Matchmaing for the Shy

Matchmaking for the Shy

is a six-part chain story written by members of the Author's Hangout in the Literotica forums. Previous chapters have been written by

Mrs_Mackenzie

,

Devinter

,

Joy_of_Cooking

, and

Kelliezgirl

. The final chapter will be written by

KumquatQueen

. Thanks to everyone who has written and read this chain story. Apologies to anyone who has been waiting for this chapter- it took way longer than it should have! Special thanks to Joy_of_Cooking, Mrs_Mackenzie and KumquatQueen for their feedback during the production of this chapter. It's been a lot of fun.

Matchmaking for the Shy

Chapter 5

"Alright," said Diane, pointing the camera towards the happy couple. "Arms round each other. Closer. No, closer still. Cassian, maybe look up towards the new love of your life. And try to look spontaneous even though I know how much you hate spontaneity."

"I can be spontaneous," said her brother completely deadpan, "given enough warning."

"Sure you can, bro," said Diane. "But...and here's the million dollar question...can you smile? Here we go...three...two...one cheese!"

She pointed, clicked and flashed.

"And another one, maybe with Heather leaning up to kiss Cassian?"

Click. Flash.

"And one with you both holding a cup each," said Diane.

"Do you want us to clink them together, Wallace and Gromit style?" asked Heather.

"I think that maybe going just a bit too far," said Diane. "Just hold on to them and give me a look that suggests 'this is damn fine coffee.'"

She clicked again then pressed a button on the camera which then deposited three photos in her hand.

"A Polaroid?" asked Heather. "I haven't seen one of those for years. I didn't think they still made them."

"They didn't for a while and then they did again. You know, for the nostalgia crowd," explained Diane.

"For those with more money than sense," said Cassian, in a voice that suggested that for however much money he undoubtedly had, no one could ever accuse him of one iota less sense.

"Right," said Diane, shaking the photograph dry, although with the modern version there really was no need, "I think these will do. Hey, Bree!" Where do you want this?"

Brianna had been half-watching, half-serving during the impromptu photo shoot. She now put her tray down fully and came over. "On the board here," she said. "Wait a mo..."

She took a rubber band off an A2 piece of paper, unfurled it and pinned it to the board. At the top, it read 'Coffee Pages Dating - Success Stories,' beneath that were the names 'Zach and Emma' and 'Cassian and Heather' with each couple having their own little banners.

It took a few minutes for to Brianna get the enormous poster lined up with the plywood board, but eventually, Diane was able to come in and pin each of the three photographs under the appropriate section, each one at a jaunty angle and slightly overlapping the one above it.

"Adorable," Diane said finally, admiring her handiwork.

"Indeed," agreed Brianna. "As for couple number two...Zach! Any word on Emma?"

Zach looked up from the coffee machine and then reached for his phone. "She says she's just around the corner."

On cue, the door swung open and Emma rushed in. "Sorry! Sorry!" she apologized. "I've been behind all morning. First Callia wouldn't get out of bed. Then Jonas started to tell me about how he'd been bullied in science class and..."

Zach came out from behind the counter and just put his arms around her. All the women in the cafe made an "Aw," sound except for Diana who just said "Snap," while taking another picture.

"Right," said Emma, calm for just a second. "Coffee. Photographs and then, I've got to get all the way over to Chelsea Market because Etta needs..."

"One thing at a time," said Zach.

"You're right," said Emma, calming again. "And that one thing is coffee."

Zach picked up an already-made cup from the counter. "There you go," he said.

"You're an angel," said Emma.

"Isn't he just," affirmed Brianna. "For me as well as you."

Zach had been working at the coffee shop for nearly a month now. It made sense. He was there every day waiting for Emma anyway and he'd offered to help Brianna so many times that she'd started to feel guilty about him not being on the payroll. And it helped him get out of the house and avoid what he called LDAR syndrome. That had been a new one on Brianna -- it stood for Lay Down and Rot. Before meeting Emma he'd been spending all days playing video games in his room as though it was a full-time job. Zach was a great employee even if it was a bit strange to have to give someone who worked in a cafe a couple of hours off at lunch. Brianna was still trying to piece together how their relationship worked, even though she'd been the one to introduce them. What was unarguable though was that it did. Emma was calmer since they met. Zach was, in his own words, more energetic.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet," said Brianna after she'd given Emma time for at least a few sips of coffee. She guided Cassian and Heather over. "I believe you know Heather," she said.

