Suddenly, her hand was enveloped in Hallie’s, and she was being dragged across the lobby. They passed through the sitting room, extra toasty from the fire, before Brynn was led into the dining room and planted in a chair, Hallie’s hands pressing her shoulders so that she would sit.
Outside of breakfast and the weekend lunches, there was usually no one in this room. They were surrounded by ten empty tables, which wouldn’t be set until tomorrow morning.
Hallie took the seat adjacent to Brynn at the square table, arms extended. She grabbed her hand again. “My first comment,” she said, eyes full of fire, “is that Jake is a jackass. As he will henceforth be known. But let’s talk about the date and see if we can understand what happened.”
Brynn nodded slowly. She did like to make things make sense. And maybe, with Hallie’s help, she could understand how things had gone wrong. She obviously didn’t know, given that she only realized that Jake had unmatched her when she’d gone to send him a message, thanking him for the coffee and to see if he’d like to hang out again.
“Okay,” Hallie said, clearly taking the fact that Brynn hadn’t stood up and walked away as her silent agreement. “Tell me about the date. Let’s leave no stone unturned.”
Brynn nodded, thinking back. The sidewalks had been cleared of the snowfall that they’d gotten a few days ago, which she’d remembered being grateful for as she’d tightened her peacoat around her body. Once she’d left The Stone’s Throw, it had been a straight shot down the street, which, fairly quickly, became the main drag of Stoneport. The coffee shop was situated near the middle of downtown, and she’d passed by more than a few stores that were closed down for the winter.
Some had stayed open through the holiday season, which, as of about a week ago, was officially over, a fact that was signaled by the town’s Christmas tree having been taken down, even though the bright, colorful lights that illuminated the street every night still seemed to be hanging from the old-timey lampposts. For a month—the entire time Brynn had been in Stoneport—the tree had loomed magnificently at the start of the stone breakwater that jutted out about a hundred yards into the harbor.
She flexed her fingers against Hallie’s warm, ridiculously comforting palm, remembering how she’d forgotten her gloves.With her hands in her pockets as she’d made the short walk, all she could do was pray that she didn’t slip on a patch of ice. Or, if she fell, that she could do a defensive roll out of what would otherwise be a pretty dangerous tumble. A broken wrist would be a terrible start to a first date.
She’d taken ice-skating lessons a few decades ago, and the first thing that the instructor had done was teach them how to fall properly. At the time, Brynn had been grateful to discover there was a way to insulate herself from hurt. From pain. With enough information, she could stave off feeling out of control.
Instinctively, she squeezed Hallie’s hand for comfort. Whenever she thought about ice-skating, she thought about the fact that her sister should have been there with her, taking lessons, too.
But just like an hour ago, she’d tried to do the same thing that she was doing now and push the thoughts away. They weren’t here for that. They were here to talk about her miserable excuse for a date.
Brynn sighed, appreciating that Hallie was sitting so patiently, giving her time to work out her thoughts. Hallie hadn’t pushed her to spit out some haphazard version of events. It helped Brynn to go through things sequentially, walking through the entire experience in her mind.
When she’d stepped into the busy shop, she was thinking about the importance of bending her knees, focusing on how she’d fall to the side or forward, letting her hip or forearms take the impact.
“I arrived right on time.” In the here and now, she relaxed her body the same way she had done when she thought about how to fall safely.
She was met with an encouraging nod. “Which is great. Not too eager but still shows that you value his time. Perfect marksso far,” Hallie said, flashing her a comforting smile. “What happened next?”
It had been easy to spot Jake; he looked exactly like his pictures from the app. Which, she’d been informed by Hallie days ago, wasn’t always the case. “He was already seated at a table, but he waited to get his drink until I arrived. I left my coat on a chair, along with his, and we went to the counter together.” Having the steadying comfort of Hallie’s touch made pushing forward feel a lot less painful than she’d expected. Because something had, obviously, gone horribly wrong. And over the next few minutes, with Hallie as her witness, she was going to discover exactly what that was. She took a deep breath and kept going. “I ordered a flat white. He ordered a large black coffee. He paid, but I did offer.”
