Chapter 13
The only thing more unnerving than having first-date jitters while preparing for a first date is having first-date jitters
while preparing for a secret first date with your agent and best friend in the confined space of an RV bathroom you share with him. An RV bathroom that actually manages to be smaller than that of an airplane. As in, my elbow is hovering above the
toilet and one foot is in the shower as I race a brush through my hair.
“Just a moment!” I say in a cheery voice through the paper-thin bathroom door. I rapidly unwind my hair from the curling iron—and
ram my elbow into a wall. Everything inside this bathroom is exponentially smaller. And fragile. Knock your knee on the toilet
paper and the whole thing falls off. Tap your elbow on the wall and it sounds as though you’re trying to punch through it.
“You all right in there?” Penny says.
“Super! Thanks!”
“You sure?” Penny says in that bright, listen-you’ve-been-in-there-a- long -time-but-I’m-Southern-and-too-polite-to-be-direct way. “Anything I can... do?”
“Not a thing!” I reply brightly. “I’ll be right out!”
I decided the safest plan of action for tonight was to wait for Jack to be on a call (not the hard part), sneak into the bathroom
(a little more challenging with Amelia’s eight-hour-long beauty “routines”), and get ready as quick as humanly possible, on
the off chance I am overthinking all of this.
Which is why I don’t change my outfit from the plain blouse and simple black flats I was wearing all day. The only thing I’ve changed is from the black leggings I wore this afternoon (the same I crawled all over the floor in to sop up Amelia’s spilled water) to a plain brown corduroy knee-length skirt. A nod to the Kathleen Kelly style of nineties fashion. Simple and understated class that says, “Oh, why, I fit in here!” whether we end up at a high-end restaurant or a pizza joint. I am prepared.
I am calm.
I am collected.
I whisper under my breath through the phone cradled in my ear, “So. What do you think?”
I’ve filled Gloria in on every single possible detail over the course of the past ten minutes. Touching on every single detail quicker than Jack, even when he played auctioneer
a few days ago.
And Gloria, like the truly efficient court reporter sister she is, gathered in all this information wordlessly and responded
with meticulously organized, rapid-fire responses.
The breakup speech with Parker. “Oh, how could he?! You know what? I told you he didn’t deserve you!”
The grief that he was cheating on me. “I never liked him. The man always was looking for the next thing, wasn’t he? Couldn’t just be happy knowing one language.
Had to learn two. Couldn’t be happy in one country. Had to fly off to live in two.”
The gaping hole in my heart from the sudden loss after such a long and complicated relationship. “Oh, hon, you are so brave though.” And subsequently, the new incident with Jack: “No, he DIDN’T?” Even the dream. “Are you serious?! Why have we wasted the last twenty minutes talking about, about—you know who—given this inspired news!
Forget Parker! It’s agreed, then—Parker ceases to exist in our brains. Tell me more about Jack.”
“Right, well,” Gloria says, when I’ve finished and I’m now hastily dotting my cheeks with blush while simultaneously continuing
to curl my hair, “to answer your question, no , I do not think this is all in your head. If you’ll recall, I’ve been telling you he’s had feelings for you for years.”
“Yes, but—”
“As evidenced by the fact he’s been making up names of females to pretend to date the past year. A year , Bryony? You have to ask yourself, why? Who’s he waiting for? And maybe think, Oh , I don’t know, perhaps he’s waiting on the girl he has dinner with every week under the guise of ‘friendship.’ And no, I don’t think this is all just a case of temporary insanity because you’re stuck on a bus—even if Amelia does make
you crazy.”
My eyes jerk toward the door as I notch the volume down two more levels. Even her name in my ear in this place is loud enough
to echo.
“And no , I do not think this falls under the category of rebounding. The law of rebounding clearly omits instances of long-distance
relationships where one guy is a cheating idiot. But you know what? Who cares if it is? Who cares? You’ve wasted two years waiting for this guy across the planet, turning down dates left and right—”
Well, that’s a stretch.
