Miss Matched [COMPLETED]

31. Simon

Tayla's house isn't big, and although we've only been apart a few days, the distance feels enormous when I walk into her house and find her sorting through her personal things. Boxes are marked in bold letters with storage or Mom's, and they litter the small living room. Guess she's really moving to Scotland. I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my jeans and try to ignore the crushing heaviness in my chest. Man, did I ever fuck up.

Tayla clears the couch of clothes and gestures for me to sit down. Unlike before, she doesn't sit beside me. She takes the stiff-backed chair to the left of the couch. When I glance toward her bedroom, I can't decide whether I should laugh or cry. The door is closed, and the Soulmate Simon plate hangs in the center. She might as well have a giant picture of me on a dartboard. Though I suppose the ugly, flaccid penis amuses her more than a photo of me. Either way, her do not enter is clear.

From my back pocket, I take out the printouts of the emails I exchanged with GameSetMatch and the women, and I pass her the sheaf of papers.

"This is all of it?" she asks, scanning each page before flipping to the next one. A crease forms between her brows.

"Yes," I say, my gaze straying to the plate again. Two weeks ago, that plate was funny. I was so sure I could win her back, and the plate would become a joke between us, something we both laughed at eventually. Instead it's functioned as an omen, a reminder of what a shit I can be, a warning for her to keep me in check. I'm not the soulmate the top of the plate decries, but the ugly dick depicted beneath it. I release an unsteady sigh.

When our gazes connect, her honey brown eyes glint with steel and then she follows where my focus has been. A hint of a smile tips up the edges of her lips. "Felt like a good place to hang it. I put a lot of work into that plate."

"All the others seem to serve their function in a dark cupboard." Why am I pushing the issue? It's not like I don't know why she put it there.

"Not true." She tries to lean back in her chair and is stopped short by the high, stiff back. "The Happy Birthday plate comes out every year. This one," she gestures towards the dickhead on the door, "can serve a purpose every day."

Instead of continuing the conversation that'll probably go in circles and make me feel even worse, I opt for a subject change. "What's your plan with GameSetMatch? Did you book an appointment with them or something?"

"They won't see me," she says, her jaw tightening. "I've violated their contract by lying about whether or not you and I made contact."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me." I run a hand through my hair. "Have you got the contract? Did Ruby or Dean look through it?"

"Neither of them is a lawyer," Tayla says opening her phone and passing it to me.

"I'm not either, but it seems ridiculous they can take so much money from you and just dismiss you." While I read through the contract, she pours over the emails I was sent with a highlighter.

We read in silence for a few minutes. Words like libel and slander are mentioned several times throughout the contract. Have they sued people into silence before? Can we go after them through social media without incurring their litigation arm? Maybe I can get Aaron's lawyer to look through this. She does corporate law for the dealership and might be able to decipher some of this legalese.

When I glance up, Tayla is holding a single piece of paper in her fingers, the others back on the coffee table. "I can't believe they sent this to you," she says, her face pale.

My stomach clenches. "Which one is that?" I close her phone and lean forward, though by the expression on her face, I realize which email she's clutching. There's only one in the pile that could elicit that reaction. It's the letter I received in the bathroom the night I didn't propose. When I printed the emails from Aaron's car dealership, a spike of anger shot through me at GameSetMatch's audacity. Of course, anger hadn't been the most prominent emotion that night. Resignation, a cloud of inevitability.