Perfectly Unmatched (3 page)

karfiolleves
, her special cauliflower soup that can cure anything, for me.
              When I know she’s far off, I bury my head in the pillows and unloose long, keening, choking wails and sobs.
              I cry for my own stupidity, for not being able to see Damian for the snake he is.
              I cry for the loss of my love, gone forever once I witnessed a single, unforgivable act.
              I cry for my family, who, I realize, I’ve let down, and myself, because I’m lonely and worried and worn out from caring for so many people and never getting a break.
              I cry because Damian’s shoulders were never going to be the ones I could share the weight of my problems with.
              I cry for all the wasted, stupid, idiotic feelings I poured into a love that wound up crushing me.
              When I don’t have a single tear left, I sleep. I wake up to my mother’s knock and eat her soup in the dim light of my bedroom. I let my misery play on repeat for one more day before I stop sobbing and moping and get a shower. I put on a cute outfit and hid my puffy eyes with expertly applied eye makeup. Then I take my sentimental box full of Damian keepsakes, ticket stubs, pictures, jewelry I could only wear around him, some pressed flowers he’d picked for me or bought to say he was sorry, and I chuck the entire thing in the trash.
              My parents are sitting in the living room, watching a soccer game.
              “Mama, Pop.” They both looked up, relief on their faces. “I feel much better. And I’ve been thinking. I think I should go to Aunt Abony’s a little ahead of schedule this year. I’ve already booked my ticket.”
 

Cormac
1

The sun puddles all of its light in the middle of the wide, still lake. No matter how hard I throw my little mountain of smooth stones from the beach, I can’t get them to break the reflected brightness and explode it into ripples.

After being bogged down for weeks with reams of notes on archaic Hungarian translations of
The Odyssey
and facing, night after endless night, the particularly cruel stab of never seeing an email in my inbox from the one person I’m desperate to hear from, I decide to treasure the simple things in life.

Like an afternoon sitting on a grassy bank with nothing more to do than cast stones, as many as I want, with as much force as I can muster.

The only interruption to my dismal melancholy is the quick patter of footfalls, too speedy for a hiker, too delicate for a worker, too frantic to ignore. And then, suddenly, the afternoon calm is completely interrupted and a girl trips over a ridge of knotted tree roots and catapults into my arms, her elbow bashing into my ribs, her knees arrowing dangerously close to my balls, her hair tangled in my hands and filling my nostrils with the smell of warm honey.

“
Bocsánat!” she cries before she tries to untangle herself from my lap, which only results in her getting even more locked and puzzled with my limbs. “Fuck!”

Based on her perfectly accented apology, I would have said she was a local girl. Based on her violent obscenity, I’m definitely betting she’s American.

“Nem probléma.” I put an arm around her waist and lift her gently off my lap, manage to get to my feet, and offer her my hand. “It looks like we both made it through without any permanent damage.” I smile at her and she takes my hand, her return smile half-hearted and her eyes darting back towards the path she just sped off of. “Were you being chased?”

“No.” She laughs, and this time she really looks at me with eyes the same deep, sweet blue as the sky reflected in the lake. “I just saw someone I know and…he’s really sweet. He is. We just…um, we had a few dates, and the chemistry just wasn’t…It’s not that I
have to
run away—”

“Say no more.” I point to the boathouse hidden off to the side behind some dense bushes.
“Safe, dry, no vermin that I noticed, and concealed. If your suitor comes by, I’ll play dumb, on my honor.” I hold one hand over my heart for theatrics, but am mildly surprised to find it beating in a quick, irregular rhythm.

The mingled thankfulness and amusement makes her lips quirk up for a single instant before the sound of crackling branches sends her flying, dark hair streaming like a banner behind her. An eager-looking guy bursts out of the forest and almost trips on the exact roots the girl just fell over.

Thankfully, my lap isn’t available for him to stumble onto.

“
Elnézést, láttad a lányt?” The guy looks eagerly all around for the girl, though he doesn’t seem to notice the boathouse.

“Honestly, my Hungarian is pretty crap, mate. Sorry.” I shrug and he switches languages.

“No worries. My English is okay.” He flips his hand back and forth. “Have you seen a girl? Beautiful, long hair that’s very dark, big blue eyes, very shapely?”

I shake my head and internally grimace over the fact that his basic description is both completely accurate and not even remotely good enough to describe the girl who just pounced on me and pounced back off too soon.

“I only wish. She sounds gorgeous.”

“Oh, she is.”

The guy’s smile is smug, and, for no reason at all, it irritates the shit out of me.

“Well, this path twists in on itself.” I point to the boggy swamp area that ruined my best leather shoes a week ago when I got mixed up, trudged on it, and walked too close to the lake. “She could have cut onto the lower path. It’s very private down there, you know
, if she was headed somewhere quiet to do some thinking.”

The look of total confusion on his face lets me know that ‘thinking’ doesn’t occur to him as synonymous with something one actively does. But he nods and thanks me before he heads into the bog.

I sprint back to the boathouse and open the door slowly. She’s made a pathetic attempt to hide behind an upright canoe.

“Coast is clear, but Romeo is on the prowl. I’d suggest
hightailing it out of here if you want to continue to avoid him.”

She shimmies from behind the canoe and pulls one hand over all that long, shiny hair, straightening the pieces that flew around and stuck to her face in her fall and subsequent dash to the boathouse.

“Thank you. I owe you one.” She sticks out a hand, and I shake. She’s got an impressively firm grip. “Benelli Youngblood.”

“
Cormac Halstrom.” I like the way her smile works straight up to her eyes. And, though she’s made it crystal clear that she’s
not
looking for company, I find my mouth running independent of my brain. “Benelli Youngblood, there’s this little shop up the path that has the most amazing Kadarka I’ve ever had. Ever. In my entire three weeks in Hungary. Would you care to have a glass with me? We can toast the fact that we survived that terrifying collision.”