“—throwing aside every guy who’s turned up at your door—”
Which would be none.
“—and you have a lot of time to make up. A lot .”
I sniff. I mean, I wasn’t like some knitting lady glued to the sofa all these years. I had a laptop. I was a laptop lady glued
to the sofa all these years. Which is categorically much better.
She slathers on layers of compliments, as she does, and for a few more minutes I listen while managing to wind up a few more
strands of hair while burning myself on the arm twice.
When she hangs up, I uncurl the last strand and stare at myself in the mirror. There is a crazed look in my eye. It’s all
so very adrenaline kicking, uncertain. So very... scary, not knowing what my next step looks like, or even if I want to
go there.
What if this date goes wrong?
What if this date ends horribly, and instead of getting to run back home and hide in my apartment, in another town, for a
few days until the awkwardness wears off, we both end up back here— together —where we continue to see each other every second of the day? And night? Would we ever recover? Would we damage anything beyond repair?
Is there a case study I could turn to? Somebody else out there in the world who has done anything just as weird as this and
has a recovery story to tell?
I wince at the very obvious display of shimmery golden shadow I just added across my eyelids and rub it out as Penny knocks
on the door. “Bryony? D’you know how much longer you’ll be?”
Perfect. I’m turning into Amelia.
I open the door. “Sorry, Penny.”
“Wow,” she says, taken aback. “Don’t you look nice.” Her eyes cut to my outfit and then a look of alarm runs across her face.
“There’s not an event tonight?” She scrambles for the electronic planner glued to her side.
“No, no,” I say hurriedly. “I just... wanted to get some fresh air. Take a breather from the bus.”
“Oh. Right. The bus ,” she says knowledgeably, then slides her eyes toward the closed back door where Amelia has been busy doing “manifestations”
the past hour—which basically amounts to her declaring all the things she wants like a child on Santa’s lap while listening
to ocean music.
The rest of us have taken to referring to Amelia as the bus.
Sometimes the bus is acting uniquely punchy.
Sometimes the bus needs to refuel and it’d be wise to let it have the last doughnut.
Sometimes the bus needs to take a nap or else the rest of us will lose our ever-loving minds.
Frankly, it’s incredible how much attitude the bus has.
“Good for you.” Penny gives me a look that screams, “ Help! I’m a captive here. Please take me with you! ”
“Do you...” I hesitate, but her brown eyes are so big and hopeful I can’t help myself. “Want... to come with us...
in a little bit? We could swing back and pick you up later?”
The RV door opens and Jack steps back onto the bus and up the stairs to our little living area.
“Hey.” We lock eyes. And I hear it, my own little surprised intake of breath. It’s not that he’s changed clothes. His shirt
actually bears a tiny mustard stain neither of us noticed after lunch. Even his expression is one of carefree ease.
But he’s put on his watch. His father’s lucky watch.
The one he reserves for only the moments that really count in his mind.
It’s a funny thing, going on a date with a longtime friend. You can’t mask your true feelings, I guess. You know each other
so well that you give yourself away even without meaning to.
Were I a girl off the street, I never would’ve thought he was anxious about our dinner. In fact, I would’ve mistaken that
easy, open expression on his face and the way he’s resting his hand on the back seat of the leather captain’s chair as almost
too easy. Too nonchalant about how we plan to spend our evening. Almost as though, well, if we end up at a burger joint with a bunch of
other acquaintances and then split ways, fine! Who cares? Certainly not me. We can chalk it up to a nice time between friends.
But I’m not a girl off the street, as it happens.
He hasn’t ever had to say the meaning behind his lucky watch; I just know. He wore it on the day I went with him to the German
book conference, and he was particularly anxious about securing a conversation with a specific foreign rights company. He
wore it when I ended up at his fifteen-year high school reunion (heaven knows how) and he was anxious to show the world he
grew into an entirely different man than the ( quite , I learned) immature youth he used to be. And he puts it on practically every time he’s called up for a special meeting with
his CEO father.
