Chapter 2
Luke
Cassie looks gorgeous even with her mouth hanging open like that. The studio lights love her, giving her skin a warm glow that complements the large yellow and tan flowers on her skirt.
I know Cassie well enough to know she’s forcing a smile, forcing herself to trade niceties back and forth with Felicia. I sink into my couch and press my palms to my forehead.
“What have you done?”
My heart leaps. I spin around. “Mom! You have to stop sneaking in!”
“Luke Curtis, what have you done?” She’s holding her morning mug of tea.
“What are you doing here at seven thirty in the morning? We’re supposed to be neighbors, not roommates!”
I moved back to Charleston two months ago, trading the hustle and bustle of L.A. for a much calmer pace. The L.A. branch of my venture capital firm, Stratos Capital, runs smoothly without me, allowing me to open a branch here. I’ll still head to L.A. now and then and do weekly virtual check-ins, but I trust my partners to handle most of the daily business.
However, there’s a glitch in my dream of paradise in historic Charleston. Mom.
She promised she’d live in the guest house. In other words, she’d stay there most of the time, and I would retain my privacy in the main house. We would be like neighbors, she said. Turns out, our definition of “neighbors” differs. Mine means keeping to yourself. Hers means popping in for random daily visits.
Mom rushes over and perches on the edge of my La-Z-Boy. “She looks mortified.”
“You can tell?” Maybe I don’t have a Cassie spidey sense. Maybe this is a bigger disaster than I realized. And it’s playing out on live TV.
“Luke, what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, Mom,” I say gruffly.
“Her application just happened to match her with you? The guy who treated her like complete trash?”
“I didn’t treat her that badly.”
“Cheating on her isn’t ‘that bad?’”
“Okay, it was bad. But it wasn’t like I was mean to her or anything.”
Mom levels her eyes at me. “Luke.”
“I was mean behind the scenes, but not when we were together. I treated her like a princess.”
“Which made your infidelity all the more devastating for her, I’m sure.”
I glance at the television. Cassie and Felicia are still talking.
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe.”
“I’ve been there, son. I know what it’s like to be cheated on. You and your father are too alike sometimes. You both think you can strong-arm your way into getting what you want.”
I take after my dad in a lot of ways. We’re both handsome—Mom says too handsome for our own good. Not that handsomeness is an excuse. It’s not. Cheating is a character flaw, and I’ve come to terms with mine. Dad, not so much.
“It only happened once,” I say.
“You only cheated on Cassie once, but what about all those other women you cheated on?”
“I’m not proud of my past.”
“You set this poor woman up on national television, didn’t you?”
“It’s not national television. It’s local.”
“Close enough. Did you?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe.”
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe,” Mom mocks.
I glare at her.
Mom purses her lips.
I sit up, lean over, and stare at the floor with my elbows anchored on my knees. “Fine. I might be a secret investor in her startup. And I might have had one of her IT guys add my name to her database. But I didn’t know Cupid was going to pull my name up.”
No comment from Mom.
I clasp my hands together and look at her. “Well?”
“You have to make this right. If she’s the one, you have to fix it.”
Yeah. You heard that right. A couple nights ago, I told Mom Cassie is “the one.” See, I thought I was going to be home alone. I know, drinking alone is bad, but I hardly ever do it, and sometimes, rarely, when a guy is pining extra hard for his old girlfriend, he wants to sulk with some libations in peace and quiet.
The quiet didn’t last. My mom popped into my living room with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and hijacked my night. I was a couple of cocktails in when she arrived. I don’t remember much of our conversation. I just know the next day Mom was talking about how I’d said Cassie was “the one.”
I’m never drinking again.
“You couldn’t think of a better way to reconcile with Cassie?” Mom asks. “I don’t know, maybe call her up, say you’re sorry, and ask her to join you for coffee?”
My phone buzzes. I reach for it.
“In hindsight, yes,” I say as I swipe up.
Cassie sent me a text.
