Match Read online

  MATCH

  PART I OF THE SPARK SERIES

  SETH KING

  For C. Maybe in another world we’re still on the beach in that picture your sister took on the Fourth of July. Maybe we’re together in that world and we’re perfect and nothing ever got between us, nothing ever made you walk away. Maybe those versions of us from that photograph will live on somewhere in some eternal July, and the waves will surge forever.

  I will miss you until the end of time.

  “Sex and art are the same thing.”

  - Pablo Picasso

  *

  Some matches are inevitable. Some souls pull together like the ocean beckons the breeze from the shore, like the Earth kisses the moon with gravity, like the eyes of lovers pull together in a dark, quiet room. You and I were meant to collide, to make all this new light together. You set my brain on fire like some chemical stimulant – dopamine, that red blazing rush, it’s all there. You are a Jackson Pollack explosion in a grey-toned world, and my body, my mind, my soul – they’re all drugged. I am your love addict.

  And if you are an illusion, if this love is all a ruse instead of some perfect solution, I don’t care. I don’t want to know. Let me live in this hologram, let me get high off you until I crash and burn. Destruction would be a small price to pay in exchange for this fleeting infinity with you.

  Until we detonate each other, I am yours.

  **

  “I made a billion dollars today, and you just agreed to be my wife. I want my mouth on you immediately.”

  I lunged onto the bed and landed between Nicole’s legs. As I kissed my way up her long, tanned thighs, the New York newspapers strewn all around told the story of the day. “TECH’S IT-BOY BECOMES OVERNIGHT BILLIONAIRE AFTER MATCHMAKING APP’S WILDLY SUCCESSFUL STOCK MARKET OFFERING,” one tabloid read. “TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD BILLIONAIRE: MANHATTAN LADYKILLER MAKES EVEN BIGGER KILLING IN STOCK BONANZA,” another declared. Last month’s Forbes sat by my elbow, its cover reading “STEVE JOBS 2.0: HOW PENN SPARKS AND HIS MATCHMAKING APP ‘SPARK’ IS CONNECTING A DISCONNECTED GENERATION.”

  The last few days had been a dizzying procession of celebratory luncheons, pretentious cocktail hours, and various other events during which a bunch of asshole investors clinked glasses to celebrate the dating app I’d founded four years ago going public and immediately getting a valuation at near $1.1 billion. And as Spark’s ninety-percent owner, this meant I was now a very wealthy dude. Sure, the trolls were screaming from the blogs that my app was pushing the Millennial generation even further into moral ruins by encouraging my millions of young users to be promiscuous and engage in unsafe sex, but who cared about all that when there were so many millions to transfer into my accounts? I’d been beaten down by the world for far too long to let them rain on my parade now. I had no time for all that nonsense, anyway, because Nicole had just accepted the Harry Winston ring I’d given her, and now I needed to feel myself inside of her – and I needed it now.

  I arrived at her sweet spot and danced my tongue across the sheen of her thin black lingerie, making me go harder than the Rockies in my Zegna suit. God, this was going to be good. “Ahh, you just became my fucking fiancé, that word is turning me on so much,” I said, my voice scratchy with fatigue and need. “First, I’m going to take you into the bathroom and take the shower head and…”

  As I ran my tongue in circles around her, I reached up to grab her arms and pin them behind her back, as usual. But for some reason, she resisted.

  I pushed harder. She pushed back.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting straight up on the bed. She looked away, and that’s when I knew something was wrong. Nicole Leefolt never looked away. From anything.

  “Hello? What is it?”

  She reached up and scratched at her elbow. “Um. It’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?”

  She set her jaw. “Look. I have something to tell you, and I know this is the worst time ever, literally ever, but it’s devouring me inside, so I’d might as well do it now.”

  Blackness, numb and terrifying, started reaching into my vision from the corners of my eyes. “But…we just got engaged. You…you just accepted my proposal.”

  “Penn. I said I liked the ring. I didn’t say yes to the…other question. You picked me up and carried me in here before I had the chance to say anything.”

  But…no. She was the magic in my veins, the only thing that glowed in my life. “Then…what are you trying to say?”

  She paused. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “That I’ve been using Spark?”

  Suddenly my lungs forgot how to do their job as lungs. “…My dating app? But…why?”

  She swallowed hard. “The thing is, I’ve been feeling these…these feelings, and I didn’t know how to process them, and so I downloaded Spark and never told you about it, and…ugh…”

  “And what?”

  Nicole’s face went dark, and she gave up completely. I knew the charade was over. She pointed at her Hermés luggage, which I just now noticed was piled in the corner by the door. “I should just get this over with before it goes any further. I met someone, Penn, and I’m falling in love. I’m moving out tomorrow. I’m so sorry.”

  My surroundings flickered and then blended together as I reached up and clutched my temples. Nicole seemed to be giving off a lot of vibes right now, but “sorry” was not one of them.

