The Matchmaker: Omega Dating Agency Prequel

Chapter 1 - Malcolm

Chapter 1 - Malcolm

January first. A brand-new year, a brand-new me.

That's what I told myself every year.

January second: business as usual.

I lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. Things were going to be different this year. Then reality inserted itself into my life in the form of my alarm clock blaring right in my ear, bringing with it a whole host of necessities. A shower, coffee, and the dreaded commute to work.

I grunted, rolled out of bed and stood up to stretch. Just like every morning, my joints popped and groaned in protest. It seemed like my body made more strange noises every day, and sometimes it was hard to remember that I was only forty-two and had the rest of my life ahead of me—even though it often felt like I'd missed out on the best years of it.

I smacked the alarm clock to get it to shut up and headed out into the kitchen to turn the coffee pot on. While the elixir of life brewed, I hopped into the shower and emerged again to a robust odor that never failed to give me a boost of energy. Like a true Seattleite, my body cried out for caffeine, and I headed into the kitchen to fetch a cup and pop some bread into the toaster.

I waited with my hip against the counter, sipping burning-hot coffee and shuddering at the painful pleasure as it scalded my insides on the way down. That was how I knew it was working.

My gaze wandered around the kitchen and landed on a stack of mail in the middle of the table. I jerked my eyes away and pretended I hadn't seen it. Bills and junk mail and local advertisements. Nothing I needed or wanted or had even a vague interest in.

The toaster flung my toast halfway across the counter with a horrifying CHUNK and I scrambled to catch it before it slid onto the floor. Once the slices were layered with a liberal amount of peanut butter, I ate them quickly while the peanut butter melted, oozed and dripped.

Licking my fingers clean, I allowed myself a moment to feel smug about the lack of manners required for single living, something I had discovered as a teen after leaving for college and finally escaping my mother's strict rule. No one was here to judge me for it.

No one.

My mouth suddenly tasted sour. I swallowed thickly and went to wash my hands, then headed back into the steamy bathroom to finish getting ready for work. A dress shirt, a nice jacket, and a pair of decent slacks that would need replacing soon, since the seat was getting worn out from sitting on my ass all day. Being a programmer would do that.

Programmer. Computer technician. Web content creator. At least us nerds had better words to describe ourselves these days, ones that almost sounded impressive until you realized that the actual job involved sitting in a cubicle farm for eight hours a day, while spending at least half of that searching for the one transposed number that had fucked everything up.

Don't be bitter, I reminded myself. Programming had treated me well. I'd be an idiot to take my livelihood for granted. I wasn't one of those young punks half my age who bounced around from job to job to get experience while never actually learning anything at all.

I winced as I realized that I was starting to sound like my grandfather.

I checked my phone, a force of habit now more than anything. I still had time before work, and I hated to waste it staring at the wall. As I left the kitchen, a flash of white in the corner of my vision stopped me.

That damn stack of mail, sitting in the middle of my rarely-used kitchen table. The stack that which would only keep growing each day no matter how much I ignored it.