"We've passed each other a few times around this place," said Emma, standing up to shake Diane's hand.

"And this is Cassian," she said.

"Charmed," said Emma. "Wow, so me and Zach weren't just a one-off! You know, Brianna, you really are New York's answer to the question of where all the good men have gone."

Brianna reached over and tapped the board. "Well, today is all about success stories. Thanks for coming in today. Look, I was going to ask you, I'm asking some of the girls to help out with Coffee Pages..."

"Help?" asked Emma. "How? You know I don't have much time."

"I know. I know. Well, it's mostly about the dating service, but it's also about general promotion as well. We'd really like to start to get more guys in here. You know, make the place just a little less feminine without making it any less pleasant. I'm going to set up a whole new shelf for books to attract guys."

"Such as?" asked Emma.

"I don't know. I'm hoping it's not going to be all six hundred-page espionage thrillers with the numerical stopping power of sixteen different types of hand-gun on each page. But it might be. I also thought it would be good to get some events going. Invite some local authors in or, I don't know, the occasional band."

"Can you fit a whole band in here?"

"Well, a singer-songwriter, shall we say. Anyway, we're going to start having informal committee meetings every Wednesday..."

"I can't. I really can't," said Emma immediately. "I'm sorry. You know how it is."

"I thought you'd say that. I also know it's nice to be asked. Especially as I've already asked Heather and Diane and they're both on-board. I just didn't want you to feel left out."

"How about recruiting Zach?"

"I'll pick his brains, but he'll need to be running the cafe while I'm in the meeting. Besides, however macho we're making this place, we kind of wanted to keep things female-run"

Emma looked at her watch as if to stress her point. "I'm really sorry. I'll keep supporting you as a customer, but that's about all I can do."

"Well, you're already doing enough by agreeing to these photos. Oh, and loaning us Zach. Thanks again. Shall we?"

They picked up Zach by the counter and wandered back to the staging area. Cassian and Heather pulled their chairs round to watch the new set of photos being taken.

"Do you want apron on or apron off?" asked Zach.

"Apron off, I think," said Brianna. "Otherwise it just feels a bit like...I don't know...insider trading, would it be? Rigging the deck? Something like that."

"Oh, but the candid photo I took just now is perfect and has his apron on," said Diane.

"Well, stick that one on and have aprons off on the other two," said Emma, "that way it won't be too obvious, but we also can't be accused of cheating anybody. Zach will be around the place serving anyway, so it's not like people aren't going to put two and two together."

"Good point," said Brianna. Zach slipped his apron off and slung it over an empty chair.

The couple posed, then posed the other way and then posed closer together. Diane snapped repeatedly.

"Right," said Emma. "Coffee - check. Photos -- check. Am I forgetting anything?"

She said it more to herself than anything but Zach took the opportunity to chime in anyway. "Us?" he said hopefully.

"Sorry," said Emma. "' Us' had to make way for the photos. I'll make it up to you, just not today." Then she thought for a second. "And not tomorrow. I've got Etta's performance to go to. Which reminds me of about ten other things I need to do this afternoon."

At the very least, she took the time to give Zach a long kiss, one passionate enough to get the attention of the assembled ladies of the coffee shop again and then headed back out in to the jungle, dumping her half-finished latte into her love-struck boyfriend's hand before she went.

"Never mind," said Brianna, sympathetically. "You've found yourself a good woman."

"The best," said Zach, somewhat too dreamily. Then he seemed to snap out of it. "Here, before I forget, I've got a few things for the shop."

He started to rummage around his backpack. Finally, he found what he was looking for and handed a wrinkled brown envelope to Brianna. "From Jake," he explained.