  “But…but you can’t leave, I just gave you that ring, and you’re the first girl I’ve ever loved, and I don’t know how to live without you anymore, and I…”

  I was vaguely aware of Nicole holding up a hand. “I know you have your issues from your mom and everything, but I’m sick of dealing with them. Bree is simple, and she makes me happy, and I want to be happy, Penn. I need to be happy.”

  I rocked back onto my butt. “Bree?”

  The love of my life took a deep breath and finally met my gaze. “Yes. Bree. I fell in love with a woman. And I just…I can’t be here anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  She pushed me away and left me right there on the bed. And that was it – my life was over. Too numb to move, too numb to think, too numb to even cry, I curled up like an infant and stared up at the ceiling.

  The next thing I knew, the sun was spilling over the East River, illuminating a world I no longer knew.

  ~

  It was strange how one moment could crack your life in half, how you could think you were in one place, living one life, and then one action or movement on behalf of the universe could move the tectonic plates under you and make you realize you were never really there at all. You were a million miles away, actually. When Nicole looked into my eyes and told me she didn’t love me anymore, I thought my life had collapsed forty stories onto the sidewalk below. I thought love was something she’d written on my skin in her blood, permanent and irrevocable, and I thought I was banished to the Antarctic for good.

  And then I met Hannah Goncalves.

  ***

  Penn Sparks

  I felt myself throb in my pants as the date I’d met five minutes ago cleared her throat and sat straighter in her seat. “So, what made you download a dating app, anyway?”

  “Basically, the urge to sleep with as many women as possible,” I said, and then I smiled as she choked on her water. In truth, I guess I did feel a little bad for this girl. She’d come here expecting a simple online date, and I could see the signs already: she wanted me. The moment she’d laid eyes on me, her cheeks flushed and her nipples grew hard beneath her satiny top even in the balmy restaurant. She’d downloaded this dating app looking for someone she could have a future with – and simply put, I was not that guy. In fact, Nicole had turned me into this girl’s worst nightmare. Didn’t she
know I was damaged? Didn’t she know what she was walking into? Didn’t she know I was about to give her the greatest pleasure of her life, and then walk away? Just as Nicole had walked away from me two months ago?

  My pulse thudded in my ears as I imagined her body under mine.

  “Seriously?” she asked, swallowing hard.

  “Seriously.”

  “So, like…you don’t want a relationship, or anything?”

  Says the girl who met me on a hookup app, I thought to myself, trying and failing to hold in a smirk. “I’d rather saw off my penis, quite frankly. But then I wouldn’t be able to use it…”

  She blinked and leaned back in her chair.

  “Joking,” I said. “I was joking. Do you want me to be honest? Bracingly honest?”

  She nodded, looking almost afraid of what she might hear. “I mean, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Okay,” I began, resting an arm on the table and fingering the base of my wineglass. “I hate to disappoint you, but this is not some romantic comedy. We are not going to meet cute, have some clever back-and-forth banter for a few weeks, fall in love, reveal all our deepest darkest secrets to each other and save one another from our dark, stormy pasts, and then run off into the sunset and have improbably hot sex into our golden years. That’s not how this works. This is going to sound harsh, but ninety percent of the guys you meet on here will just want to fuck you.”

  “Wait. Really?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. This is real life, and I want to fuck you, too. That’s what I want, because a while ago I had my heart torn out of my chest, and right now I love the female gender about as much as Catholics love divorce.” Her mouth dropped open. (I’d actually only thought that happened in movies.) “Anyway, what looks good?”

  For a while she just stared at me. After a minute or so, she regained her composure. “Well, the thing is, I don’t want food. I want to leave. I also want to slap you.”

  “Okay.”

  “But at the same time, I’m an adult, and you happen to be exceedingly gorgeous.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “So let’s…back up. Start over. Calm down a little. I’m Michelle.”

  “Penn,” I said.

  “What do you do, Penn?”

  “…I’m in tech.”

  “Cool. What do you do for fun?” she asked, prodding me along. “You don’t seem like you ‘do’ fun, actually.”

  Despite myself, I cracked a smile. “I do have a very unique definition of the word, yes. Usually it involves tying people to my bedposts...”

  She shuddered, but I saw her eyes travel downward to my pants.

  “Come on, seriously,” she said soon. “You’ve gotta have, like, hobbies, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Interests?”

  “Human mating, and all the rituals involved therein.”

  “Um. Favorite band?”

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair, a certain organ between my legs threatening to burst open the seam of my pants. “Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t ‘do’ small talk. I don’t know how. My apologies.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  “Rough sex and jogging.”

  She crossed her arms, but her eyes were more playfully annoyed than angry. “You’re kind of an asshole.”

  “I don’t object to that. I’m a weird dude, with a weird past. And yet, you’re still here...”

  “I mean…yeah. I am. I don’t even know what that says about me.”

  Poor girl, I thought as I stared at her chest, which was busting out of her purple dress. She was going to try to press pause and take it slow, because she wanted us to keep hanging out, and she wanted me to respect her. Girls like her downloaded damn hookup apps expecting to meet Mr. Forever. Guys like me downloaded them to get laid.

