Mr. Match: The Boxed Set Read online

  Mr. Match - The Boxed Set

  Delancey Stewart

  Contents

  SCORING A SOULMATE

  1. Love = Math

  2. Maverick, Elvis, and Polar Bears — Oh My!

  3. Paging Dr. Buttchin

  4. Here’s Your Tooth Back

  5. Math and Love Don’t Mix

  6. Selling It

  7. Scoring in Santa Monica

  8. Secrets and Soccer

  SCORING THE KEEPER’S SISTER

  Prologue

  9. Hello and How Do You Do

  10. Hate is a Strong Aphrodisiac

  11. A Urine Sample and Your First Born

  12. The Importance of Rodents

  13. Mr. Match is High

  14. Playing for Cheese

  15. Top-Level Assets

  16. Tesla Confession

  17. Mama Mia

  18. Coronado Capers

  19. Taming the Shrew

  20. Not a Kiss

  21. Mama Cheats at Cards

  22. Midnight Makeout

  23. Ditching the Cock Block

  24. I’ve Been Thinking About Me…

  INTERLUDE

  25. Can’t Play a Player

  26. The Green Goblin

  27. Lungs, Legs, and Balls

  28. Step Into the Light

  29. Hot Rolls

  30. Benching a Bus

  31. The Hammer Plan

  32. Textual relations

  33. Rabbits in a Wool Sock

  34. Twisted Balls

  35. Worn Slap Out

  36. Roses for Trace

  37. Ice Cream Can’t Fix Everything

  38. The Way to a Girl’s Heart (might be cheese)

  Finale

  Epilogue

  SCORING A FAKE FIANCEE

  Prologue

  39. Co-Dependency is a Lifestyle Choice

  40. French for “Faking out Maman”

  41. Never Skip Leg Day

  42. Mr. Match Doesn't Smoke

  43. Swiping for Sharks

  44. Praying for Voicemail

  45. Phones are Scary

  46. The Guff

  47. Johnny Cash Meets the Grim Reaper

  48. Dating Etiquette: Don't Climb Your Date Like a Monkey

  49. Being Calm. Like an Adult.

  50. Man of Steel

  51. Spidey Sister

  52. Here, Have a Rock

  53. Six o'clock News

  54. The Wombat Effect

  Interlude

  55. Guilty Fingers

  56. Control Your Tannins, Man

  57. No Celery Was Harmed

  58. They Say Fries Aren't French. Whatever.

  59. Oh Bonne Mere

  60. Entertaining. Like a Clown?

  61. Sleepover Aftermath

  62. Crisco and Onion Rings

  63. The Box is Distracting

  64. Prepare to be Impressed

  65. Airport Arguing

  66. The Secret Agent

  67. Mouse Nest and Elderberries

  68. Rabid Hedgehogs and Other Terrifying Rodents

  69. The Third Degree - French Style

  70. Join Me on This Clump of Dirt...

  71. Men with Tiny Balls

  72. My Heart is a Moron

  Interlude 2

  73. Love is a Weapon. Pew! Pew! Pew!

  74. Flowery Fucking Feelings

  75. Turns Out Soccer Sucks

  76. Hammer's Sweet, Sweet Balls

  77. The Intricacies of Salad Dressing

  78. Poky and Painful Soup

  79. Pilgrim's Pride

  Epilogue

  Finale

  SCORING A PRINCE

  Prologue

  80. The Durnish Doom

  81. Yoga and Dark Tie the Knot

  82. Insufficient Ballage

  83. Enter Snappy and Shark

  84. Wham! Is. The. Bomb.

  85. Dangers of Durnish Cake

  86. Being Young and Stupid.

  87. Girls. With Torsos and Heads.

  88. Destined for Cats

  89. Skywriting and Smoke Signals

  90. Kissing in the Coffee Shop

  INTERLUDE

  91. A Girl Only Needs One

  92. Spring Fashion Trend: Panties and Disappointment

  93. The Fortune Teller Zombie Downstairs

  94. Handle Your Willy

  95. Hold My Cooler

  96. Sand in my Bits

  97. Suck my Emoji

  98. Doubt is a Blonde Named Rachelle

  99. Less Scottish Than One Might Think

  100. Sorry For Your Loss

  101. Would You Like Cake with That?

  102. Stepfathers and Sheep

  103. Fetch the Farm Animals

  104. Crown? Check.

  105. Durnish Chaos

  106. The Feat of Enduring Patience

  107. Eight Legs of Death

  108. In Crap Lake Without a Boat

  109. This Uber Sux

  110. Emojis and Whiskey

  111. Snappy Shows Up

  112. Killing it on the Pipes. (Or Killing the Pipes).

  113. Brunching with Durns

  Finale

  Epilogue Part One

  Epilogue Part Two

  SCORING WITH THE BOSS

  Prologue

  114. Getting the Little Green Beast in a Sleeper Hold

  115. Entrée: Shoes and Slobber

  116. Emo Unicorns with Guy Liner