His watch represents moments in time he wishes to mark as his best.
And apparently tonight, with me, is one he wants to mark as his best.
Penny’s eyes slide from Jack to me and she slowly moves backward, back toward her chair. “Oh, shoot , I just remembered I’m supposed to be finishing up Amelia’s newsletter.”
One of her six that come out every week, I’ve learned, and always begin with: Hi, My Beautiful, Creative, Talented Babes.
“Let’s shoot for a group escape tomorrow night,” I say. And I mean it.
We have to get this girl off the insanity train sooner rather than later.
The sky is cotton candy with puffs of pink, sunset-bright clouds set against a blue canvas sky as we step off the bus and
march our way through the parking lot. It’s another strip mall we’ve landed beside here at Rosemary Beach, and a high-end
one at that. A Tesla dealership bookends one end of the strip, a commercial bookstore the other, with an REI and a Williams
Sonoma featured prominently with their large block lettering, wide-open doors, and shoppers peeling in and out with large
shopping bags. Smaller mom-and-pop shops dot the rest of the landscape, small but mighty with their bright blue facades and
swirly green palm tree signs.
“Okay.” Jack stops and waves a hand panoramically at the long row of stores. “Take your pick.”
I scan the names on the shops, my eyes sliding over everything from La Carreta to Rai Lay Thai and in between. They land on
a little white restaurant just off to one side. A black-and-white-striped awning hangs over the front window, with black Parisian
umbrellas cluttering up the small sidewalk to the curb. Light flickers from heavy lanterns on both sides of the wooden doors,
and a man dressed in a white button-up and black slacks puts out his cigarette and rushes in with an accordion, of all things.
“That one,” I say, pointing, but he’s already walking in that direction.
“I know.” He turns and pauses for me to catch up. “As soon as I saw the man with the most annoying musical instrument possible,
I knew.”
I feel pretty good about my choice, however, as we get settled in our seats and look around. The small black-and-white bistro chairs are comfortable and quaint in our little patio setting. Live music streams out from the open doors, but with the band at the back end of the restaurant, it sounds lively. Pairs nicely with the sight of flickering flames from electric lanterns and white votives all around. Our bus is in view at the end of the parking lot—Amelia’s big, bright smile leering at us from a hundred feet away. I scooch my chair around to face Jack without Big Brother watching.
My stomach is seizing up with jitters again, with so many unknowns swirling around this moment, and my brain goes into overdrive
as it questions every single little thing.
What was that look he gave me as we sat down?
What did he mean, “ No, we’ll take somewhere quieter, if you have it ”?
Why exactly did he order a basket of bread for the table?
Is this just a basket-of-bread-for-the-table type of meal between friends? I mean, bread is not stereotypically romantic.
Oh. And there he goes. Ordering champagne. For what?
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?
Not to mention the equally overwhelming thoughts regarding the way I’m doing things.
Sit up straight, Bryony! Why is it so impossible to sit up straight in these chairs? This is all your fault. You should’ve
made use of that posture bra Gloria bought you for Christmas last year. You went on and on about how you wanted it, and she
went on and on about how it would give you the grace of Audrey Hepburn, and yet did you use it? Noooo , you found it all too “inconvenient” and now look at you. You’ve spent all your time hunched over your laptop and now you’re
a hunchback over your plate. This, THIS is what happens when you haven’t gone on a proper date in two years—
“What are you doing?”
Jack stops me in my self-loathing anti–pep talk. “What?” I look up from the bread roll I’ve been shredding into little bits.
“You’re sitting like a telephone poll. Stop it. It’s weird.”
A look of deep contempt comes over the face of our waiter, who has hitherto been standing over us.
Then, with an entirely different look, he turns to me. “Perhaps mademoiselle would care to start off with something a little nicer than ‘free bread rolls for the table,’ hmm? Perhaps our famous seven-hour
beef tongue in a nice potato mousse with gravy?”
