Perfect Match

Perfect Match (4)

Despite Ria’s words of warning, the next few days went just as well as the previous week had. Tuesday evening found Cari and John sitting on the couch in Cari’s living room eating ice cream and ignoring the television playing in the background.

“I can’t believe you don’t like chocolate ice cream,” Cari said.

“I like chocolate ice cream when it’s good chocolate ice cream,” John said. “Sometimes it’s just not rich enough, or it’s too rich… When it’s just right it’s wonderful, but it’s so easy to get it wrong.”

“Chocolate is always amazing,” Cari said. “How anyone could think otherwise is beyond me.”

“You’ve clearly never had really awful chocolate ice cream then,” John said.

“No, I can’t say I have, because it’s always amazing,” Cari said.

John rolled his eyes. “Sure, Cari, whatever you say. Also, Eddie’s coming by with Holly tomorrow evening for dinner. You can join us, if you’d like.”

“That sounds like fun,” Cari said, smiling. “I just have to make sure that I finish the work I need to do for the day before I come by.”

“Do you need to send in another cover?” John asked.

Cari nodded. “Yeah, I do. It’s almost done, but I need to make a few more changes to it before I send it off.”

“I still find that to be such an interesting job,” John said. “It’s not something that most people think about, but there are extremely talented people all over the world designing the covers that they look at every time they pick up a book.”

“Our job isn’t to make them think about the cover’s origins,” Cari said. “We just need to make them look at the book and pick it up. Eye-catching designs are always the best for book sales.”

“I’ll take your word for it, seeing as I know nothing about the industry,” John said. “I’ll stick to mixing chemicals and teaching college students how to do experiments.”

“And that’s something I know nothing about,” Cari said. “I took chemistry in high school, but I don’t really remember much of it anymore.”

“That’s a shame,” John said. “It’s really interesting.”

“I wouldn’t really know,” Cari said. “I’ll stick to my books.”

“So be it,” John said, smiling.

They ate in silence for a few minutes before John spoke.

“So, tell me something about your family. I know you don’t exactly get along, but you’ve never really said anything other than that.”

Cari set her empty bowl down on the coffee table and sighed. “Well, my mom’s name is Sarah and my dad’s name is Alec. They grew up together and when they were fifteen they realized they were each other’s match, so they’ve been together for ages. I have one sibling who is six years younger than me. Her name is Grace and she’s going into her last year of high school at the end of the summer. She’s nice, very smart, pretty, and an excellent dancer. Our parents love to compare us. We’ve both learned that it doesn’t do any good to argue with them about it, so we don’t. She’s the one member of my family that I actually get along with, but the only times I see her involve my parents, so we haven’t exactly had the closest relationship since I moved out.”

“So let me get this straight,” John said. “Your parents prefer your sister to you because she gets good grades and dances well? You designed the cover for one of the most popular books of the last year, and they’re going on about her grades instead of being proud of you?”