“This is according to the sushi he made you on your date, right?” she asks dramatically.
I draw hearts into the condensation on my beer glass. “It wasn’t a date, Alisha. It was research.”
Alisha snickers. “Uh-huh. Whatever you say. Speaking of research, Harper doesn’t know you’re there, right?”
“No! Neither of them do. I just want to make sure everything goes smoothly for them. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes how wonderful she is.”
I watch as Bennett and Harper smile politely at each other. Harper laughs at something he says, and I become acutely aware of how she’s angled her body toward him.
“They’re sitting awfully close for a first date,” I mumble.
“That’s a good thing, remember?” Alisha says.
“Yeah. Yes, definitely. Of course,” I repeat like I’m trying to convince myself. “There’s usually some warm-up time involved, that’s all.”
“You’re good at what you do. You’ve already warmed them up. Now it’s game time,” Alisha says, slightly distracted. On the other end, I hear the opening song of My Best Friend’s Wedding in the background.
I nod to myself. “Right. We’ve got this in the bag. By the end of the night, he’ll be swooning.”
Harper drops her fork, and Bennett reacts before she has a chance to, picking up the utensil and standing to grab her another one. “I wonder if he’ll throw himself on the ground for her, too,” I mumble. At the thought of him doing that for Harper, my breathing becomes shallower.
“He did what?” Alisha asks, humming along to the movie’s song.
My heart thumps hollowly. “He was a gentleman, that’s all,” I say, not wanting to give more life to a kind gesture that probably meant nothing.
The crinkle of a plastic bag cuts the first part of Alisha’s sentence off. “—hope she’s into him. From the way you described him, he sounds intense. Now that I think about it, though, he could’ve reacted to the article a lot worse, so maybe he’s not so bad.”
I take a sip of beer through the wide straw, a mouthful of tapioca coming up with it. “He’s not a bad guy. Besides, he’s our enemy. Not hers.”
“By the way, have you talked to your Pó Po yet?” Alisha asks.
A group forms around a table to cheer on a dumpling-eating competition. “Not yet. I need more details first. He could be messing with me. Trying to get into my head.”
“That’d be a bizarre way to do it, don’t you think?” she says.
I narrow my eyes in Bennett’s direction. “This guy’s capable of anything.”
I lean onto my elbow to see around a family who has stopped to huddle in my line of sight. When they finally move, Harper’s alone at the table. I scan the crowd and find Bennett paying for more dessert at a booth.
“I wonder if he’ll scrape the frosting off that cake, too,” I say. Instead of going back to the table, he turns in my direction. “Uh, let me call you back.”
“I’m a big boy. I don’t need a babysitter, you know,” Bennett calls out to me as he approaches. He slides a plate of matcha cake across the table. “I brought you this. Thought all your sleuthing might make you hungry.”
“That was unnecessary,” I say, my mouth watering. “How did you know I was here?”
“I sensed a disturbance in the Force,” he jokes. “You only sat next to one of the few decorative palm trees and are wearing sunglasses at night. You might as well have strapped a neon light to your chest that blinks, ‘I’m discreet!’”
I lean my forehead into my palm. “Does Harper know?”
“Oh. Yeah. She thinks you’re really committed.”
I push my sunglasses over my head. “Because that’s what in-person matchmaking allows me to be. Committed. You’re not left to your own devices like all the poor souls in Digital Purgatory.”
“In what?” Bennett asks.
“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand. You didn’t tamper with this, did you?” I ask suspiciously, hovering my chopsticks over the icing.
Bennett shakes his head. “Too many witnesses.”
The corner of my mouth lifts into an almost-smile before I remember why I’m here and my mission of taking down Bennett—I mean, finding Bennett love.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this? We can call it off right now, no hard feelings.”
“Your date’s going that well already, huh?” I ask, crossing my arms over the section of table in front of me. “We can call it off if we both agree that I win.”
“No one has won yet. But you know what happens if one of us does, right?” he adds with a peculiar shyness.
I drop my hands into my lap. “The details of the competition were pretty clear,” I state. But deep down, I know what he means. If I win, I lose Bennett. But he’s not mine. Never has been. Any chance of there being an us is over before it can even begin. What am I saying? There is no us. There could never be an us.
Bennett lingers in the drawn-out silence. “Okay. As long as we’re clear.”
“Perfectly,” I say hesitantly, my voice shaky. I clear my throat. “Harper’s great, isn’t she?”
Bennett looks caught off guard by my quick transition. “She really is,” he says. “I have to thank you for not sending us to salsa dancing or anything. The night would’ve ended before it started.”
“Very interesting,” I say. “How do you know there’s not going to be dancing here?”
“Here in public? Where? On the tables?”
I motion toward the tables. “This date could be one giant flash mob. You don’t know.”
“If that happens, I’m gone.” Dread ripples across Bennett’s face. “I had an embarrassing junior prom moment that put me off dancing forever,” he explains.
I’m immediately intrigued, but he’s already been over here long enough. “Hates dancing. I’ll make a mental note,” I say, “for the next time that there won’t be because, I mean, come on!” I motion toward Harper across the square, who’s watching the live band that’s just started playing.
“She’s open to trying all the different food, she does interesting work, and she’s very pretty,” Bennett says. A pang shoots through me. “I admit you’re good. Though that was never in question.”
“Exactly. So how about we just call it for what it is? I win, you lose, we both move on.”
Bennett braces his hands against the back of a chair and leans forward. The veins in his forearms swell, shadows pooling in the grooves of his defined muscles. I pull my attention from them, remembering that they belong to the competition in front of me.
“The bet was on who would fall in love first. Last I checked, I’m not in love with Harper,” he says.
“Yet,” I say, not meaning to sound so hesitant about it.
“You’re not getting out of your date,” Bennett says, the corner of his mouth sloping upward.
I catch myself staring at him and look away before he notices me. “Speaking of date, I see what you’re trying to do here. The only rule was that you have to give it a fair shot. Don’t you dare sabotage this,” I say quickly. “Just ignore me. Pretend I’m not here.”