“Oh,” I say. Well. That’s quite honorable, isn’t it? He’s trying to save me. “Well... absolutely.” I nod emphatically.
“Beef tongue sounds just lovely. Thank you very much.”
He gives a little bow to me. Pointedly ignores Jack. Moves off.
It’s not until he’s back inside that Jack addresses me, all while slathering up a roll with butter. “Are you happy? This is
what you get when you sit like the queen of England. Beef tongue.”
“Dipped in potato mousse,” I add.
I look at the butter on his bread. He seems to be spreading on an extra layer. I bet it’s salted too. With honey. A nice,
lathery honey. This seems like a lathery honey kind of establishment.
He slathers on some more butter and then sighs, handing it to me. “Here. Unless you’d rather I sneak the pathetic ‘free bread
roll’ under the table to you?”
“That won’t be necessary,” I say, but snatch it quickly before the waiter comes back.
And the butter roll breaks the ice.
Somewhere between sampling the dinner rolls, prodding the beef tongue together like some science experiment, and eventually
daring each other to try it (Jack fares far better than I do; it goes straight from my mouth to the napkin), we end up in
the course of dinner as we always do.
Talking about work. Talking about the little noticed nothings of the day. Talking about bowling and wondering if our team
misses us. (We text. They don’t.) It’s all just... normal.
I look into his eyes as he tells me about the latest news in his apartment hunt and... nothing.
He looks into my eyes as I give him bite-by-bite commentary on the tarte Bourdaloue and... nothing.
Now I sit back in my chair, stuffed to the gills, slouching and slightly regretting the after-dinner cappuccino sloshing around
in my stomach as the waiter comes by with the bill and Jack lifts his hand to take it and... something.
Something.
All of a sudden I’m aware of my ankle so casually resting on his the past half hour beneath our tight quarters.
And the way his hand so casually reaches out with confidence and gathers up the bill for the both of us.
And the way he— oh my gosh, what is wrong with me? —holds his pen as his signature slides over the bottom of the bill.
And here I am, lounging like a couch potato, having gorged myself on words and food without another thought.
“You’re doing it again.”
Jack isn’t even looking up as he speaks. No, he’s snapping the pen shut. Setting it on the bill. Sliding it to the end of
the table.
Then he looks up at me, and as our eyes lock, it’s like a hole has suddenly opened up beneath me and I’m dropped through the
concrete.
It’s as though a current of electricity zips between us as our eyes lock. It feels so loud that people around us have to notice. Have to feel the change in the atmosphere.
And yet in my periphery nobody’s head is turning.
People are carrying on in their own conversations. Numb to the seismic shift between us.
A slight smile lifts his lips, and I feel a hundred more pings as it does. His eyes soften. He speaks softer. “You’re sitting
like a telephone pole again.”
And there’s a slight tease in his voice. But also... something else. Something with more intimate force.
“Sometimes,” I say, “I wonder...”
I haven’t got anything left to say.
I can’t say it.
I can’t open up something like this. It’s a tin can. Once opened it cannot be resealed.
He waits for me to finish, but when I don’t he just nods slightly. Stands.
We walk around after dinner and in our wanderings end up past the massive bookstore and the bustling groups of people and
cars, past several smaller businesses, and finally onto a quieter neighborhood street.
They are older houses, lined up side by side with perfectly manicured lawns of St. Augustine grass and zoysia. Palm trees
and scrub oaks. Stained glass features of seagulls and wind chimes swept up in the salty breeze.
Night comes upon us.
And we continue on, talking about little nothings as all the while my mind is preoccupied, my thoughts elsewhere.
Who knows? Maybe for him too.
Nobody can be that intrigued by the location of a piano through a windowpane into somebody’s living room, right? Nobody can be that interested in talking about concrete turtles in a yardscape, surely?
And yet, there he goes. Perfectly content it seems to walk alongside me. Strolling along beneath a clear evening sky, dim
stars twinkling above, hands in his pockets without a care in the world.
