Unmatching emotions

Melanie is busy in the kitchen wrapping up dinner preparations with Kalinin after spending the whole Saturday at Ryan’s family house, hanging out with Ryan and also dropping Kionna off for her play date with Aurora, Ryan’s five-year-old niece when her phone suddenly vibrates due to a notification that Melanie assumes is from Ryan, because they had an unfinished discussion, but it turns out that the notification is actually from heartily.me, the dating sight.

“What the…?!” she stares at the message, her eyes glued to the screen, as she struggles to process the information.

“For what felt like an eternity, I waited on the rooftop terrace for you to arrive with the beef and broccoli stir fry, but you didn’t show up,” Kalinin says as she walks swiftly into the kitchen, picks up the bowl of food before she returns to the rooftop terrace to continue serving dinner.

Melanie doesn’t move from the position that she is glued in, her eyes are darting back and forth trying to figure out what could have made Caleb unmatch with her, but she can’t figure it out.

Kalinin returns to the kitchen to pick up the almond cookies that they will be using for dessert since Melanie has refused to bring it, and then she notices that Melanie doesn’t look or feel like herself.

“Mel…is everything okay?” Kalinin asks, her voice laced with concern.

“You seem a little off” she points out, shaking Melanie lightly, which makes Melanie conscious of her environment again.

“I’m fine, I’m just a little preoccupied,” she hesitates, unsure of how to respond.

“Preoccupied with what exactly?” Kalinin probes.

“To the best of my knowledge, you were perfectly fine when we started making dinner, so what exactly are you preoccupied with?” Kalinin questions.

“I’m sorry, Kali. I just got caught up with something” Melanie sighs.

“Why do I feel like there is something that you are not telling me,” Kalinin’s eyes narrow, as she eyes Melanie suspiciously.

“You know that you can always talk to me about anything?” Kalinin’s expression softens.

“This may sound foolish to you” Melanie starts and Kalinin waits for her to tell her what is up.

“Caleb unmatched with me on the dating site” Melanie finally reveals her bone of contention to her sister.

“Which Caleb are we talking about?” Kalinin asks her, visibly confused.

“The club owner that I went on a date with two weeks ago” Melanie refreshes her twin sister's memory.

“I am not trying to make light of whatever you are feeling as a result of him unmatching with you, but I thought you were not interested in the guy, so why should him unmatching with you make you act as if you just lost somebody dear to you?” Kalinin asks, raising an eyebrow, trying to wrap her head around the information that she just got from her sister.

“I wasn’t or so I thought but why would he unmatch me?” Melanie complains bitterly with a frown.

“Maybe he is playing games. Guys like him often do that” Kalinin presses her sister's shoulder as she grabs the cookies that she came into the kitchen for and starts making her way out of the kitchen.

“Do you think he was genuinely interested?” Melanie asks, looking concerned and Kalinin stops walking.

“Honestly sis. I think you dodged a bullet. You deserve way better than somebody that makes you feel uncomfortable and also somebody who is unsure” Kalinin shrugs.

“But what if I was wrong about him? What if he is genuinely interested?”

“Mel. You need to ask yourself why you are so bothered.” Kalinin sighs as she starts

“Is it because you’re interested in the possibility of a relationship with Caleb or is it because your pride is hurt?” Kalinin’s expression turns serious and Melanie’s eyes widen, taken aback by her sister’s blunt words.

“You have been spending time with Ryan, and he seems genuinely interested. Maybe it is time to focus on someone who cares” Kalinin pats Melanie’s shoulder as she makes her way out of the kitchen with the Almond cookies that she came to get, but Melanie’s face falls, feeling unsettled by Kalinin’s words.,

Meanwhile, Martins and Kionna waited patiently at the dinner table, growing frustrated as the minute ticked by because Kalinin had just gone to the kitchen to grab the desert, but she had refused to come back to the dinner table, and Melanie did not even show up at all.

“ I don’t know what Kalinin is saying about Ryan being genuinely interested in me when both of us are just platonic friends without any strings attached” she hisses as she dials Ryan’s number.

Ryan picks the call on the first ring and she runs the situation of what just happened by him because over the past two weeks that they have been in touch and he has been the closest that she has to a friend in Orion, where the only set of people that she knows is Kalinin and her family, and he suggest that if the whole unmatching situation bordered her that much, she should try to reach out to Caleb and have a conversation with him.

He asks her to check Caleb’s profile if there is any means of further communication like his email address or his mobile number and surprisingly, she finds his mobile number and starts contemplating if she should just call him out or let it go.

She goes ahead to join Kalinin and her family for dinner, and after dinner, she returns to her room to save his mobile number with "unmatch champion" but she doesn’t call him because she feels like it will be such a foolish move to make.

Three days later, she finally decides to dial Caleb’s number and call him out on his bullshit but the reason that he gave for unmatching with her is because he needed space after she ghosted him and she couldn’t believe it because as far as she wasn’t concerned, he didn’t make any more attempts to try to reach out to her over two weeks and now he even dares to put her call on hold for over fifteen minutes.

Melanie is boiling with anger because she knows what it took for her to get herself to call him, but now he is making her feel stupid for initiating contact.

“I am sorry for putting the call on hold for long” he apologizes after removing the call from the hold.

“I feel like the majority of this issue resulted as a result of lack of proper communication, so do you want to meet up to discuss what happened”

“Is that not the conversation that we are having right now?” she asks him with an edge to the tone of her voice.

“Do we have to meet up?” she questions him.

“I don’t fancy chatting or phone calls, I prefer us to have a face-to-face conversation” he explains

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” she hesitates.

“You can pick anywhere you are comfortable with,” he tells her.

“Can I make a decision and just text you?” Melanie asks him and he agrees.