“Me?” I frown.
“Yeah, I’m glad I had a chance to meet you.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because if I’d have spent the rest of my life believing you were some hotheaded zillionaire model chaser, I’d have been secretly disappointed.”
On some level, I suppose I am a hotheaded zillionaire model chaser—but I’d like to think my other qualities make up for that.
“What made you choose me in the first place?” I sip the sweet wine, letting it linger on my tongue until it turns velvet.
Blowing a tuft of hair from her eyes, she shifts in her spot. “Well. For starters, your moniker was Ambitious Athlete—very cute by the way.”
“Hm, can’t take credit for that. The clinic must’ve assigned me that name. Either way, it’s not wrong.”
“My family is laughably unathletic,” she says. “Like we tried this family bowling league one year, and none of us had an average above fifty. We literally got last place out of twenty-five teams. So right away, you were bringing something to the table that we didn’t have. And your bio said something about being adventurous, placing value on experiences over things.”
Ah, yes. I did write that back then—before I had money. When “experiences” were late-night road trips with no destination, hitting up a concert for some band I’d never heard of, and drinking Boone’s Farm with my closest friends in some middle-of-nowhere cornfield while a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower lit the sky.
Those were the good old days—and I’d forgotten all about them until now.
Life was simpler then.
“Also, it said you were half French and half Italian,” she says. “Which is what I am. Not that I’m some kind of bloodline elitist or anything, but I took it as a sign. And then of course, we were matched by the clinic. Genetically, psychologically, all that.”
Now that she mentions it, I remember having to fill out a fifty-page personality questionnaire and have an evaluation performed by a psychologist who asked everything from my sleeping habits to my earliest childhood memories.
“It’s funny though,” she continues, “because I don’t think we’d have ever matched in real life.”
Lowering my glass, I ask, “And why would you think that?”
Licking her lips, she tilts her head, laughing. “Do I really have to answer that?”
“Very much so.”
“Because you’re you … and I’m just a regular girl from the suburbs.” She does a quirky little jig with her arm, as if she’s trying to lighten her words, but when she catches the weight of my stare, her cheeks turn as pink as her lips. This topic obviously makes her uncomfortable. But the way she squirms under my hot lights gaze is undeniably sexy.
“What qualifies you as regular?” I use her words.
Her eyes widen, and her lips begin to move. “I … I don’t know … I think I’m pretty average in every aspect. Average height. Average weight. Brown hair. Mid-thirties. I’ve seen the women you date … plus, I’m all about the quiet, simple life and you’re this jet-setting mega athlete who probably doesn’t stay in one place for more than a week at a time.”
She isn’t wrong about that last part, but I disagree with her first statement.
The woman standing before me is anything but average, and I’d hardly call her regular.
“Does the self-deprecation schtick always work for you?” I ask.
“Schtick?” Her brows knit.
“When you talk to men, do you usually do the whole I have no idea how beautiful I actually am thing?”
“What? I’m not doing any kind of thing,” she says, jaw hanging slack. “You asked why I said what I said, and I gave you an honest, down to earth answer. We’re night and day. If you saw me on the street in jeans and a t-shirt, pushing a baby stroller, you wouldn’t think twice. You would not be rushing up to me and begging for my number. Which is totally fine. Not trying to be the most beautiful person in the room.”
She hides her chuckle with a generous sip of wine.
“That’s not true,” I say. “When I saw you earlier today outside the clinic, you stopped me in my tracks.”
Her ocean eyes roll to the back of her head. “Yeah, because I’d just tripped and I was making a spectacle of myself.”
“There’s nothing wrong with owning how attractive you are,” I say. In LA, women pay a lot of money to look like her—and it never looks natural.
“I think maybe you should slow down on that wine.” She nods toward my glass.
“I’ve had two sips.” I take another. “Three. I’m one-hundred percent of sound mind.”
She breaks eye contact, gazing toward her cozy, lived-in living room and back.
“Are we flirting? What is this? What are we even doing?” She squints, hooking a hand on the back of her hip. The lapel of her robe falls open, revealing a hint of a lacy black camisole. She’s one careless move from spilling out of that thing and I doubt she has a clue.