Mrs. Matched | Complete

Chapter Thirteen

I peeled my eyes open the next morning and looked at the alarm clock blaring its siren towards me. Four hours of sleep is definitely not enough, I thought to myself as I rolled out of bed and put my feet into my slippers. But with all these tasks, who knows when I'm going to have a chance to get anything researched if I don't lose a little sleep. Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end.

I dragged myself down to the kitchen for breakfast and a cup of coffee -- the first one I had to make myself since I moved here -- and then back upstairs to the computer, choosing to forego my shower until later in the morning.

I bit into my croissant as I opened the browser and started searching the legalities of marriage.There was a lot to learn, especially about parental matches, so I narrowed the search to parental matches with the company Match Made.

Apparently there were several other companies that provided this excellent service to parents.

There were a lot of pages touting the excellence of Match Made as a company and their success pairing people for 'lifelong partnerships,' but it took me almost two hours to dig up what I actually wanted: example contract terms and their meaning.

It was a small forum on a corner of the internet where no one used their real name, but there in black and white were people's contract terms and an explanation of what they meant. I had somewhere to start. I bookmarked the website and closed out of the computer, because it was fast approaching a time when I would be missed and I could smell Christopher's cooking wafting up the stairs. I'll have to try again tonight, I thought. Or maybe tomorrow.

After gathering my things for a shower and putting on a cute top with my favourite jeans, I wandered downstairs to the kitchen to find Christopher sitting at the table.

"How'd you sleep?" He got up to get me a cup of coffee.

"Not enough," I laughed. "How are you? And how are you always up three hours before I am?"

It wasn't really a lie. He would have been up three hours before me if I hadn't snuck out of bed to research contract terms at 6 AM.

"I usually wake up with the sun. One night like last night won't throw me off, but I can assure you I'm as tired as you are." He finished the eggs on his plate and gulped down the last of his orange juice.

"How could you tell?" I asked, taking a sip of my coffee. It was really too hot to drink, but I needed the caffeine.

"Oh, I'm not walking into that trap. But we should probably discuss this garden party my parents are throwing."

I groan. "Don't remind me."

That was one of the topics we'd discussed last night. His parents wanted to meet me.

"You'll be fine." He slid a pile of toast across the table to me. "I'm sure they'll love you. I mean, they picked you after all."

"That's ... actually a good point. But what if they don't like me as much in person as they did on paper?"

He laughed and shook his head. "I am sure they're going to love you."

While Christopher cleaned up his dishes and got himself a glass of water, I had an internal panic about his parents. I needed them to like me to keep up pretenses, but I also didn't want to grow the list of people I was going to hurt when I left. Hurting Christopher was going to be hard enough. I didn't need a bunch of family and friends to add to that list.

A deafening silence filled the room.

"So..." I finally broke our silence by taking my own dishes over to the sink. "What do I wear to a garden party, anyway?"