She looked at it confused for a moment and then opened it. "Oh, the gym photographs! Great!"

"What's this?" asked Diane, peering over her shoulder.

"Oh, this was going to be one of the items on the agenda for our first meeting. Zach's friend said that if we set up Zach right, he'd help out by recommending the dating service to the guys he trains at the gym. We're doing like a cross-promotion. We advertise the gym and they advertise us. A first step in Operation More Men. And there are a whole bunch of sign-up forms in here as well. Let see...God! Seventeen! He really does believe in doing this in bulk."

"Bulk is right," said Diane taking a photograph out of Brianna's hand. "These guys are buff. I think that photographing the wildlife in its natural habitat was definitely a wise choice."

"What was the other thing?" Brianna asked Zach.

"What?" said Zach absentmindedly, then remembered himself. "Oh, yes, this." He went back into his backpack and pulled out a large box set of books. "

Sparks of War

," he said almost proudly. "Jake mentioned you were asking about it and I thought it would be good for the cafe to have a copy if you want to attract more young guys."

Brianna took the box off him and turned it over in her hands. "Wait!" she said. "This is new! We only really wanted people to bring in second-hand books. These must have been expensive."

"Oh," said Zach. "It's nothing. I couldn't bear to part with my own copies and I'm always interested in spreading the word about Sparks. It's such a great series."

Brianna turned the box set over in her hands and then started reading off the back. "The first three volumes in the iconic fantasy epic. There are more? Since you've been good enough to gift this to us, I could always go onto Amazon and grab the rest."

"Oh, yeah," said Zach, "that's kind of it for Sparks. Well, not exactly, but it's complicated and it didn't ever quite get finished. Let's just say the first three will be perfectly fine for the cafe."

"Do you mind if break this open?" Brianna asked. Zach smiled. Brianna grabbed a pair of scissors and dug them into the plastic fold at one corner. A moment later and she'd ripped off the wrapping. She slid the first volume of the series out of the lushly illustrated box and inspected the cover. At first glance, it was a portrait of a woman. It was a standard fantasy depiction although more tastefully done than most. The artist had skillfully indicated nakedness and the inevitable enormous breasts without actually showing anything too tacky. Your eye was first drawn to how attractive she was, and only secondly to the fact that she had scales where her hair should be and a forked tongue.

"She's got it going on," said Brianna approvingly. "Tell me the story."

"Don't you want to read it yourself?" asked Zach, his eyes full of a rather adorable betrayal.

"Of course," she said quickly. "I absolutely will when I've got time. But just give me the general outline for now. The elevator pitch if you will."

"Well, it starts with the King who has been recently widowed being driven mad by these sexy dreams. He's convinced that he's being targeted by some kind of enchantment, so he sends his heroes out to kill every female monster in the land."

"The female of the species is more deadlier than the male," commented Brianna. "So, it's a pretty horny book then?"

"Not at all," said Zach quickly. "It's all done in the best possible taste. Nymphs dragging heroes underwater to their deaths, sirens crashing their ships against the rocks, medusa turning people to stone. It's a modern take on classic Greek myth with the odd bits of Jewish folklore thrown in. It was written at the start of the nineteen-sixties so there were limits to what he could put on paper."

"I hadn't realized it was that old."

"Yeah, they modernized the covers for this edition. They are well done, but it doesn't quite fit with the overall vibe."

"So, you said the series wasn't finished. If it was published in the nineteen sixties I'm guessing this guy, Houston Rambold, is dead?"

"Not at all, he's in his nineties now, but he's still keeps on trucking."

"We'll have to invite him to one of our book signings," said Heather.

"Yeah, right!" said Zach with a laugh.

"So how come the series never got finished? Is it one of those George R. R. Martin-type deals?"

"No, actually the complete opposite. What happened was..." Just as Zach was about to launch into a full explanation, a woman who had been staring at the advert board quite intently for a few minutes came over to the counter.

"Can I help you?" said both Zach and Brianna at the same time.

"Yes, just let me take a look at what you've got in the dessert section. Oh, and, just out of interest, these guys in the photographs on the board over there...they're actually members of the dating service, are they?"