I sound like a desperate ass, and I’m positive she’ll find some way to bow out politely, but she exhales a relieved sigh and says, “I’d love a glass. It’s been a really long afternoon.”

She falls in step next to me, and I can smell that soft honey scent her hair gives off as we start up the trail, side by side. We walk in near total silence for a few minutes, until it seems we’re safely out of Loverboy’s hearing range.

“Thank you, again.”
Benelli tilts her head to the side and gives me a quick, nearly-shy smile. “I’m not usually such a klutz. Also, I usually have a backbone and just tell a guy if I’m not interested. But this guy…” Her words melt into a frustrated groan. “The biggest problem is that there is no problem, you know? He meets every single requirement my family and I have. But there’s no spark. None. So, I guess I’m running because otherwise I feel like he might talk me into saying ‘yes.’”

That one syllable trembles with a terror too severe for a summer romance gone sour.

“Yes?” I repeat and narrow my eyes at her. “‘Yes’ to yet another boring date?”

She shakes her head from side to side, her dark hair falling over her shoulders.
“’Yes’ to a marriage proposal.”

The words shock me.

Marriage?

She looks so young.
Too young to be married.

Not, like, too young to be legally married.
Just too life-young to be thinking about tethering herself to such a huge commitment.

She’s younger than I am, for sure, and marriage has only ever flitted across my mind one idiotic time.

And, considering the outcome of that situation, no matrimonial thoughts will be coming anywhere near my brain anytime soon.

“I’m sorry.” She swings her hands at her sides. “We’ve known each other for ten minutes, and here I am dumping all kinds of personal crap in your lap. Please ignore me.”

“No apologies necessary. I think when your first meeting is as violent as ours, you just hop over social conventions.” I stick my hands in my pockets because, for some reason, I feel like I need to contain them.

Like they may reach out and touch something they aren’t supposed to.
Without my permission.

Ridiculous.

“Okay.” She hooks her thumbs in the belt-loops that circle her very short shorts. Exquisitely short shorts. “Since you now know all about me and my crazy dating life, can I ask you a question?”

It gives me an immediate and strange thrill that she’s curious about me. “I’m an open book, available for your perusal,
m’lady.”

Her laugh is clear and gurgling, like a surge of rain water rushing along the curb in London.

“You speak so proper. And I can’t place your accent. Where are you from?” Her feet are outfitted in a flimsy pair of flip flops. The polish on her nails is a deep purple. I’ve always liked collecting information-based details so I could slide people and things into their allotted places, but this girl is intoxicatingly difficult to characterize off the bat.

“Nowhere and everywhere.”
I nudge her with one shoulder, and I like the slide of my body against hers. “Are you intrigued yet?”

“Completely.”
She bumps me back, and the connectivity of our bodies is cellularly pleasing in a way I try not to think about too much. “So you’re a spy? A diplomat? Raised by wolves? The son of a ship captain?”

“Impressive!” I
wag a finger at her. “I am the son of a captain in the United States Navy.”

“Ah-ha!
So you were never in the same port for all that long and all that?” She blinks and her deep black eyelashes seem to be sending some kind of morse code message to my adrenal medulla, because I have a head-spinning surge of adrenaline so severe, I have to fight the urge to yank her close, and try to content myself with ogling her instead.

I’m so busy sneaking glances at her impossibly long legs, I misstep, and she grabs my arm to steady me.

“I guess I never quite lost my sea-legs.” Her laugh is worth the prickle of my humiliation. “But, yes and no, to your question. I grew up traveling a good deal. When my parents were together, we traveled where my father traveled. When I got old enough, I went to the boarding school in England where my mother’s brother is the headmaster. I graduated and went to college in the states, and did a year abroad in Ireland and a summer in Italy. And now I’m here completing a requirement for my graduate work by interning for a local professor who’s one of the foremost experts on archaic Hungarian translations of
The Odyssey
. So I’ve been everywhere and attempted to speak everything, and if my accent was a dog, it would definitely be a mutt.”

“If your accent was a food, it would be goulash.”

Her metaphor unhinges a laughter in me that I know is embarrassingly nerdy, but she laughs along, so I let it fly.

We’re finally at the uneven cobblestoned road that marks the entrance to the miniscule town, and I lead
Benelli to a wrought iron table at a quiet little cafe, then I order the wine and some pastries because I definitely want to do all I can to ensure this drink lasts a while.

“What is a gorgeous young American girl doing in the hills of Hungary?” I ask as an unsmiling waiter puts our glasses down on the table with a gentleness that’s at odds with his shitty attitude.

“I am here to find a husband before the summer is over.” She looks pleased with herself as I choke on the first spicy sip of wine.

“Excuse me,” I gasp, pounding my sternum with my fist.

She rolls her pretty blue eyes and leans over to repeatedly slam between my shoulder blades with the flat of her hand. “Put your arms over your head,” she instructs.

“Old…
wive’s…tale…” I wheeze, but I do it anyway.

And my choking subsides.

She pulls her hand back and takes a slow, delicate sip of her wine. “Better?” she asks, and I nod.

“It’s just, you mentioned it before…
er, marriage, that is. On the way here, you mentioned it, and I thought…it seemed like it was your boyfriend who was—”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she interrupts firmly, and I pause to enjoy her declaration.

“Right. Sorry. It just seemed that your, um, admirer was the one more eager to…get married,” I gulp, mixing the word with a swig of alcohol to make it go down easier. “I didn’t realize you were…looking with such, uh, purpose. For a husband, that is.”