  The food came and we pretended to eat it for a few minutes, chatting sporadically. She kept taking out her phone and checking Facebook and Instagram and, yes, even Spark – I could tell by the telltale sound I’d created myself. Why couldn’t she just sit here and talk with me instead of monitoring the lives of a thousand frenemies? Why did we all eschew the present and try to live in the future, now?

  Still, she was clearly interested. By the volume and enthusiasm of her laugh when I made an unfunny joke about the lazy eye I acquired whenever I was drunk, I guessed she wanted to get laid. So did I. But I was too hungry to pounce yet.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve met someone like you before,” she forced out.

  “You haven’t.” I said it as a statement, not a question.

  “I know. For one, everyone in here seems to be terrified of you.” She pointed at the waiter who had just refilled my water and was now scurrying away. “Who are you?”

  I leaned back and bit my lip. I had no more time for small talk. I’d come here to feel the inside of her vagina, not her heart. I’d had enough “hearts.” Forever.

  “Look, let’s get this over with. Are you horny?”

  “What?”

  “I said, are you as horny as I am?”

  “What are you asking me right now?”

  “I’m asking you if you want me to fuck you in this restaurant.”

  She licked her top lip, looked around, and then pointed down at the table. “I mean, maybe I do, but…here?”

  “Here,” I nodded. Technology could change everything it wanted about this world, but the humans living in it were still humans, who wanted to reach out and form bonds and have someone to come home to at night to fool us into thinking life was anything other than a ridiculous waste of time. And they also wanted to fornicate. “Do you want to have sex with me?” I asked. “Because you’re beautiful and I would definitely enjoy having sex with you.”

  “Aw. And, well…I mean…I don’t know…”

  I dropped my voice. “I mean, you can obviously say no, if you want. But you can also say yes.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Do you want me to take you to the bathroom, run my tongue over every inch of you, bury my face in you until you come, and then turn you around and do some other things? Because if you’re down, I’d love to.”

  She convulsed. A fat bead of sweat dripped from her neck down her clavicle.

  “I am an expert,” I said quietly. “Not to brag, but I am. I will make you feel things you never felt, experience things you never experienced. If I’m an asshole, and this is the only time you’ll want to see me, then at least let me make you come before you go.”

  For a long moment she just stared down at my shirt.

  “Fine,” I said. “No problem. I’ll just head home then. And-”

  She held up a hand, then swallowed some champagne. “Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what the hell. I spent almost six years in college, anyway, so it won’t be the first time I’ve done something stupid in public. And I’ve been single for seven months, so I should probably make sure my equipment even works anymore.” She placed her napkin on the table, wiped her brow, and finally looked me in the eye.

  “You sure?” I asked, and she leaned closer.

  “This is the skankiest thing I’ve ever said, but: I think you should take me to a back room now.”

  ~

  I followed her into the ladies’ room. Several twenty-something girls applying makeup stared openly as we headed into the far stall.

  “You ever made love in a restaurant?” I asked as I leaned down and began kissing her neck while pulling at one nipple through her top.

  “No,” she whimpered as I pinched her nipple.

  “Well, you’re about to.”

  I launched my assault on her neck, licking and kissing and sucking, when she started whining again. “But we’re in public,” she breathed, “and someone could come in at any minute, and…”

  “I don’t really care,” I said as I undid my belt. “I know the owners.”

  “It’s still illegal.”

  “I can b
ribe my way to innocence.”

  “Well I can’t. I make sixteen dollars an hour doing reception stuff at Good Morning America.”

  “Good point, but I still want to fuck you. If you want to leave, you can. If not, please lean back and let me put my mouth on you.”

  She chose the second choice. Once she was good and ready, I decided I wanted to watch her touch it. “Show me how you touch yourself, baby. How do you do it?”

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said, and I rolled my eyes. Oh, God – we have a daddy issues girl. She did as she was told, but still, she seemed distracted – and I wanted her to be dick-stracted.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Honestly?” she asked, pausing.

  “Sure.”

  “I was thinking that I don’t want you to lose respect for me. I kind of…want our match to matter.”

  I groaned.

  “What?”

  I couldn’t even remember her name, so I just gave it to her plainly. “Okay, let me explain something that I think might help you. You’ve been conditioned to think all the wrong things. Like I said, guys don’t download dating apps or make profiles on dating sites looking to date – they do it looking for sex, and maybe if they get worn down enough in the process, then maybe they’ll settle down. But nobody with a penis ever took out an app and thought about a white picket fence.”

  “What am I doing this for, then?” she asked as she looked around the room.

  “To get laid. If you can’t beat the game, join it.”

  She closed her eyes as I rubbed her thigh. “Ugh, Penn. I hate saying this, but something about you is so sexy. And so annoying. But sexy, too.”

  “Why?”

  “You say what you think. Nobody else does. Have sex with me.”

  “Oh, I will. But strum yourself first. Strum it for Daddy.”

  “Ahhh,” she cried out, as the next few minutes escalated into exactly what I’d expected.

  “Holy shit,” she said a minute later.