Page 45 of Match Me if You Can

Or without the copious f-bombs, anyway.

I tap the screen, bring Tori back up to full-size, and say, “Let’s get back to why you’re crying.”

“Violet,” she whispers, eyes filling with tears again. “I’m so dumb. I slept with him.”

“Right. I got that,” I say. “But more importantly, did he hurt you? Or make you do something⁠—”

A sharp shake of her head, those tears escaping. “No.”

“Then what, sweetheart?”

“H-he’s wonderful!”

I blink, not getting it.

“And last night was”—another sob—“it was amazing! B-but I’m so dumb. I fell in love with him and I slept with him and he…w-well, I don’t think he feels the same way about m-me.”

Ah.

And now I get it.

“Why do you think that, sweetheart?” I ask gently.

“Because he hasn’t said so.”

My heart squeezes. She’s going through it, feeling deep, and she’s uncertain and scared and vulnerable. “Stop for a second and think,” I order. “Maybe he hasn’t given you the words, but has he shown you how he feels?”

My mind drifts as she ponders that, remembering an air vent being closed on a plane because I shivered, a blanket being drawn up over me for the same reason. Remembering gentle fingers taking down my bun, a soft voice when my migraine was raging.

Then I deliberately shove those thoughts aside.

“He calls me every morning,” she whispers.

“That’s good, honey. What else?”

“And there hasn’t been a day since we started dating where we haven’t seen each other.”

“How else?”

“Um, he doesn’t cook but baked me a cake for my birthday.” She laughs softly. “It was somehow both underdone and burned and it was still the best cake I’ve ever had.”

Another pulse through my chest, and I don’t have to prompt her as she goes on, telling me about his nickname for her and the flowers he gives her just because, the way he listens when she talks about her family and how he took her to the beach solely because she missed hearing the sounds of the waves crashing against the shoreline.

“—and sometimes I catch him looking at me like…”

“Like what?” I prompt when she trails off, expression dreamy.

Her exhalation is soft. “Like I’m his whole world.”

I see Tyler’s return message slide down from the top of my screen.

TYLER: I found it.

TYLER: Oh God. Does she know I thought she took it?

TYLER: Is she pissed at me? Do you know where she is? I’ll chase her down.

Fucking men.