, like, a coven? Is it scary magic? Am I going to get turned into a frog? Or maybe it’s more like Harry Pot?—”
“ Iris.”
It’s the first time he’s said my name, and when he does, I stop. A shiver runs down my arms. I force myself to ignore it.
“What I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make any sense,” he says.
“Nothing about this entire last week has made sense,” I quip, stabbing another piece of chicken. “Have at it. ”
He picks up the loaf of bread, tears off a small piece and pops it in his mouth. After chewing thoughtfully for a moment, he says, “I’m trying to figure out the simplest way to explain this.”
“Just say it. No matter how ridiculous it sounds.”
He half laughs to himself. “No matter, huh?”
“And don’t leave anything out,” I say. “I don’t want the abbreviated version here.”
He swallows the bread and goes for another piece. “Fine, but are you prepared to leave here, after I explain everything, and still not understand what’s happening? No—more accurately, not understand why it’s happening?”
At that, my shoulders drop. Because no, I’m not. I want answers. The why. The how.
“Because I don’t have those kinds of answers.” He glances at my plate. “Is the chicken tender enough?”
I look down quickly. There’s only one bite of chicken left. “It’s perfect.”
He nods, then arranges his own perfectly layered bite of sauce, pasta and breaded chicken on his fork. The bite looks as meticulous as this office, neatly stacked, as if this is exactly how it was meant to be eaten.
He sticks the fork in his mouth, and for a few long seconds, it’s like he’s assessing something. The taste? The flavor? The balance? I have no idea, but the way he chews is wildly different from the way I chew.
I eat like two seals fighting over a grape. Matteo, not so much. I absently wonder when was the last time he really enjoyed a meal. Without grading it or looking for ways to make it better.
After he swallows the bite, he sets down the fork.
“That’s it?” I ask, going in for another bite.
“What’s it?” He looks confused.
“You’re not going to eat the rest?” I take the last chunk of chicken and do my best to assemble my own perfect bite, dragging it through sauce, swirling on a few strands of pasta. It’s not nearly as neat as his, but it tastes way better. “You should eat.”
“You should stop talking with your mouth full.” He says this flatly, but I catch the slight smirk he’s trying to hide.
“You should pack up your knives and go, because you’re about to be chopped.” I playfully hold up the knife at him.
Careful, Iris. This is what you do.
“If you’re used to Pop-Tarts, I guess I can’t fault you for reacting the way you do to actual cooked food.” The corner of his mouth twitches.
I think he means to tease me, which is a sign that maybe I’m not the most annoying person he knows.
That feels like a win.
“Maybe the food is terrible and I’m just delirious with hunger.” I take a sip of my water.
“It’s not,” he says, confidently.
I smile behind my water glass, and after I set it back down, I shake my head. “So cocky.”
“It’s all the awards,” he says, dryly. “Remember? I’m a big deal.”
And I start to think maybe there’s an actual human behind that robotic facade.
The awards are impressive, but I’m not going to gush. That’s the kind of thing the old Iris would do. Shower him with compliments in hopes of getting him to like her.
My superpower is oversharing. And over-asking. I want to know everything about everyone, which usually ends up suffocating the other person, and then they leave. Some for a few minutes, others for the rest of my natural life.
Enough about that. I’m here for answers about the magic. He’s probably close to reaching his weekly quota of words spoken out loud, so I need to stay on track .
“Tell me what I need to know about our building.” I push his plate closer to him, and after a pause, he capitulates, picks up his fork, and takes another bite.
Look at us, having a meal together.
Magic , my brain, the little traitor, whispers.
“My grandpa lived in my apartment before me. I used to spend summers with him and my grandma.”
“The one who taught you to cook?” I ask.
He nods.
“The smell must’ve been otherworldly.”
He cracks a small smile. “When I was a kid, I loved being there. My grandparents were very social, and there was always something going on. But I never saw anything to make me think The Serendipity was anything other than, you know, just a building.” He pauses, takes another bite, methodically chews.
I do the same, though I’m eating at a much quicker pace than he is. “I think having the ability to make food like this whenever you want has desensitized you to how amazing it is,” I say, a total non sequitur.
His eyes dart to mine, and he frowns.
“Sorry, go on.”
He pauses, like my comment has thrown him, and I tell myself that interrupting someone who doesn’t like to talk is probably not a great strategy for keeping the conversation going.
“After my grandma died, I started coming around more, mostly to check on my grandpa, but still, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.” He takes a quick sip of water, and I watch the muscle in his jaw tense. It’s a well-defined jaw, with just enough stubble to look sexy and not unkempt.
Not something I should be thinking right now when he’s finally about to answer my questions.
Focus, Iris .
“But then, uh . . . a little over three years ago, my grandpa met someone new, got remarried, and moved to Italy.”
“No way! How fun!”
He makes a pained face, and I can’t tell if it’s how I said what I said, or just what I said.
