I'm covered in vomit. When the drunk chick from triage turns pale and covers her mouth, I grab the nearest plastic bin and shove it into her hands. What a fucking day. I check the clock near the nurses' station before I draw the curtain around her bed. Five more minutes of this dumpster fire shift, and I can get the fuck out of here. Aaron wanted to meet for a beer, but I'll have to text him and change the time. No way I can go like this.

Drunk chick heaves again, and this time, she mostly hits the bin.

"This is so embarrassing," she cries, tears streaming down her face. "Why did I have to get a hot male nurse when I'm so, so drunk?"

"It's true," I say with a wry grin. "We're a rare breed. Also, you're drunk. So, it's possible I'm not as hot as you think." How she can comment on my attractiveness when I'm covered in a half-eaten kabab, and probably smell faintly like shit thanks to the guy behind curtain number two, is a mystery. She's probably seeing two of me anyway.

  "Are you single? Do you want my number?" She gives me a hopeful look, which is almost comical with the mascara running down her face.

"You know, it's tempting." I pretend to ponder the request. "Unfortunately, I have a girlfriend." That's a lie, but there's no need to make Drunk Chick feel any worse than she already does. Before she puked on me the first time, she told me she went on a bender because her boyfriend broke up with her on their anniversary.

I have been that shitty boyfriend more than once, so when the contents of her stomach rushed out, dousing my scrubs, I wasn't even mad. Probably all my ex-girlfriends would pay money to watch me being vomited on over and over. Or at least two of them would. If I knew it was coming, I could have recorded it for them. Oh, who am I kidding? If I knew it was coming, I'd have moved out of the way. No one would willingly smell this much like tequila and despair.

Joan, a middle-aged female doctor throws back the curtain, focused on a chart. Anticipation stirs in my stomach. I've worked with her before, and she's great with a lot of things, but she has an unusual quirk for someone working in the medical field. Her nose twitches, and a line appears between her brows. "Is that—" Joan looks up and sees me, and her face pales. "Vomit."

I'm practically gleeful when I admit, "It is." I hold out my shirt and shake my head in mock remorse. "Puked all over me."

Joan covers her mouth with the back of her hand, stifling a gag. "I'll have to get—"

"Yeah," I say with a smile. "Sure. Don't worry about it." Joan ducks out, and I hold back a laugh.

"Jesus, Buchannan," Wendy, one of the other nurses in the ER tonight says as she pokes her head in the curtain. "You coulda warned Joan."

"Where's the fun in that? I've never actually seen her lose it."

"Well, now she's losing it in the bathroom toilet." She sighs and comes in to survey the situation. "Severely intoxicated?"

"Bad breakup." I start to cross my arms and then remember the puke. 

Drunk chick groans. "I didn't see it coming." The last word is a slur before she begins to snore.

"Your shift is over, right?" Wendy glances at the clock.

I follow her gaze and realize my shift finished a few minutes ago. "Yeah, but I think I might stick around until she's been dealt with."

"You've got a soft spot for a lonely heart."

Even in sleep, her expression is sad. Where are her friends? No one should be alone when they feel this shitty. There's something about her, though the hair color isn't right, and the shape of her face isn't quite the same, that reminds me of someone I once knew. An ache spreads across my chest. If time travel is ever invented, I'm going back to that restaurant when I told her it was over and punching myself in the face.

"Don't tell anyone about that soft spot." I smirk. "Wouldn't want to give up all my toxic masculinity credits."

Wendy scoffs as she slips back out the curtain, and I sink into the chair beside Drunk Chick's bed. Aaron and I will have to reschedule that beer.

~ * ~

"I thought you were busy saving some damsel in distress," Aaron says as he flags the bartender and orders our drinks.

"Managed to track down her mom from her phone. So, once she arrived, I left her to sleep it off." I take the bar stool beside him and pass the bartender some money for our beers.

"So, what's new, man? I feel like I never see you anymore. What are you working? Eighty hours a week?"

"Something like that," I admit, taking a gulp of my beer. Even when work is literally piles of vomit, my job is clear.

"You still sworn off women since you and Mandy broke up?" Aaron picks at the coaster under his pint.

"Yep," I say. I have zero desire to talk about Mandy. How can I get it so wrong so many times in a row?

"Did you get Noah's email about his bachelor party in a couple weeks?"

"I haven't checked my email in a while." I chuckle. When was the last time? With texting and chat apps, who really uses email anymore? "I work, walk Rex, and I crash. Repeat until the end of time."

"Well, he sent all the details—hotels, flights, how many drinks we're all allowed to have."

"How far up his ass he wants the pole. Did he ask for lube as a present?" I take my phone out of my pocket and open my mail app. A flood of emails downloads, clogging my inbox. "Ah, shit. I have like 500 junk emails to wade through here. What did he call it?"