“Sounds normal so far.” Hallie squeezed her hand again, and Brynn could already feel some of her stress and embarrassment melting away. Delving into a blow-by-blow breakdown of events was exactly what she needed, and she was grateful to Hallie at this moment.
Brynn snapped her fingers, remembering, “And I asked what non-dairy creamers they carried, just in case you and I go there at some point.”
“I appreciate you thinking of me.” Hallie smiled again, softer this time. Her focus was fully trained on Brynn when she said, “No alarm bells. So you’re back at the table now. Walk me through your conversation. What did you talk about?”
Brynn scrunched her face, her thumb rubbing absent circles over Hallie’s calming hand. “We talked about our lives. I told him that I lived with a roommate in Stoneport right now but that I’m originally from Boston.” She and Hallie had worked out the script, as Hallie had called it, to convey where Brynn was at in her life. “I told him that I’d finished my PhD in philosophy a few months ago.”
“What about Jake? Any red flags for him?” Hallie asked, choosing this moment to scoot her chair around the corner of the table so they were sitting closer together, their knees brushing.
Distracted by Hallie’s touch, Brynn took a few extra seconds to orient herself. When Hallie’s leg shifted again, moving a few inches away, it was like she could finally think again. She squinted, envisioning the coffee shop. She and Jake had sat across from one another, unlike she and Hallie, but it had allowed them to make direct eye contact. He had pretty blue eyes, with dark brown hair cropped short. And great teeth. His overall smile wasn’t as nice as Hallie’s, she’d remembered noting, but that was because Hallie had better lips.
Still, he was cute, just like his profile implied.
“He looked like his pictures. And he works remotely for a Boston-based company in sales. He’s one of three kids, with two older sisters.” Brynn rattled off the facts that she’d learned on their twenty-five-minute date, if you didn’t include her travel time to and from the cafe on foot.
They’d mostly stuck to the basics, at least as far as Brynn was concerned. She’d told him that she was an assistant manager at a local inn. Another nugget of wisdom from Hallie had been to keep it light on specifics regarding real-life places she frequented, worked, or lived near, just in case a date sought Brynn out in the future with unwanted attention.
“Okay…” Hallie stilled, like she was mulling her next question over before she asked, “What else did you two talk about? Anything that ended in a weird look from him or a long, protracted silence?”
Again, she felt a deep appreciation settle in her chest at Hallie’s clarity. Because yeah… those things had happened. Brynn had just assumed they were first date hiccups. Specifically when… “I asked him about his blood type.”
Hallie’s brow shot up even as she smiled. Brynn felt like it was probably close to exasperation, but, as usual, Hallie seemed to be enjoying herself. “And what, pray tell, made you ask him that?”
This one was easy. “Well, I was thinking about how you’d said he was the definition of winning the lottery and then getting struck by lightning. On my walk there, it got me thinking about other incredibly rare things. One of the rarest things in the world is a blood type called Rhnull, and someone who has it has ‘the golden blood type.’ There are fewer than fifty documented cases in the world, and I was struck with this thought about how incredibly improbable it would be that Jake could also have this blood type. So I asked him—” At this moment, she realized that Hallie had started to laugh.
“Oh my god, Brynn,” Hallie said between bouts of belly laughter, clearly delighted by the story. Anyone else laughing at her like that, especially after she’d just explained her thought process, would have made her stomach churn or have caused her to flee from the situation as soon as possible. But there was a lightness, a playfulness, in Hallie’s eyes that, as usual, made Brynn feel like she was in on the joke, too. Which was crazy because she had absolutely no idea what Hallie was getting at. Finally, her question was answered when Hallie pushed out, “He probably thought that you wanted to farm him for organs or something.”
