Gregory worked in finance and kept long hours. By the time he was available in the evenings, Brynn and Hallie were both usually home, settled into a night of hanging out. Unless they were reviewing their matches on the app, Brynn wasn’t usually looking at her phone to see his responses. Instead, she checked them the next morning, when the cycle of being ships in the night would start again.
On the weekends, too, Gregory led a very active social life, to put it mildly. There was always a brunch. Always an event. Always an afterparty. For them to even meet up before she’d come to Stoneport, he’d had to decline two different invitations: a drag brunch and an afternoon date.
Truly, she couldn’t imagine leading his life. It sounded exhausting.
Shockingly, though, he seemed to find her current chronicles far more interesting than she’d expected. “You run off to Stoneport more than a month ago. I receive cryptic texts from you…sometimes. And then, a few weeks ago, you hit me with the fact that you’re online dating and then decided to be very vague on the details! You’re lucky that I didn’t drive up there myself and hassle you in person.”
“I didn’t realize that you were so eager to know what’s going on. I figured that a young, eligible gay man in a bustling city had far better things to do than worry about my comings and goings in small-town America.” For the last few years, it had been a running joke between them. Brynn, the least social butterfly, and Gregory, the belle of the ball. Their sexual orientationsaside, how they’d made it for almost two years as a couple was anyone’s guess.
But she liked that she knew, without a doubt, that Gregory was rolling his eyes, too. “I care deeply about what my first and only girlfriend is doing with her life. Especially,” he added, “when you consider the fact that I don’t know this woman, even though I recognize her voice. This Brynn Fitzpatrick who has a day job with the general public and casually dates. With women, no less!” he finished emphatically.
She could picture him pacing around his luxury apartment, situated in Downtown Boston. The sun had set hours ago, but she was sure that when he looked out his window, he’d see a city filled with lights and the flurry of activity. Conversely, she looked out her own sliding glass doors to see actual flurries, falling onto a grassy area that ultimately led to the rocky shoreline of the coast. Darkness enveloped everything more than five feet away from her apartment’s interior lights.
Even in an inn filled with dozens of people, it felt private and secluded.
And she liked it. Bingham, where her family summered, one of her favorite places in the world, had a very similar vibe to Stoneport. The quiet. The solitude. The small-town atmosphere.
Even with all the newness in her life as of late, she felt more grounded here than most other places she’d ever been.
“Well, never fear, Gregory. I’m not keeping nearly as busy of a social calendar as I’m sure that you are. I’ve gone on three dates. Hallie said I’m doing great, as far as averages are concerned.”
“Tell. Me.” In the last six months, her and Gregory’s lives had started looking more similar. Or, at the very least, she was keeping up with his own bustling schedule. For most of their friendship post-breakup, Brynn had been locked away working on her PhD, planning her wedding, or spending time with herparents. It was rare that she had anything remotely constituting an interesting story to share with him.
Except for the time that Grant had failed to look at the list of wedding cake options that she’d sent him ahead of their appointment and had broken out in a vibrantly red rash at one of the nicest bakeries in Boston.
This made it all the more fun when she began to regale Gregory with the story of Jake, who’d unmatched her before she’d even gotten home from their date. That had been a real crash course into the world of meeting people on the apps. As expected, Gregory was laughing so hard that he was wheezing through the phone.
When he still couldn’t stop laughing, Brynn finally cut in. “Well, I’m so sorry for trying to bring a little bit of probability and statistics into the dating world.”
It took a few more seconds, but he finally got his laughter under control. “Because everyone knows that’s such a panty dropper.”
Brynn made a disgruntled sound. “I didn’t need him to drop his panties, but I didn’t assume that he’d think I was trying to traffic his organs! Like, I got it when Hallie explained it to me, but what is wrong with this world? Who even thinks like that?”
“Apparently your new BFF, Hallie,” Gregory chirped back. “What’s her deal, anyway?”
Brynn smiled, thinking about Hallie. Then she frowned, which caused a weird, guilty feeling to settle in her stomach. “She’s on a date tonight.”
The line was quiet for a few seconds, and she could imagine Gregory with his pensive, faraway stare that he insisted made him look intelligent even though, many times, Brynn had told him that it actually made him look confused. “Why does it sound like you don’t like that?”
That wasn’t true. Even though Gregory couldn’t see her, she shook her head, rejecting the idea. Brynn was happy for Hallie. It was possible to be excited for someone and be sad that things were changing.
And, anyway, it was only one date.
Only, she hadn’t really expected after pushing Hallie so hard to come on this journey with her, that she may not be thrilled about where they were ending up. Which made her feel selfish. Hallie deserved all the happiness in the world, even if it divested her time from the little bubble that she and Brynn had built for themselves.
“I just like routines. You know that.” Even as she said the words, she knew they didn’t quite fit. The uncomfortable, hollow feeling of emptiness in her chest was back.
Thankfully, it abated when Gregory laughed and carried the conversation forward. He was always good at not letting her get lost in the weeds. “Yeah. We had to go to the same coffee shop on campus every morning, where you always ordered the same exact thing.”
“Having a standing coffee order is normal,” she argued for at least the dozenth time in their friendship. Brynn knew that she hadquirks, but this wasn’t one of them.
“So, Hallie’s on a date tonight. But like… what’s herdeal?” Gregory asked, bringing the conversation back to one of Brynn’s favorite subjects.
She didn’t get to talk about Hallie nearly enough, except to Hallie herself. And Brynn’s effusive commentary about the big and small in their lives that Hallie had accomplished, seemingly with ease, was usually brushed off with a self-deprecating joke from her roommate.
Except tonight, when Brynn had complimented Hallie before she’d left for her date. Hallie had walked out of her bedroom, and Brynn’s breath had caught in her throat. Hallie had lookedbeautiful, and Brynn wasn’t going to take the chance that her date would be the first one to tell her that.
Andthatdidn’t make Brynn selfish. It made her a good friend. Brynn had wanted the compliment to come from someone with no ulterior motives.