  117. Tropical Fruit and Rodents. Your Thoughts?

  118. Ponce de Leon – Hot or Not?

  119. Conversational Standoff

  120. Walking a Lion

  121. Microblading Mishap

  122. Nostradamus and Ricky Ricardo

  123. Drowning Feelings with Vodka

  124. This Chair will Kill You

  125. Aspirational Shoes

  126. Shot Down Near a Potted Plant

  127. The Errant Asshole Gene

  INTERLUDE

  128. Wednesday is the new Wednesday

  129. It all comes down to Fish Tacos

  130. Delirious Elf-Gnomes Take Over

  131. Trashing the House

  132. Coffee Does Not Equal Fate

  133. Taking Tesla’s Name in Vain

  134. Sex Talk with Mom. Ew

  135. Big Dogs and Sweat-Covered Eleven-Year-Old Unicorns

  136. The Tale of Mr. Peps, the Humpy Poodle

  137. Dunked and Discovered

  138. News, Noodles, and Nudity

  139. Resolve and Regret

  140. It Always Comes Back to Cheese

  141. Crocheting for a Teeny-Tiny Army

  142. Traversing a Goat Path on a Pogo Stick

  143. Giant Dog Sweaters

  144. Alex Craft: Toolshed Choad

  145. Lana was a Jerk

  146. Catatonic Soccer Players

  147. Susan Rose Rides Again

  148. Match Met

  Epilogue

  Finale

  Chapter 149

  BONUS EPILOGUES!

  SCORING THE KEEPER’S SISTER

  150. I Love Your Stuff

  151. Tiny Player Alert

  152. Look at my Face. MY FACE!

  153. Welcome to the Shitshow

  SCORING A FAKE FIANCEE

  154. French Fashion

  155. Pre-Game Grind

  156. It Always Comes Back to Cheese

  157. Milking Pigs is Serious Business

  158. LePoivre the Pooper

  SCORING A PRINCE

  159. A Smear, Sir?

  160. He Who Smelt It…

  161. Fetch the Sheep

  162. Durnish Invasion

  SCORING WITH THE BOSS

&nb
sp; 163. Christening the Couch

  164. Switching Things Up

  165. This is the End…

  Also by Delancey Stewart

  SCORING A SOULMATE

  Mr. Match, The Prequel

  Chapter 1

  Love = Math

  MAX

  I was twenty-four when I discovered the equation for love.

  Maybe that sounds nuts, but the reality is that I'm a fucking mathematical prodigy. It's not a claim, or an arrogant assertion of hubris. If I was going to make an arrogant statement, I'd tell you how I was recruited to play pro soccer for the South Bay Sharks after my sophomore year at college. I'd tell you about my ridiculous mansion, my three cars, or about the fact that I've already saved enough at the age of twenty-six that no one in my family will ever have to work again.

  But I'm not actually an arrogant prick. Just a genius.

  And like I said, I discovered the equation for love at twenty-four.

  But let me back up a bit.

  When I was a kid I watched my mom's heartbreak when we lost my dad. Maybe I didn't get all the nuances of their love, of what exactly she was grieving when he was gone. I knew what I missed. I missed piggyback rides and wrestling, kicking the ball around the yard and the patient way my dad would explain the rules of soccer to me as we watched World Cup games. I missed the way he'd get me up out of bed in the middle of the night so we could sit side by side on the couch and cheer for Manchester United—something my mom really never understood.

  And I sort of got what my older sister Cat missed—a man to model how women should be treated, a set of big arms to comfort her when high school girls proved just as diabolical as the movies reputed them to be, and someone to steer her when she brought home guys with more piercings and hair product than her. I was too young to do any of that.

  But the hardest part about losing dad was what it did to Mom. And as I grew, I saw that while it was tough losing your best buddy and your dad, it was maybe harder losing your soulmate.

  I became fascinated with the way two people might fit together, and Mom suggested that we all started out just slightly incomplete to begin with. Not so much that we couldn't live on our own, but just lacking enough that when we found that thing we'd been missing, life turned into a whole other kind of adventure.

