27. Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Brandy
At five fifty-eight my doorbell rang.
Two minutes early.
I took one last look in the mirror. Dark jeans, a soft lavender blouse, my good flats. Hair down. Lipstick on. Presentable but not trying too hard.
It's not a date, I told myself. He asked you to dinner. That's just dinner.
I opened the door.
Nick Carson was standing on my porch in dark jeans, a white T-shirt, and a casual grey suit coat that had absolutely no business looking that good on a human being.
Oh shit. Thank goodness I shaved my legs.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," I said.
We stood there for approximately one second too long in the way that people do when they're both thinking something and neither is saying it.
"Ready?" he asked. “You look great.”
"Thank you." I grabbed my bag and pulled the door closed behind me. Walking to his pickup, I asked, “Where’s Cap?”
“He’s having a self-care night at home.”
I laughed. “I can see him in a mask getting a massage.”
“That’s about his speed.” Nick opened the door for me and offered his hand. “Tonight involved a treat, the sofa, and his stuffed penguin.”
I got in. “Well, there’s self-care and there’s self-care.”
He closed the door and walked around to his side.
One point to Nick for opening the door.
Every time I come to Pins & Grins, it strikes me as a social media influencer who wears outlandish outfits, the crazier the better, and is so excited to do so.
I can’t even say it's a bar having an identity crisis because I think it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.
A bar, a white-tablecloth restaurant, and a bowling alley, all rolled into one.
Sam met us at the host stand before the server could. He looked at us and a slow smile spread across his face.
“Hello, Brandy, how are you?” Sam smiled at me.
“I’m good, thanks.”
As soon as he saw Nick, his attention shifted to him. "Well," he said. "Look at this." He walked around us. "And wearing a suit coat, Chief Carson?"
"Sam," Nick said.
Sam said pleasantly, "I've known you for years, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in a suit coat." He looked at me. "This must be something important." He tilted his head. "Like maybe a date?"
I waited for Nick to answer.
Say yes, I thought. It's one syllable. Y. E. S. You can do it.
Nick cleared his throat.
"No," he said. "Well." A pause. "No."
Well, cross that one off the list.
I kept my face completely neutral.
I don’t know about that. He asked me out. He picked me up, even opened my door. I’m pretty sure Webster's would give that as the definition of a date.
I mean, not that I care. Not really.
Sam looked at me with the expression of a man who had just witnessed something he wished he hadn't. He recovered quickly.
"Well, whatever it is, you look great. Right this way," he said pleasantly, and led us to a table near the window that looked out onto the bowling lanes.
The server came. We ordered drinks. The fabulous popcorn arrived, and I ate several pieces on autopilot because Beckett's popcorn was the one constant in a suddenly confusing evening.
It's fine, I told myself. It's just dinner. He said it himself.
We ordered food. Nick got the burger. I got the fish and chips because Beckett's batter was apparently made of dreams and I deserved something good.
The food came, and we talked. About our days, about the event, which he annoyingly still disagreed with.
And we talked about nothing in particular.
And it was fine. It was good, actually. Nick was funny when he let himself be.
A good communicator who didn’t dominate our time with everything being about him. Like someone else I’d been here with.
But I felt like someone let the air out of my balloon. Initially, I was excited to be here with him. Now? Now it felt like I should pay for my own check and walk home.
I don’t know, maybe I’m being melodramatic.
But he kissed my cheek. That’s a relationship move. Isn’t it?
All he had to say was yes. I guess he doesn’t feel that way about me.
But then why get dressed up?
It’s not the bar that needed clarification, it was Nick.
"I'll be at the station tomorrow," I said, dipping a fry into the most extraordinary mushy peas I'd ever encountered. "I want to sort the decorations into piles so we know what we have for the event setup."
"Sure," Nick said. "Thompson and Scott can help. They owe you that at least."
"Owe me?" I said. "They don't owe me anything."
Nick set his burger down. "Oh, believe me, they do."
I looked at him. “How so?”
"It was them," he said. "They watched us on the cameras in the storage room and told people." He picked his burger back up. "Thompson told Karen. Scott told the Harris sisters. Between the two of them, they managed to turn a kiss into—"
"Sex against the fire truck," I finished.
"You got it.” Nick lifted an eyebrow. “Although against a truck would be fun.”
This isn’t a date. No flirting!
I sat with everything he’d said, processing it.
“Oh, those two!” I shook my head. “Now I understand why Scott retreated back through the door this morning like he'd seen a ghost. And why the two of them looked like they’d been caught in a crime.” I looked at Nick. “They're going to pay for that.”
“Do your worst.” Nick gave me a small mischievous smile. “I have a feeling turning them over to you is better than any punishment I could come up with.”
“You blamed me. How did you stumble across this information?” I asked, curious if he knew before he called me to his office.
Nick set his fork down. “I didn’t. Jo did. That afternoon after I was an idiot and blamed you. She marched them into my office and made them confess.”
“Oh, they're going to sort every single box of decorations by color, size, and all the candy too. Every. Single. Box. And they’re going to decorate. I might even come up with their costumes.”
“You go, girl. They deserve it.”
We finished dinner and were sitting looking at each other.
"I should get home," I said. "Early morning tomorrow, and after last night I am genuinely exhausted." I looked at him across the table. "I need to catch up on my sleep."
Nick looked at me like someone took away his favorite toy.
"Of course," he said. "Sure."
He drove me home quietly, as though he too understood that the evening had not gone exactly as planned.
When we arrived, he opened my door and walked me to my porch. At the door, I turned around and looked up at him in the porch light. His green eyes. His jawline. The suit coat.
“Nick, what was this, tonight?”
“What do you mean? We had dinner.”
“Dinner, that’s all it was?” I wanted complete clarification.
“It wasn’t breakfast.” Nick genuinely looked confused.
“No, I know we had dinner, but I...” For a split second, I thought about letting it go. “I guess I thought it was a date.”
He blinked twice. “It was.”
“What?” I rubbed my eyebrow. “You told Sam it wasn’t.”
Nick ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, he caught me off guard. I panicked.”
“Panicked? Over saying yes?”
“We didn’t talk about it. And after the last rumors, I didn’t know what you wanted to say.
So, no just spilled out.” He looked at me with an expression I was learning was regret.
“Plus, Sam’s a good guy, and I don’t think he would tell people, but his staff and all the others there? Like I said, I panicked.”
“You face fires, buildings consumed in flames, and one date got you that panicked?”
“I’d rather face a fire than people. With a fire, I have an idea what’s going to happen. With people, who knows. Need I remind you of the fire truck sex?”
“I see what you mean.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, the kind of kiss that says goodnight and nothing more. "Thank you for dinner," I said.
"You're welcome," he said.
Once I was inside in my pajamas and had changed the sheets on my bed, I lay there and thought about the night.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want more with him.
Believe me, I did. But I didn’t want him thinking that more was going to become the norm.
And I guess, after years of being ignored and not wanted...
He still could have said yes, it’s a date.