“Yeah, he’s just living it up over there,” he says.
I take another bite. “I would too. Italy? It’s like another planet to me.”
He stops talking for a moment, and I suddenly fear that’s all I’m going to get out of him, but then he starts talking again.
“So, I took over the lease on his apartment. Not too long after that, things started to”—he looks at me—“get weird.”
“Weird, how?” I ask, wishing I had more than one bite left on my plate.
He shakes his head, looking like he’s trying to figure out the best way to say it. Finally, he says, “The newspaper.”
I set down my fork and wipe my mouth with a napkin, waiting for him to go on.
“I got a newspaper at my front door. Big deal, right? Thought it was junk. Something everyone was getting and throwing away.” He looks at me, eyeing his food and my empty plate, then quirks a brow. “Are you still hungry?”
Is it that obvious?
I lie and shake my head, holding up a hand because good grief , I just devoured another one of this man’s meals, what more do I need?
Little does he know that if the plate were edible, I would have eaten it, too.
It’s that good.
He sets his fork down and slides his plate toward me.
“I can’t eat your dinner.” I lean back in my chair.
“I’m good. I promise. Eat.” He watches me as I take another bite. “Better than eating like a twelve-year-old. ”
“Don’t knock the Pop-Tarts till you try them,” I say, pointing my fork at him.
“You don’t actually like Pop-Tarts,” he says, making a face as if he just ate something sour.
“False. Brown sugar and cinnamon or strawberry. Or both, stacked on top of the other.”
He indicates to his left. “Guaranteed Nicola’s pastries will ruin Pop-Tarts for you.”
I glance over at the small tray of desserts on the desk, then back to his plate, which is now fully in front of me.
“Ooh. I’ll save room.”
He leans back in his chair and watches for a few seconds while I continue to devour more than my share of this dinner. I can’t help it. I have zero self-control. The only problem is, I’m never going to want frozen pizza again.
“So. Newspaper. What happened with it?” I ask.
“It kept coming back,” he says, simply.
Ah. So the same thing that happened to me.
“Didn’t matter what I did or how many times I threw it away,” he says, sounding frustrated. “And then one day, I came home, and my living room was full of newspapers.”
“Oh, my gosh, me too,” I say, almost reverently. “That’s what I tried to show you in the hallway the other day—my apartment was full of them.”
He nods.
He understands.
Relief washes over me. Because for the first time since this started, I don’t feel completely alone. Someone else has experienced the exact same thing as me.
“Why didn’t you just tell me in the first place?” I ask, not hiding the accusation in my tone.
He looks at me like I just asked him to add Fruit Roll-Ups to his menu .
“Tell you? You mean, ‘Hey, we just met, and oh, by the way, this building delivers magic newspapers’?”
I shrug. “Fair point.”
“Plus,” he continues, “all the people I talk to about the newspapers don’t remember.”
This makes me pause.
“They don’t remember,” I absently repeat in an awe-filled tone. “Like Brooke and Liz.”
“The only other person I’ve talked to about them is my grandpa,” he says, and then after a pause, “and now, you.”
It’s like I’ve just been let into a secret society, one with only a handful of very elite members.
“So, wait. Is this real ?” I’m instantly giddy. “I mean, are we really discussing magic like it’s something that actually exists?”
He sighs. “It would appear so.”
“Okay. Okay.” My mind is racing. There is so much I want to know. “How often do you get a new paper?”
“It depends,” he says. “I’ve gone months without one before, but I’ve also gotten two in the same week.” He glances over at the tray of pastries, almost like he’s contemplating whether he should eat one.
I stack my empty plate on top of his now empty plate and move them aside, then pull the pastry tray to the center of the desk. “Do you want to share them?” I pick up one of the clean forks Nicola left with the desserts and hand it to him.
To my utter shock, he takes it, then cuts into a slice of cheesecake.
“It’s like . . . when someone needs something, the newspapers show up,” he says.
“Things like . . .?”
“Bringing a cat to a lonely neighbor,” he says, smirking a little. “Which will ultimately lead to her meeting this swinger.”
I laugh out loud. “He’s not a swinger . ”
“Swing dancer.”
“ Square dancer.” I can’t keep from giggling.
Matteo looks confused for a split second, and when he makes the connection, he hides his smile and looks away.
Endearing . My insides warm.
“Does that mean you think Winnie and my new friend Jerry are . . . soulmates?” I borrow Liz’s word, but I don’t do anything to hide the fact that I’m not buying in to the idea.
“If that’s what you want to call it.” He says it so easily, it catches me off-guard.
“Wait, for real?”
“Sometimes—but not always—that’s where these things lead.” He takes another bite.
“So . . .” I pause to taste a bite of cheesecake and wrap my head around this idea. “You’re a matchmaker, and oh, my goodness, this cheesecake is amazing.”
He harrumphs a reply, and I can immediately tell he doesn’t like that title.
