Mail Order Stepbrother(5)
And then his cellphone began to ring.
She thought for a brief, fevered moment, that it was hers. She had several patients still on the floor, one of whom she half expected to have an emergency at some point. But then he shifted and tugged the offending device out of his hip pocket and made a sound kind of like the noise a sleeping intern makes when they realize they’ve missed rounds.
“I have to take this,” he said, brushing Melanie’s hands from his pants.
“Yeah, baby,” he said a second later into the phone, “I didn’t forget. Yes, I’ll bring home milk and diapers…anything else?”
It was worse than a bucket of cold water poured over the head. It was more like the shock of an electrocution.
Melanie had never moved quite as quickly as she did in that moment. She grabbed her shoes—which she’d kicked off as they climbed into the car—and climbed most unladylike over the side of the vehicle without bothering to look for some sort of mechanism to open a door, smoothing her skirt down over her thighs as she marched toward her own car.
“Hey!”
She just kept walking, hoping he’d get the message and let her go.
He didn’t.
Jack grabbed her arm and spun her around. “What are you doing? Are you some sort of cock tease, or something?”
“You’re seriously asking me that? Do you think I’m deaf?”
“What does that mean?”
She laughed, a sound that was more like a very unladylike snort. “I heard you on the phone. Are you married?”
“Yeah.”
He said it like he assumed she had known or didn’t see why it would be an issue. Melanie just shook her head and turned away, again headed toward her car.
“Fine,” he called after her. “Your loss.”
She laughed again, but this time there was a little more humor in it. If she couldn’t laugh at herself and her own screwed-up life, she’d go absolutely insane.
***
Melanie went home and showered for a long time, scrubbing every inch of flesh that man had touched and every inch he might have touched if his poor, oblivious wife—she preferred to think the wife was oblivious, but for all she knew, they both screwed around like it was some sort of game or something—hadn’t called. When she finally felt clean enough to climb out, she indulged in her favorite lotion and curled up in her favorite cashmere bathrobe. She looked through the shows recorded on her DVR, but couldn’t find anything that seemed to fit her mood. Maybe she’d be better off just crawling into bed with a good book.
She was about to get up when her cellphone chirped. A new email had just arrived. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened the application. When she saw the name of the dating service on the sender line, she considered deleting the email without reading it. But really, how could reading a short note from some guy a dating service set her up with be any worse than what had happened to her tonight?
She opened the email and glanced at the name of the sender. Nash. He was one of the two who were local to her area, one of only two of the five that she had considered even a possibility. An interesting coincidence, right?
And then she read the body of the email:
Dear Melanie:
I have no idea what to say. I know absolutely nothing about you except for the fact that some algorithm that was probably designed by a fifteen year old kid says that we would be a good romantic match. I don’t even know why I joined this service, other than the fact that my luck with women in the real world has been less than satisfactory lately. It’s not that I can’t get dates, it’s just that I have a hard time meeting women who want to get to know me…the real me. Does that make sense? So, anyway, I joined this service and I’m paying them to find me a woman who’s willing to talk a little before we meet in the real world, so the least I figured I could do was email one who caught my attention. And, guess what? You’re that lucky one. So, if you’re interested, I’d likely respond to your response.
It was signed simply: Nash.
Melanie read it a second time, not really ready to admit that he seemed…great. He felt the same way she did about the service. And he seemed as weary about the idea that it would work as she. Yet, he was reaching out to her. So, who was she to ignore that attempt?
Melanie pulled out her laptop and composed a response. She ended up editing it to death and having to rewrite it more than once. But she finally settled on a short note that she hoped didn’t sound completely snobby and self-absorbed.
Dear Nash,
Your email made complete sense to me. I am a super-busy professional woman who’s had a lot of difficulty finding a man who either, 1) understands my commitment to my work, or 2) is after more than just a physical relationship. I joined this service as a sort of cry for help, I think, but I don’t really expect anything earth shattering to come out of it. But like you, I paid for it, so I figure I should give it a try. I just got my list of matches today and have yet to look closely at them. I guess the next thing I should do is look at your profile. Will I be surprised by anything I find there? I certainly hope not…You aren’t married, are you?