A Smug Sister's Satisfaction

And so it was, as the universe, or perhaps just my exceptionally well-oiled matchmaking machine, had decreed, that Daniel and Sarah found themselves, quite unexpectedly, falling for each other. It was, I must say, a rather satisfying development. Not that I was surprised, of course. I’d seen the potential from the moment Sarah walked into Daniel’s life, a beacon of normalcy in his otherwise romantically barren landscape. My initial assessment, honed by years of observing Daniel’s rather beige dating history (or lack thereof), had been, as always, spot on.

The ‘chance’ encounters, as Daniel so delicately put it – bless his mortified heart – had done their work. There was the coffee shop incident, where I, with the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros, ‘accidentally’ spilled my latte, forcing Daniel to rush to Sarah’s aid with a napkin dispenser. Then came the ‘forgotten’ umbrella at the office building, which, naturally, I had “borrowed” from Daniel’s desk that morning, knowing full well a sudden downpour was predicted. And who could forget the strategically placed ‘lost’ dog poster I’d plastered all over their usual lunch spot, featuring a picture of a particularly unphotogenic chihuahua I’d found online? Daniel, ever the gentleman, had dutifully stopped to examine it, only to find Sarah doing the exact same thing. The sheer audacity of it all! I still chuckled thinking about Daniel’s wide-eyed panic as he realized he was trapped in yet another one of my meticulously crafted scenarios.

He’d tried, bless him, to resist. He’d given me the patented “Milkah, please don’t” look, the one that usually involved him pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling a sigh that could extinguish a small bonfire. But I was a force of nature, a hurricane of good intentions and slightly unhinged optimism. And, as it turned out, my well-intentioned chaos was precisely what Daniel needed to shake him out of his romantic stupor.