“A grumpy matchmaker with a sweet tooth.” I close my eyes, now focusing on nothing but how this cheesecake tastes. “This is incredible.” I open my eyes and find him still watching me. “Did you make this too?”
He shakes his head. “Nicola is the pastry chef.”
“Right. She said that.” I pause. “So that’s why you’re free to eat it like a human instead of a robot in charge of quality control.” I move to the tiramisu and try a bite.
Heaven.
He frowns at me. “I don’t eat like a robot.”
“You do, but okay.” I take a sip of my water, then smack my lips together loudly. “I need to cleanse my palate.”
He allows himself a tiny laugh as he shifts in his seat. I’ll take it. For a second, I think he’s going to argue with me, but instead, he says, “I’m not a matchmaker.”
I laugh at the disdain in his voice. “Oh, let me guess, you’re one of those guys who got his heart broken, and now you don’t believe in love.”
He reacts like he was just slapped, and there’s a shift in the air.
I feel the mood change from light-hearted to tense, and I know I messed up. What I don’t know is how. And I want the whole story.
Way to go. You don’t need the story, Iris.
He sets down his fork and doesn’t respond.
I desperately try to salvage the conversation.
“I’m . . . sorry if I said . . . I shouldn’t have . . . sometimes I just, you know, open mouth, say stuff, and it’s not always . . .” I tilt my head down a bit to try to catch his downward gaze.
He looks at me, and I can tell there is a really deep wound there.
“I should know better. If anyone knows about heartbreak, it’s me.” I hitch both thumbs back in my own direction. “Definitely the heartbreak queen.” I frown. “That makes me sound super pathetic and—” I wince. “I’m just sorry.”
I don’t expect him to say anything back, and I mentally prepare myself to pack up my things and leave, when he says, “It’s fine. It’s just—” He stops. “But maybe we can stick to . . . you know.”
Understood.
“The newspapers. Got it.”
I pick up the plate of tiramisu. “And I’m not going to share this one.” I smile, because I don’t like the tension in here.
“Figures,” he says, and I sense he’s also missing the lighter mood. “It’s our best-selling dessert.”
“Is it your favorite too?” I ask.
He gives his head one quick shake. “For me, nothing beats cheesecake.” He leans back but doesn’t take another bite .
“How long has this been happening?” I ask, hoping we can move on. “The newspapers?”
“Started almost immediately after I moved in, three years ago.”
“You’ve been doing this for three years?”
“Wish I could say no,” he mutters. “But yeah.”
Huh. So, he doesn’t want to be a member of the secret society. Got it. Maybe that’s why the magic has gotten me involved.
“You should give Nicola a raise,” I say, holding up a forkful of tiramisu.
He chuckles quietly and says, “She’d love that,” and picks up his fork again, almost like his attempt to set it aside keeps failing.
“So, three years of articles,” I say, thinking. “How many couples have you matched?”
“I don’t keep a scrapbook.”
“But you’re a part of people’s stories.” I watch him. “That’s kind of amazing.”
“If you say so,” he says, again with a bite of irritation in his tone. “I think it’s a huge pain.” He pauses. “You’ll see.”
Right.
So, this hasn’t turned Matteo into a hopeless romantic. I wish I could say the same. There’s a part of me that will always believe in fairytales and happy endings, despite my experience.
“So, what do we do next?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I think you should introduce Winnie to?—”
“Jerry,” I say.
“Jerry.”
“And then what?”
Another shrug. “And then you wait and see what happens. Usually, an introduction is all it takes. ”
“Right,” I say. “I guess that’s how it works with soulmates .” I say this ironically, because what do I know?
I do love the idea of Winnie getting a second chance at love. And I like the idea of playing Cupid, even if my own love life needs an editor.
This could be great for Winnie. A friend. A companion. Someone to keep her from being lonely. Isn’t that what we all need?
I think so, but if that’s true and everyone is searching for the people who will just “get them,” why are they so difficult to find?
I scrape the last bite of tiramisu from the plate, thinking that if I could figure out a dignified way to lick up every last smear, I would.
Matteo must sense this because he raises a brow and says, “I think you got it all.”
I set down the fork and push the plate away. “And I’m stuffed.” I turn and grab my purse. “Do you want to bring me the bill or . . .?”
He waves me off. “On the house.”
I freeze. “Whoa! You don’t have to do that. I wouldn’t have eaten like a lion over a zebra carcass if I’d known you weren’t going to charge me!”
He actually laughs.
I actually like it.
“I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or as a reason to avoid you altogether,” he says.
I hang my bag back on the chair. “Eh. Maybe both.”
With all the food gone, I don’t know what to do with my hands. I fold them in my lap, not quite ready to leave. “So, are we partners now or what?”
He meets my eyes, confused. “No.”
I feel myself deflate .
“I’m just hoping that if I tell you what I know, maybe this magic is going to finally leave me alone and become someone else’s problem.”
“Right,” I say, acutely aware that that “someone” is me.