Brynn’s mouth dropped open. Even if she had tried to guess the most unlikely words that could come out of Hallie’s mouth, “organ harvesting” wouldn’t have been even a remote possibility. “What?” she finally spat out. Seriously…what?
Hallie settled down, thankfully—or not, because Brynn didn’t know if she wanted to hear the rest—and added, “A gorgeous, smart, seemingly perfect woman walks into a coffee date and then asks a man for his blood type. It’s the start of a great horrormovie. You go home together, and next thing he knows, he’s in some makeshift operating room that used to be a warehouse, a few organs lighter. All because he didn’t listen to his gut. And now he doesn’t have one,” Hallie pushed out with one last burst of laughter.
Brynn thought about clarifying that kidney transplants were actually the most commonly completed organ transplant annually and that they were actually a part of the renal system, not the digestive system. But if Hallie was talking about the liver, then yes, she would technically be correct since it was an adjacent organ to what was colloquially known as “the gut.”
No. Brynn wasn’t going down this path. She shook her head to clear the thoughts. This wasn’t helping her case in the slightest. Even she could see that.
But as soon as she stopped thinking, she felt heat bloom across her chest, snaking up her neck and then splashing across her cheeks. Someone like Hallie calling hergorgeous, smart, seemingly perfectwas not nothing. A whole lot more than that, in fact. And it landed in a completely different way than it had for anyone who’d paid her similar compliments on the apps so far.
For the first time since they’d met, Brynn didn’t know that she could easily laugh something off with Hallie. What she really wanted to do was wrap herself up in the compliment like it was a blanket and bask in its warmth.
It must have been because she actually valued Hallie’s opinion and trusted her judgment. That made the most sense, even as a thought that didn’t slot into a neat box nagged at her peripheral.
A weird, sharp sound dislodged itself from her throat, some sort of hybrid bark of laughter mixed with anxiety.
Thankfully, Hallie, none the wiser, was too distracted as she wiped tears from her eyes. “I have to tell you, I cannot blameJake for unmatching you. With that being said, the enjoyment you just gave me by telling me that story was one for the record books, Brynn. Truly.”
Brynn remembered to smile as they shifted back to discussing the date that had gone horribly wrong. It was for the best; she still had a strange, buzzy feeling in her limbs that was making her feel a bit off-kilter.
So yes, even if she’d completely flubbed her first online date, at least she knew why now. It was all because Brynn had been curious. In her defense, she had explained her thought process to him, but now that she was thinking about it, she could understand that someone else may possibly construe her question as a convoluted ruse to get information.
With that in mind, she laughed genuinely, not the awkwardly pitched sound that had come out of her mouth a minute ago. “There really are some crazy people out there.”
Hallie nodded in agreement, her own face slightly red, too. “I’m always saying that other people are the best and worst things about being alive.”
This was good. Normal conversation was good. Brynn’s pulse was finding its way back to an expected range, and the room was finally feeling more temperate.
Hallie pulled her hand away then, and Brynn almost chased it with her own, missing the closeness and comfort. Pushing herself out into the world of dating felt so much safer when she knew that Hallie was there, waiting in the wings to catch her not if, butwhenshe fell.
With that in mind, she said the first words that popped into her head. “I think I’d like to, like, officially go on a date with a woman. Can you help me make that happen?”
CHAPTER NINE
Hallie scrolled through her phone at the check-in desk, perusing the matches that had come in on her dating app. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t find very many people interesting—at least, not enough to put her best foot forward and go on a date with them.
Only a week ago, Brynn had said decisively, in the very dining room that Hallie could see if she craned her neck, that she wanted to go on a date with a woman. Tonight, that date would be happening.
Hallie couldn’t imagine having that kind of get-up-and-go.
She was just about to let out a long-suffering sigh when the front door chimed. She pasted a smile on, expecting it to be a guest, back from an afternoon outing.
Instead— “Hey, Reese. I wasn’t expecting to see you today.” Hallie did what she’d been doing for the last few months: look past Reese’s shoulder for Sydney, who sometimes tagged along. This time, Reese was alone, which caused a nervous, skittering feeling to ping-pong through Hallie.
She couldn’t figure out what wasoffabout the situation since Reese did, almost as often as not, come to the inn without Sydney.
And then it hit her. Instead of her usual blazers and peacoats, Reese was dressed more casually than usual in a pair of jeans and a bulky, black jacket. Normally, Reese was on her way to and from meetings with contractors for the expansion and renovation plans at the other hotels she’d been acquiring.
This was a new situation, and Hallie was on her guard. Reese didn’t pop in, at least not on her, for purely social visits. Especially if Sydney wasn’t along, too.
Hallie had almost finished her mental gymnastics by the time Reese reached the desk and leaned on the edge of the counter. “We’re getting close to mid-January, so I was thinking a check-in would be a good idea.”
That didn’t really make sense to Hallie, but she wasn’t going to say that to Reese. Mid-January was quite possibly their slowest time of year. There wasn’t much new in the world of The Stone’s Throw to be updated on except— “Are you here to talk about Brynn?”
Hallie was very pointedly not mentioning the more casual get-up since Reese was being surprisingly fidgety, a point that was reinforced as subtly as a brick to the head when Reese looked around the room. But Hallie saw it for what it was. She was checking if the coast was clear. “Maybe we can go to the office?”
Hallie nodded and hopped off the stool that she was sure had an imprint of her butt, given how frequently she sat in it during this slow time of year.
Silently, she led the way through the door behind the desk, which led them into the small office that Hallie had spent less and less time in of late. Why would she want to be secluded in her cramped office when she could hang out in the lobby? Brynn was prone to popping by at random intervals throughout the day and regaling her with what should have been incredibly mundane musings on the world at large.