“Do you think that’s an addition they added on above the workshop?” he begins.
“What exactly is happening here?”
I’ve done it.
I’ve blurted it out.
I clap my hands over my mouth. And yet a part of me is relieved.
Perfect, Bryony. Looks like you can make it roughly twelve hours before you need to have a talk about the status of your next
relationship.
He looks away from the workshop in mild surprise at my outburst.
Stops.
Turns.
Studies me.
“Well,” he says after a pause. “We just went out to dinner. I told you you were acting bizarre, the waiter became smitten
with you and decided to loathe me—nothing new—and now we’re walking off the three-pound cheesecake you made me eat because
you said it was blueberry, and you went on about how I love blueberry cheesecake, but it turned out to be raspberry, and you
made me eat it anyway. So here we are. Cue”—he waves his hand at the house opposite—“palm trees.”
He says it like it’s the most casual thing in the world.
“Right, I know that, genius, but”—I look around me—“just, I just, well, I just feel like something is different.”
“Nothing is different.”
I shake my head. “ Something is different. Do not challenge me on this, Jack. Something is different. I want—I need—to know what it is.”
He cocks a brow. “Do you really, Bryony? Do you really need to know what it is?”
I hesitate. Take a breath.
Do I need to verbalize it?
Tackle it, right now?
Against all Gloria’s (and usually my own) wisdom? “Yes.”
“Fine. The fact is, nothing has changed. For me.” He puts his hands out. “And everything, it seems, has changed. For you.”
“What?”
“Bryony. How often do we go out to dinner?”
“I don’t know. Maybe... once a week.”
“Three. Four if I’m lucky.”
I feel a little zing in my chest with his understated word choices. The way he says “if I’m lucky” as though, well, this is something he hopes for. Waits for.
“How often do we see each other?”
I shrug, my anticipation rising. “Well, every other day or so, I suppose. But we’ve got a lot in common. Work, like on this
tour.”
“Which I chose to go on with you.”
“Bowling.”
“Which I signed up for, for you.”
“Mutual friends.”
“Your friends. Your friends whom I’ve made my friends.” He must see the electricity in my eyes and adds, “I’m actually far
less needy than you and can exist happily with only two or three important people in my life. All of which proves my point.”
“Which is?”
“That for all intents and purposes, up to this point, we have been dating.”
“ What? No, sir .” My ears flame at the boldness of his suggestion. “I think I would know if I am dating someone. And I was dating someone.” I clarify with an indignant air, “I was dating Parker, and I was very loyal.”
“You were indeed. Maybe I should clarify then,” Jack says, and there’s a bemused grin on his face as he looks down at me.
He slows the moment down.
Lets silence rest between us, so that only the sounds of humming HVAC systems and cicadas whisper around. He takes a step
toward me. “You weren’t dating me. But I was dating you.”
The world is swirling around me now.
I feel such a rush of confusing emotions at his casual attitude toward this moment, this revelation. Gloria was right . Gran was right. Parker was right. Everyone was right.
“There’s just one little detail I’ve been missing in the past year and a half, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to
go ahead and capture it and take it home with me.”
My breath is coming shallowly now.
The world spinning around me slowly, not like some swooping roller coaster but like the gentle movement as you sit on a sailboat
in a bay. The slow rush of excitement is taking over me, and despite all my plans and goals, despite all my orderly aims,
I find myself asking in a whispery breath, “Which is?”
“This.” He closes the gap between us and kisses me, there with the onlooking concrete tortoises and clapping palm trees. His lips brush against my cheek first, sending a shiver up my nerves, and before he even has time to reach my lips I find myself rushing to his.
His kiss breaks into a smile, then a kiss again, as he takes me by the elbows and draws me in, more impatiently now, more
eager. Fingers gripping me more protectively now, delight clear in the way he holds me, touches me. Draws his fingertips through
my hair. Me. His Bryony.
His girl.
And it feels, well, it feels like home.