Page 46 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

“Well, because it feels like we literally just stepped into one.” He gestured broadly. “Look around us. It feels like Christmas is about to spring forth fully formed, like the body of Athena from Zeus’s head.”

Julia gave him a double blink of surprise. “How…metaphorical of you, Ethan. How did you even come up with that one?”

“Okay, now who’s being condescending?”

“I never thought you were being condescending,” she said eventually, following him into the shop that Noah and Katy had disappeared into. “I just think you need to be more careful with what you say, because you never know who you’re offending.”

“You?” he asked, pointing at her.

She shook her head with a small smile as she polished off the rest of her drink.

“Me?” he tried again, and she laughed this time, which felt like a victory.

“No. Who gives a shit about you?” she responded through giggles, tossing her empty cup away. “I’m saying, in general, you tend to run your mouth, and it’s gotten you in trouble before.”

He opened his mouth to argue and then clacked it shut again. “Touché.”

Laughing again, she shook her head, watching the two celebrities. He turned his head to see what she was looking at, and he saw Katy and Noah taking turns throwing roasted peanuts into each other’s mouths.

The shot was too good to pass up, but it would look suspicious if the angle was too close. Nothing got by internet sleuths these days, analyzing every shot for its authenticity from every angle.

He stepped back about fifteen feet or so, back to the other side of the street in front of the candle shop, to have it appear more like it was a hidden shot from a distance. Julia, not realizing that he’d fallen out of step with her, turned around to say something to him, and he snapped the picture prematurely, too soon for her to realize and get out of the way.

She understood that she’d ruined the shot almost immediately after he snapped it, and she pulled a face half a second later.

“Whoops,” she said, moving back out of the frame completely. “My bad. Try again.”

The insane urge to tell her not to worry, that, actually, her being in the picture made it exponentially better, needed to be quashed. Instead, he just shook his head reassuringly and went to take another picture.

All it took was a couple of clicks, and he ended up with something just mediocre enough to pass for paparazzi footage of a somewhat identifiable couple throwing peanuts at each other’s faces. The two giggled like kids and then linked arms, ostensibly forgetting about the presence of their older chaperones and moving on through the square, munching away at their new snacks.

It registered to Ethan just how young they actually were, and he felt a pang of guilt—guilt at the responsibility he held for portraying their lives to an audience of millions. For manipulating people into believing something that wasn’t true about two strangers they’d formed parasocial relationships with, which, in turn, gave those people the delusional bravado to assume certain feelings and intent without taking a moment to consider the real thoughts of the actual people involved.

It was bonkers. And he was right in the thick of it. Now there was no going back. He looked at Julia, standing still though not looking at him, instead observing the environment around her, hair still blowing back softly in the breeze. In her profile, he caught how her cheeks and nose were a bit red, indicative of the chill in the air, which seemed to grow cooler as the day progressed. As if possessed by the spirit of something he couldn’t name, he quickly lifted his phone up and snapped another shot of her, this time intentionally. He slipped his phone back into his pocket hurriedly, as if he was afraid of getting caught red-handed, and then picked up his pace. He was eager to catch up to her, to be walking beside her again.

“It’s only about a ten-minute walk from here,” she was saying as he fell into step with her. “Back to the cottage, I mean. Because we’re farther east but also a bit more south.”

Ethan nodded, as though her directions meant anything to him. Julia had always been good at placing them geographically in any given spot; it was an innate grounding ability that helped her determine where they were and where they needed to go. Ethan was better at executing the move than choosing the direction.

It was kind of a metaphor for his life, if he thought about it. Constant motion without a focused destination. He had once thought photography was going to be the career he’d make for himself. He would travel the world taking pictures of all the amazing sights and people there were to see, he would sell his stuff along the way to fund the next legs of the trip, and his name would grow until his fame reached the farthest corners of the globe.

Instead, he and Gem had left Buffalo together. They’d ended up at NYU together, and then, to make ends meet after college, they’d found a job at Kouzina, that Greek restaurant in Queens—again, together.

Years had passed, and the photography thing hadn’t really taken off—he could take some pretty pictures on Washington Street, but they were a dime a dozen, and nobody paid him enough for them to fund anything other than a few weeks of inner-city transit, with the occasional jaunt to Brooklyn for more of those DUMBO Manhattan Bridge View pictures. And Julia, though well-loved by Spiros, the owner of Kouzina, especially as the creator of a galaktoboureko that was advertised asBetter Than Yiayia’s, had failed to elevate herself beyond hostess and occasional pastry chef over his own daughters and sons. Apparently the nepotism lived strong, especially in second-tier Greek restaurants across the river.

They’d both started becoming bitter and disillusioned withthe trajectory of their lives in a way they hadn’t predicted. Life had never beeneasyfor the two of them, though Julia would probably argue that Ethan’s had beena little biteasier than hers, but it had never been so…disheartening.

This was also the point in their lives when they were both living in cramped postcollege apartments with roommates and lives that hadn’t quite turned out the way they’d imagined. That was probably where the cracks had really started—tiny fissures that, in time, became seismic.

“—take you there tomorrow.”

He realized belatedly that Julia had been talking during his quick mental jaunt down memory lane. He also realized that he had no idea where Katy and Noah had gone.

Maybe she saw his confusion—or the fact that he clearly hadn’t been listening to her—because she sighed.

“They went into the stationery store over there.” She pointed at yet another quaint storefront, bricks painted white, with a navy blue pergola and matching front door. “I decided to stay with you and plan for tomorrow, but I lost you once I started referencing the compass rose.”

He snorted, then shook his head. “Sorry. Just thinking how I went from wanting to be a photographer”—he held his phone up ruefully—“to this.”