“Are you ready?” Pó Po whispers. She adjusts the cornflower blue vest she’s wearing over her white polo, her signature daytime look. Her short hair is freshly waved from hair rollers, a style she’s preferred for decades. “I’m going to make the announcement after the cake is served.”
“I think most people already know, Pó Po. Was it supposed to be a big secret?”
“Aiyah! I guess I should’ve expected the news to spread. This is the Huang family, after all. No respect, even at ninety-one years old.” Pó Po laughs and reaches out to rub a rose’s soft blush petal. “Ah well, I’ll still give a little speech. It’ll be nice.”
“Pó Po, you’re ninety! Not ninety-one,” I say, holding her gently by both shoulders.
Pó Po gives me a subtle wink. “When I was born in China, children were considered to be one year old at birth. That would make me ninety-one, but yes, let’s go with ninety. Oh, Liv? The cake. It’s hilarious. Thank you. Can I put in an early request for a unicorn next year?”
“They’re becoming harder to find, but if that’s what you want, I can make it happen,” I say with a mock-serious tone.
She pushes a loose strand of my dark brown hair behind my ear and takes a moment to study my face. “Why do you look so radiant? You’re practically glowing!”
I bring a hand to my cheek. “Am I? Well, I’m excited about today!”
“For the announcement?” she asks probingly.
“What else?” I say casually, fiddling with a plastic fork. I’m definitely not glowing because of Bakery Guy. That would be ridiculous. I don’t even know his sign.
“Okay. Well, good.” Pó Po nods slowly. “Ah, before I forget, there’s someone I think you’ll want to meet. Should I set up a date?”
It’s one of Pó Po and Auntie’s favorite pastimes to introduce me to people they think I might want to meet. Really, they’re young men they want me to meet.
“Do you really think now is the best time for me to be dating?” I ask. “There’s going to be too much to do with Lunar Love.”
Pó Po narrows her eyes at me. “We’ll revisit this later. Auntie also has someone you might like. Choices are never a bad thing! One way or another, we need to get you matched,” she says before fluffing her hair and twirling off to find more family members to charm.
I pluck the melted candles out of the horse and smooth over the icing. When I cut into the cake, it becomes apparent that this looks very wrong. In its entirety, the cake looked great. Dismembered, not so much. I divide the tail into six pieces, placing each one onto small round paper plates. I line the plates up next to each other and attempt to re-create the shape of the horse so that it doesn’t look like a bunch of body parts scattered on the table.
A bracelet-covered arm jingles past me to grab half a hoof. Without needing to look, I smell Alisha’s gardenia perfume and know it’s her. Alisha Lin, my co-matchmaker at Lunar Love, always looks put together in stylish clothing. She sweeps her long, dark brown hair over to the side, the curls cascading over her shoulders. Ever since Alisha was hired at Lunar Love three years ago, she’s quickly become one of my closest friends and confidants.
Randall Zhu, Lunar Love’s finance, admin, legal, and human resources teams all wrapped into one, follows closely behind. Randall joined as an intern around the time Pó Po retired and worked his way up, so he knows practically everything there is to know about Lunar Love.
Alisha and Randall deeply inhale the chocolate-on-chocolate cake scent. “Your Pó Po is major goals. She doesn’t look a day over seventy. What’s her secret?” Alisha asks.
“Full-moon milk baths, red wine, and dark chocolate,” I reveal.
“I’m lactose intolerant, but I’ve got the other two covered,” Alisha jokes.
“It’s working. You don’t look a day over thirty-three,” Randall says, teasing Alisha.
“These days it takes skill to actually look your age,” she says with a mock-defensive tone. Alisha takes a bite of cake and groans. “This is perfect. Not too sweet.”
“Yeah,” I mumble, half my mind still stuck on the man from this morning. Why is this happening?
Randall takes a step back and shoots me a concerned look. “Are you okay? You feeling nervous about your first day as Head Matchmaker on Monday? It’ll be fun since we have that conference to attend.”
“I’m not nervous! You know that’s my favorite event of the year,” I say. I try to find the words to explain what happened this morning, but they jumble in my head. I met a man is all that comes out.
Alisha gasps. “Ooh, who is he?”
“No, it’s not like that. It was at the bakery. He took Pó Po’s cocktail bun, I made a trade for it, and he works downtown. That’s really all there is to know.”
Alisha’s eyes glimmer as she closely watches my face. “What sign is he?”
I fiddle with the cake server. “I didn’t ask for his birthday or analyze him that closely,” I admit.
“You didn’t analyze him?” Alisha asks. Her widened eyes are as round as full moons. “I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t expect to be engaging in negotiations this morning,” I say. “It caught me off guard.”
“Okay, well, what were his traits? Could he be a candidate for one of our clients? Let’s debrief,” Alisha says, taking another bite of cake. “You said you made some kind of trade? Maybe he’s a lawyer.”
I cross my arms. “Let’s see. He’s overconfident and engages in social behaviors that are a little too forward for my taste. He told me he likes to go to Lucky Monkey for breakfast, but he works all the way downtown, which indicates that he puts his needs before his company’s. Yes, he was eventually charming and was surprisingly good-looking. He had stunning eyes. Hazel! Well-dressed. But he probably knows that, and in a relationship, he’d likely want to be told those things. I wouldn’t tell him what he needed to hear; we’d fight about it.”
Without stopping for a breath, I add, “I can see it now: A couple of months into the relationship he’d be frustrated that I prefer doing things the way I want to do them. I’d be annoyed that he can’t sit quietly with himself and that not everything can be a negotiation. That kind of dependency, paired with my need for alone time, would never work.”
Alisha and Randall look stunned for a moment. Then they finally break the silence by clapping against their plates. “You continue to impress us. But who said anything about a relationship?” Alisha says, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Oh, I didn’t mean relationship. They’re just always on my mind for our clients,” I hurriedly reply, fumbling over my words. “You know how I feel about being matched.”
She sighs. “Right, of course. You’re the matchmaker who can’t be matched.”
I shrug. I know how people will act—and how things will turn out—because I know their traits on a deep level. I’ve accepted my fate. For everyone else though, there’s hope.