"I think the title had the word set in it for some reason. All set? Get set?"

I type set into the search box and sure enough, there's Noah's email. But the one under it causes my heart to skip and then race. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

"What?" Aaron leans over to peer at my phone.

"Fucking GameSetMatch sent me another email." I toss my phone on the bar, my jaw rigid in annoyance.

"Another one? I thought you blocked them."

"I thought I did too. I'm not opening it. How many women can they tell me I'm perfect for?" The first time I heard from them, I believed their spiel. Data driven soulmate selection. Who wouldn't want a relationship guarantee? Turned out to be a fancy language for scam.

Aaron shook his head. "You should sue them."

The thought crossed my mind once before. But what did I claim? GameSetMatch might have ruined my life, but they hadn't defrauded me. "The people I feel sorry for are these women who pay so much money, and they don't even realize it's lies dressed up as the truth." They fooled me once too. 

"You told the last girl the truth, didn't you?"

I wince. "Yeah, I did. It's probably best if I just stop opening the emails. She cried for like an hour because she'd taken out a loan, and the company has a no refund policy even if your match rejects you." Even the word rejects makes me cringe because I wasn't rejecting her but more so the process. If something sounds too good to be true, that's probably a clue.

"Give me your phone," Aaron says, tipping his chin at where it rests on the bar.

"Why?"

"I'm going to email them back and tell them to stop contacting you. At some point, this becomes harassment."

"It's been four emails in six years. The last one was almost two years ago. Not exactly harassment." Though every single time I get their email, it fucks with my head.

"Fraud then, whatever. What they're doing isn't right. And that initial email seriously fucked you up." He raises his eyebrows and takes a long drink.

That it did. I pass him my phone and gulp back my beer in silence. Beside me, Aaron has gone eerily still. "You reading Noah's email again? Some extra horrific detail tacked on at the end?"

"Uh, no."

I swivel in my chair to face him. "What is it? Did you accidently put a virus on my phone?"

A muscle twitches in Aaron's jaw, and then he meets my gaze. "The, uh, match they sent you." He clears his throat. "You know her."

I rear back and then snatch my phone from his hand. "I know her?" The question dies on my lips when I see Tayla Murphy in bold at the center of the email. "Oh, shit." I know her.

"Oh shit is right. We've come full circle." He clenches his fist.

I check the date on the email. A week ago. "Oh, God. She probably thinks I'm ignoring the match." Annoyance flares in me that I even know the company's shitty process. They've learned to leave me alone. Their tactics don't work on me. Why haven't they removed me from their data pool? I've gotta be hurting their less than one percent claim. Of course, that's probably bullshit too.

"She hasn't contacted you either, so maybe she's ignoring the match."

I rub my forehead trying to gather my thoughts. I haven't seen Tayla in six years. Aaron isn't wrong—this email is like coming full circle. "What should I do?"

"Meet her and tell her she's been scammed. Offer to help her go after these assholes. Get her money back."

The wheels of an alternate plan have already started turning. "Yeah, I could, or..."

"Or you could meet with her for funzies? Come on, Si. You were like one step removed from jilting her at the altar. You're not coming back from that."

I reread the generic soulmate sales pitch at the top of the email. Three other times I've glossed over these paragraphs with a sense of foreboding. This time, it's not dread churning in my stomach. "She thinks we're soulmates."

"I can guarantee you Tayla Murphy is smart enough to realize you are not, in fact, soulmates."

"She went there. She paid the money. Whatever is going on with her, she wants to believe this is possible." Excitement courses through me.

"Okay," Aaron says, holding up a hand in my direction. "Let's say you meet her, and you manage to convince her, by some miracle, that you're meant to be together. What happens when GameSetMatch's house of cards comes tumbling down? It's only a matter of time before one of the people who paid all this money and didn't get the result they wanted has the guts to speak up."

In six years, no one has bothered to speak up, or at least not loudly enough to deter other people from flushing their money down the toilet. "I like my odds."

"Going into a relationship on the back of a deception is a bad idea." Aaron scratches his stubbled cheek.

"The company is the one deceiving her." My explanation is weak, and I don't even try to hide it. "Look, if I tell her, I never get my second chance. You said it yourself, I fucked up last time. Huge. I made a leap, and it was the wrong leap to take. This is fate stepping in."

"Almost like you're soulmates." Aaron's tone is wry. "I just want to be on record about what a terrible idea this is."

At this point he could show me a video of this plan blowing up in my face and I'd probably still be on board. In the back of my closet is a box, and in that box are mementos of Tayla Murphy, including a tiny velvet box, the one I clutched in my hand in the bathroom of the restaurant, right before I went out and broke up with her. This is my chance to set things right. Why wouldn't I take it?

Author's Note:

Thoughts so far?

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