"They are. That is to say, I have their forms just come in right here and am about to go through and process them all. What's it to be?"

"A slice of the blueberry cheesecake and mocha, please," said the woman. "And, um..."

"Would you like a form for the dating service?" asked Brianna.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt to sign up," said the woman casually. "You know, just on the off-chance."

She was practically salivating, although in fairness the cheesecake did look pretty good.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Heather and Cassian sat in a late-night ice-cream parlour in the East Village and examined their plunder.

"That is one heck of a lot of books," said Heather.

They'd spent the afternoon raiding the second-hand bookstores. Heather hadn't had much time to explore the city and had been Amazoning all her most recent purchases just through laziness. Cassian, of course, seemed to know every bookstore owner in Manhattan personally and had been directing her hither for classics literature, thither for historical romance and yon for contemporary fiction. Then they'd passed a little art cinema that was showing a season of Fellini's work, and they decided, then and there, to watch

Eight and a Half.

It was three weeks after they met, and this scavenger hunt was just another watershed in a relationship that was progressing at a very healthy gallop. They had slept together, in the intercourse sense, then, a few days later, they had slept together, in the slumber sense, and then later they had gone on a series of increasingly cultured dates. Today and tomorrow would be the first time that they had devoted a whole weekend to each other. The impromptu movie had been a great demonstration that they had moved from formal dating to just hanging out together.

They both loved books, but they were very different shoppers. Heather just wanted something interesting to read, preferably cheap. As far as the condition went, she liked her used books with all the pages and hopefully not too covered in unidentified stains, but after that, she wasn't fussy. Cassian, on the other hand, was a

collector

. A book, he said, should be well-loved, but it should be well-looked after as well. He would scan shelves quickly, but when he found something he was interested in, he would pull it down and then forensically examine it to see if it met his standards. The standout moment, as far as grasping his character went, was when he found a copy of Vikram Seth's

A Suitable Boy

and announced, with a very refined glee, that as it was in noticeably better condition than the copy he had he would be making the purchase. Heather then made the mistake of commenting that he must really like the book, to which he replied that he'd never gotten round to reading it, but this pristine, almost new copy was just what he needed to motivate himself to finally get round to it.

They were still at that stage of the relationship where she found this adorable, although she couldn't say that her indulgence would continue if the relationship continued on longer term. As it was, she smiled as he put down his spoon and carefully wiped his hands on a napkin before picking up another purchased volume to flick through.

"Indeed," he finally replied. "I shall have to get another bookshelf at this rate."

"I'll have to get a bookshelf," said Heather, without thinking.

"Oh?" said Cassian, suddenly interested.

"Actually, I haven't really gotten my apartment anywhere near straight yet, and a bookshelf is near the top of the list of things I kind of need to get sorted, but can survive without. Just about," she explained hurriedly. "You know how it is."

Cassian raised an eyebrow, and Heather cursed herself. Cassian lived for 'getting things straight'. That things could be allowed to be other than they should be was an anathema to him. She hadn't thought of it until now, but it was probably fortunate that he still hadn't really seen the apartment properly. That first night, they'd been so wrapped up in each other, and then he'd had to leave so quickly that he probably hadn't worked out exactly how much of a dump it really was. And afterward Heather had always angled to stay over at his. Cassian's place was so much nicer than hers, and, by and large, so much closer to anywhere which was fashionable in the city, that it just made sense that it had become their base.

"I thought you'd been in there a good while already. We've been dating for nearly a month, and I thought you'd been in New York for a month or more before that. And you do most of your work at home, don't you?" He wasn't really chiding her; he was just confused.

"I don't know," said Heather, trying to cast her mind round for an excuse better than pure bone-idleness. "It's just that I'm still getting used to life post-divorce. I'm not sure that I've really accepted that that place is my home, and I've been putting off choices about how to decorate. I want to make it mine, but that's kind of hard because I'm not sure who I am anymore and having a home that is all your personality and no one else's is kind of depressing."

"So, where are your books at the moment?"