Hallie quirked a confused eyebrow, even if it did also make her feel pretty damn good inside that Brynn valued her opinionthis much. That wasn’t generally the case with people in her life. “You’re just going to blindly trust me on this?”
She expected some thoughtful, nuanced explanation of how Brynn had come to the same conclusion on her own, but instead, Hallie was met with a ridiculously attractive smile that made her want to blush. Yeah, Jay definitely didn’t deserve Brynn.
After a beat, Brynn snuggled back into the pocket of space she’d claimed on the sofa, right against Hallie. She lifted her phone back up so they could both look at the app, opening the next message as she did.
Hallie was about to make a joke about Seth, the next possible suitor, and his penchant for muscle tees, but her words stuck in her throat as Brynn said softly, “I have a really good feeling about you, Hallie.”
Hallie suppressed a reflexive urge to roll her eyes at the compliment. Instead, she snuggled down so that she and Brynn were shoulder to shoulder, trepidatious but—a little embarrassingly—more pulled into Brynn’s enthusiasm than she wanted to admit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Brynn could lead by example. At least, that’s what she told herself while getting ready for her date on Thursday afternoon.
Now that Hallie was officially splitting shifts with her again, Brynn had taken the day to drive to Boston. She’d needed to pick up some extra clothing from home, but the more pressing motive was to put in some face time with her parents. She had a sixth sense when it came to them, and she could feel that they were about a hair’s breadth away from popping into The Stone’s Throw unannounced.
And she’d been right, given that her dad had shown up in Stoneport on Tuesday anyway, under the guise of having a meeting with Reese.
Brynn had joined them for lunch, along with Sydney, where her dad had shed a few tears when he’d been told about the engagement. The whole day had beenveryStan Fitzpatrick: Crying. Lunch at a seafood restaurant, which he insisted on paying for. So many hugs for Brynn—and Sydney and Reese—that she’d had to check once he’d left that she hadn’t cracked a rib.
But in the here and now, she had other things to focus on. She pulled on her sweater and smoothed down the soft material, her fingers fidgeting against the fabric. It wasn’t that she was nervous exactly, but she’d never been on a date with someone she hadn’t already met in person. So, it wasn’t exactly a blind date, but it was pretty darn close.
She was going to put on a little makeup and then have Hallie psych her up on the way out the door.
They’d decided on a coffee date at a local café, which was perfect for Brynn. She knew Stoneport better than any of the surrounding areas, and though Hallie’s speech about drinks versus dinner as the perfect first date was less serious than her “never go to a second location” talk, she’d made sure to rebuff the dinner suggestion when it had been offered.
Insofar as boxes went, Jake was checking all of them. Brynn just sort of took people as they came, but she was learning in the world of high-stakes online dating, there was a fairly rigorous amount of information to be gleaned ahead of a first meeting.
Jake, she knew from their messages back and forth, texted in almost full sentences. His profile said that he was gainfully employed, which Brynn had learned, by way of him mentioning his role in pharmaceutical sales, actually seemed to be true. Per his photos, he liked to rock climb and volunteered at a local animal shelter.
Of all her matches and messages over the last five days, he was the only one who’d made it to the final meeting-in-person stage.
She opened up the small makeup bag on her bathroom counter, in one of the two bedrooms in the owner’s quarters. It hadn’t really made sense for her to move back to one of the guest rooms after the guest from the Christmas period checked out. Especially not since winter sports season was starting to pick upand The Stone’s Throw was only a short drive from a few of the smaller mountains in the area.
In her defense, she’d tried to pay for one of those guest rooms, giving Hallie an out, but she also wasn’t going to pretend that she wasn’t pleased as punch that Hallie had waved her off and insisted that she stay right where she was.
Brynn had never had a roommate before, unless you counted her parents. There was something exciting about living with another adult, especially another woman with whom she could veg out on the sofa after work, lamenting the ridiculous requests of some guests.
She could be her whole self, warts and all. It was, she was learning, okay to have a bad day or not constantly be a ray of sunshine. If anything, Hallie called Brynn out for her blind optimism, especially when it was leading Brynn down what would probably become a chaotic path. But having lived with her parents for so long, it was the only way she really knew how to be.
She and Hallie had settled into a rhythm over the past week, which Brynn was loving. They had opposite days off, so during the day, Brynn would visit her parents, text with Gregory, or casually peruse teaching positions for the upcoming school year—though the availability of those, especially in philosophy departments, was scant.
After they were both home in the apartment, depending on who was working, they’d either order in or cook dinner, sometimes in the apartment and sometimes in the inn’s kitchen, before settling onto the sofa to start working through a variety of shows.
Hallie, she’d also learned, loved to talk about what she was watching. A forty-five-minute episode could take them more than double the time to get through, just because one of them was always hitting the pause button with commentary or aquestion posed to the other. It was the practical application of philosophy in its most human form, and Brynn relished every second of it.
But life with a roommate was… fun. Brynn felt way more comfortable with Hallie than she usually felt with people. In her adult life, it always felt like she was trying and failing to fit in. With her friends in college, who hadn’t exactly shown up for her when she needed them to. And then in her PhD program, where it was way too cutthroat for her cohort to truly let one another in. She thought it would get better once she was with Grant, but trying to assimilate into his friend group was the worst of all.
They were always attending fancy dinners at pretentious and popular restaurants and loud clubs, with a revolving door of women on the arms of his friends. To top it all off, they must have known about his relationship with Sydney, which caused a prickle of anger that flushed her cheeks.
But Grant was in the past, she reminded herself. And even if she sometimes regretted how low she’d sunk in outing his infidelity in such a public way, she couldn’t exactly feel badly about the whole situation.
As Hallie had told her repeatedly, he’d reaped what he’d sowed.
Which brought her to a far more pressing thought over the past few days. When it came to her and Hallie, only one of them was putting on their big girl pants and following through on their commitments. To be fair to Hallie, Brynn was one of those people who, once she got an idea in her head, couldn’t let it go. And now that she’d decided dating was that idea, she was fixated on seeing it through.
She knew, on some level, that people responded to life in different ways, which was why she was trying not to feel anything even close to annoyance toward Hallie.
Since her date was in the early afternoon, she’d gone light on her makeup, opting for a soft, natural look. Makeup, like color palettes, was something she’d been able to study and learn to apply to herself.