I look at the television. She’s still on set, looking at her phone, waiting for me to respond. Felicia looks giddy.
Hi, Luke. Our match came up on MatchAI. How do you feel about a blind date, maybe tonight?
The message glows on the large screen behind her. This conversation is live.
I wait a few moments to make it seem more legit. Then I type, Hi. Sure, a date tonight would be amazing.
I think about typing more, something like, “I’m glad Cupid matched us together,” but that feels too sappy. I keep my eyes glued to the TV as I hit send.
My message pops up on the screen behind her. Maybe I’m reading too much into her body language, but I think she’s relieved, which buoys my mood. Maybe this won’t be a disaster.
“This is going to be a disaster,” Mom says.
I roll my eyes to the ceiling.
The news fades to a commercial.
“I don’t know what goes through your head sometimes, son.”
Cassie
As soon as the news segment ends, I say thank you to Felicia and the production staff and then zoom out of the studio with Sarah following closely behind.
“That was great, boss,” Sarah says as she struggles to keep up. “You were brilliant. And that Luke. Shew! He’s a hottie.”
“Looks aren’t everything,” I grumble. The unrelenting August heat intensifies my inner cauldron of anger.
“They’re a good start,” Sarah muses, “especially for picky people like me.”
Sarah has several stipulations when it comes to dating. He has to be clean. No weird moles. Definitely no skin tags. He can’t stink. (She puts musky cologne in the stink category.) And she won’t kiss a guy with coffee breath, even if he brushes his teeth five times before kissing her. She’s my most epic matchmaking challenge to date and you better bet, I’m going to find her someone.
After I clean up the mess that just landed on my lap. (I didn’t throw up on live TV, but I was close. Oh, so close.)
When we’re out of earshot of the WSAV staff, I turn around and claw my hands through my hair. “This is a disaster.”
Sarah’s expression flips from elated to concerned. “No, it’s not. You did amazing. You didn’t even seem nervous. The lighting made you look like a runway model.”
“My match, Luke Curtis, is the Luke.” I’ve mentioned Luke to Sarah before but never shared a picture.
Sarah’s chin mops the asphalt. “The Luke who cheated on you?” Anger creases her brow.
“Yes.”
“Oh my gosh, Cassie! What now?”
I cross my arms and shift my eyes to the clouds. My anger dissolves into disbelief. “How did he do it? How did that jerk pull this off?”
“You think he set you up?”
“I didn’t even know he was in Charleston. How did he just happen to pop up in my database? What are the odds of that?”
“One in one hundred?”
Sarah’s practicality during my crisis makes me want to explode into a multi-sentence word vomit, but I stop myself. She has a point. She’s technically correct. But how did Luke manage to become one of one hundred? That’s the question he’s going to have to answer after I punch him in the face on our “blind” date.
I did this to myself. I didn’t think through the launch strategy, its potential pitfalls, its unintended negative consequences. Granted, being matched with Luke Curtis on live television never would have come up in my brainstorming sessions. I thought he was still in L.A. What is he doing in Charleston and why is he cyberstalking me?
“Are you going on the date?” Sarah asks.
“Do I have a choice?”
Sarah chews on her lip while mulling over my question. “Your entire launch strategy revolves around you dating the first guy Cupid pulls up. If you back out, it makes it look like you don’t trust your app.”
I drop my arms to my sides and trudge to my car.
Everyone saw Cupid’s first choice, Luke Curtis. They saw him text me back. They know we connected. They know he accepted my offer.
I’m stuck.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah, what?” Sarah says, with one hand on the passenger side door.
“If I don’t go on a date with Luke Curtis, my entire launch might fail. I have to go through with it.”
“It might not be that bad.”
“You haven’t seen me when I’m mad.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Not when I’m really mad.”
Sarah shudders. “As long as there’s no blood involved, I think you’ll be fine.” We both get in the car. “And if there is blood,” Sarah continues as she straps in, “make sure to clean it up before you go live on Instagram.”