  "It's chemistry and luck," Mom said once as we sat at our favorite diner with milkshakes. "But it's not rocket science. Parts of you just fit with parts of the person you love. And if it's right, things just snap into place. It's not perfect, but it's close enough. The hardest part is finding that person who fits. And there's not just one fit, I don't think," she would say. "There are probably a few different people who might be right for each of us. Maybe more. But it's the right combination of elements—”

  "Like an equation," I'd suggested. "Where both sides need to be balanced."

  "Just like that, Max."

  "Oh my God, can we have one family outing that doesn't turn into a math lecture?" Cat, my older sister, wasn't as fond of math as I was. “Love isn’t a math problem,” she went on, drawing a series of hearts on the napkin in front of her as she spoke and then shading them to look three-dimensional. “Love is something magical, something you can’t define. Something you just know when you feel.” She looked up from the drawing, and added, “it’s the way I feel about Zac Efron. That’s love.”

  “It’s like that too, Cat,” Mom told her as I rolled my eyes.

  “It makes more sense if I think of it like an equation.” My sister might not enjoy it, but math was a comfort to me—it made sense. And the more I talked to Mom about love—something everyone seemed to regard as mystical and fated, the more I became convinced that it was just another equation, one I could solve.

  And as an adult, I started really working on it, testing different theories and algorithms, looking for the one that worked. When I was twenty-four and my sister was at the end of another dramatic relationship with a guy who was so wrong for her he might as well have been wearing a sign that said “NOT FOR CAT,” I found the one I was pretty sure would work. But it needed refining. And I needed to help my sister find someone who would appreciate all the great things about her, and love her despite her complete incompetence at math.

  I’ll be honest—part of my motivation was that if Cat was settled and happy, I’d feel better. She took Dad’s death hard, and I was too young to step up. She and Mom have always taken care of me, and now that I’m in a position to take care of them—financially if necessary, and mathematically, if they’ll let me—I plan to do it.

  With some convincing (mostly me assuring her there’d be no math involved on her part), my sister Cat was a willing participant in the tests, and this is her story. And mine.

  This is the story of how I became Mr. Match.

  Chapter 2

  Maverick, Elvis, and Polar Bears — Oh My!

  Cat

  "Oh my God, are you even listening to me?" I lifted myself up to peer over the arm of the couch in my brother’s living room to where Max sat at the dining room table, alternately pounding away at a keyboard and scribbling with a pencil on the notebook at his side.

  "Yes. There was the whining about the Swedish exchange student in art school, Johann, and how he took you out that one time, tried to get in your pants, and then told you it had been just a fling before he went back to the frozen tundra to wrestle polar bears or whatever."

  "Right. Except the polar bear part," I said, sitting up.

  "And then you were complaining about Andrew and how he compared you constantly to his ex, who apparently had the intellect of a mildly gifted snail but was blessed with a huge set of knockers. And then you told me about Rob and Richard and that guy, Maverick—the name alone should have warned you off, by the way—and finally, Elvis."

  "And?" I was looking for sympathy. Another relationship had gone up in smoke and I was clearly fated to be alone—at twenty-eight I’d expected to be married and pregnant by now. My parents must have named me Cat to save me time when spinsterhood knocked and I had to choose what kind of companionship to settle for as I headed into old age.

  "And what, Cat? You have terrible taste in men and a proclivity for picking dudes with ridiculous names." Max closed his computer and narrowed his eyes at me. He looked smug. My brother often looked smug. That’ll happen, I guess, when you’re blessed not just with mathematical genius (like no shit genius, seriously), and a career as a professional soccer player. The genes in our family were not fairly distributed. Though I am a delightful human being, it might be nice to be a genius.

  I lay down again. I was going to have one day of misery before I got back to work preparing for my art show.

  "Sis, I have a proposal for you."

  I rolled over, letting my arms hang over the armrest so I could get a better look at my little brother. I'd come over for dinner and to hang out, and for some brotherly advice. I did have a terrible track record with men, but being with Max usually made me feel a little bit better, if only because it helped me feel just slightly less alone in the world.

  Max and I were nothing alike. He was all left brain and I was all right. He had an intuitive understanding of numbers and formulas, seeing patterns in things where other people only saw chaos, and I had a similar gift for art. It was the same thing really, I could find beauty and pattern in seemingly ordinary things, and find ways to represent them so others could appreciate them too. But getting Max’s analytical take on my life sometimes helped me put it in perspective. I tended to get a little dramatic. Just a tad. It was charming, I assure you.