Perfect Match Read Free

more into him than he is into me.” She looked at me. “Do you know what I mean?”
    The truth was, Alex and I had had the exact opposite conversation last night after the movie. But I knew that just because I thought it would be fun to meet up with friends after the movie, it didn’t mean that I wasn’t totally into Alex—and looking at Camille now, I was sure that the case was the same for Xander.
    â€œOh, you girls and your little worries!” SBB laughed, picking up the check. “I won’t hear any more of it. You’re beautiful and adored by your men,
capisce
?”
    â€œNice empathy, SBB,” I joked.
    â€œEmpathize this: what we need is some retail therapy. Now, who knows what she’s getting her man for Valentine’s Day?
That
, ladies, is something worth stressing over.”
    As we stepped out of the warm, cozy restaurant into the harsh reality of February in New York, all three of us hustled into our hats and mittens. SBB whistled for a cab.
    â€œBloomingdale’s on Broadway,” she told the driver. Then she pulled out a thick packet of paper bound like a screenplay with three golden brads. But I doubted that anyone would title a script SHOPPING LIST. “What?” She shrugged at us. “I don’t mess around with it comes to retail therapy.”
    When the cab pulled up to the great white building,SBB got out first and started calling out a breakdown of the floor plan. “Boys first. We’ll start at the third floor and move through the fifth. Then, once we’ve gotten the gift-buying work out of the way, we can reward ourselves with spa treatments on six and shoes on four.”
    Wow, it usually took me an hour just to make it out of the cosmetics section on the ground floor at Bloomingdale’s. Since I had no good ideas about what to get Alex for Valentine’s Day, I was pretty grateful that I had SBB-on-a-mission to keep me on track.
    While we thumbed through piles of men’s shirts and racks of ties and boxes of cuff links, I could feel my eyes glazing over. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in shopping for Alex—though I had to admit, high-heeled boots were way more fun to look at than cuff links. I mean, what
were
cuff links, anyway? But I just didn’t think any of this stuff was quite right for Alex. And I wanted to get him something really special. What exactly that was going to be just hadn’t come to me yet.
    I looked at Camille to see if she was having any more luck. Her brow was furrowed in frustration.
    â€œIt’s not just finding a Valentine’s present that I’m worried about,” she explained when she saw the concerned look on my face. She was holding up ahideously ugly brown sweater without even seeming to see it. “Xander’s birthday is the week after next,
and
our one-month anniversary is right after that, but I don’t want to go overboard with the gifts—especially if he doesn’t think that one month is a big anniversary, ’cause you know, some guys don’t really think about that, and—”
    I had never seen Camille so unglued over a guy. I could always count on her to be the smart, balanced, carefree one. What was making her so nervous? I looped my arm through hers.
    â€œMaybe you should follow SBB’s lead,” I suggested. “Put yourself in her shoes. Look at her. She’s dating the most popular pop star on the planet and the only thing in her relationship that she’s not completely confident about is whether JR would prefer the blue or the green Burberry scarf. You should get Xander what feels right. Try not to overthink it.”
    She nodded. “You’re right.” Her eyes finally locked on the mess of brown merino wool in her hands. “God, what am I doing with this awful sweater? Yuck. This is certainly
not
the answer.” She tossed it back in the sale bin and sighed. “I’m going to go check