Chapter 6 #4
“Whatever you include, it will be better than Sydney making mine. I can promise you that. Actually,” Hallie said, readjusting her position so that she could grab her phone, too, “I’ll update mine at the same time.
” And then, Hallie shot her a soft smile that made Brynn feel like, for whatever it was worth, they were in this together.
That smile, with Hallie’s dimple just visible, made Brynn’s initial reservations melt away.
She navigated to the app store on her phone, recognizing an icon. “Do I really want to use the same app that Grant was using to cheat on me?”
“That’s a ‘him’ problem,” Hallie said decisively before she looked at Brynn with big, expressive eyes that made her pay attention to whatever Hallie was about to tell her.
“But this is a very good time for me to point out that nefarious creatures abound. You cannot take anyone at their word. A few years ago, I went on a date with a guy who told me that he was an entrepreneur.”
Brynn wasn’t sure where this was going even as she leaned toward Hallie. “Lots of people start businesses?”
“He ran an illegal ferret farm out of his living room,” Hallie answered drolly.
“Is the problem that it’s illegal or that it’s ferrets?” Brynn asked, trying to hold in her laughter. Regardless of which one didn’t pass Hallie’s test, it was… eccentric. Even she could see that.
Hallie bit her lip, her brows furrowed, and Brynn could tell that she was thinking. “Have you ever had to search for an apartment? And lots of words are code for other words?”
Oh god, this was going to be so much worse than Brynn had thought. She had no idea what Hallie was talking about. And yeah, maybe she wasn’t embarrassed with Hallie, but she also didn’t relish looking like a complete idiot. She already knew that she was ridiculously sheltered. “Maybe remind me?”
Laughing lightly, Hallie patted Brynn’s knee. She missed the contact—the connection—once it was gone. “I’ve got you. So people will say something like the studio is ‘cozy’ but it actually means, ‘You will be lucky to fit a Murphy bed in here.’”
“The different words make sense, actually. Precision in language is important, but connotation also matters a lot. It’s part of why the focus on linguistic philosophy has fallen by the wayside in the last couple of decades,” Brynn said excitedly, feeling like she was finally getting the hang of something.
It was probably for the best that Hallie wasn’t touching her knee anymore; it was distracting.
Except, “What is a Murphy bed? You say it like it’s something that I should just know.
And now I’m zero-for-two on references. Based on this conversation, I don’t even know what I’m going to talk to these people about. ”
“People love to answer questions about themselves, and you clearly love to learn about things,” Hallie said graciously. “It’ll be perfect.”
“But… what if they lie to me?”
Hallie set her cup down on the coffee table and then punched her fisted hand into her other palm. “Then they’ll have to talk to me about that.”
Warmth flooded her chest again, even as she bit nervously at the edge of her lip. “Ummm… it’s going to be hard for me. I don’t exactly have that thing that lets me know when people aren’t being honest or genuine.”
“A bullshit detector?”
Laughing at Hallie’s word choice, Brynn said, “Sure, if that’s what we’re calling it.
I don’t have one of those.” As much as anyone could be real with themselves, Brynn tried to believe that she was aware of the majority of her flaws.
She was way too much of a people pleaser when it came to her parents.
She got irrationally annoyed when people chewed loudly.
And, most inconveniently as of late, she’d realized that unless it was well and truly shoved in her face, she always assumed people were telling the truth.
But she knew all of these things about herself. That must count for something?
At this moment, though, it didn’t. Because she was about to venture into a brave new world with Hallie, where Brynn had to decide if she trusted someone.
She looked at Hallie then, tapping away on her phone, a completely different look on her face than the one she’d been wearing an hour ago. It settled something inside of Brynn, to feel like they were about to jump into this ridiculous plan together.
Really, what Brynn needed was to get better at reading people, and luckily for her, she’d met the perfect person to help her do that.
“I cannot in good conscience let you use that photo.”
Brynn had been trying, and failing, to get final approval on her dating profile for the last thirty minutes. And sure, she could have posted it regardless of Hallie’s opinion, but that wouldn’t have been as much fun.
They were down to half a bottle of whiskey, and everything was hilarious right now. “I like this photo,” she argued in between hiccups of laughter, holding her phone aggressively close to Hallie’s face. Spatial awareness was not currently one of her strong suits.
Luckily, it didn’t seem like Hallie minded. She’d moved closer on the sofa once they’d both gotten down to work, and for the last few hours, they’d been sitting next to one another, their thighs and arms touching.
The only exception had been at midnight, when they’d rung in the new year by taking a shot of whiskey and placing a hex on Grant that a woman Hallie had dated in her early twenties, who’d been into the occult, had taught her.
They’d held hands and chanted and run around in circles, calling on the energies of all the women that he’d mistreated over the years. Hallie had made an emphatic plea that she should be included in that group since she’d had to deal with him in a “romantic-adjacent” capacity for way too long.
Brynn didn’t know if she’d ever had so much fun before, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to let Hallie’s rejection of one of her favorite photos go.
It was a shot that someone from her volunteer group had taken in Louisiana while she’d been straining to lift a large bag of concrete mix. “I don’t get it,” Brynn pressed, listing off what she felt like were the photo’s positive points. “It shows that I volunteer. It shows that I’m strong—”
“It shows that you are very into letting people know that you like to pop a squat in public places.”
“That is not what it means! And I’m not doing… that.”
Hallie leveled her with a wildly entertaining look. “Well, that’s what it looks like it means. I don’t make the rules.”
For the last two hours, Hallie had been explaining the intricacy of online dating and all its unspoken rules. When had the world gotten so gross? It felt like nothing was safe and that everything could be taken as some kind of double entendre.
“Trust me,” Hallie had said an hour ago, “men will already say gross things unprompted. Some women, too. You don’t need to give them any more ammunition.”
In their present moment, Hallie threw her hands up as Brynn continued to smile at the picture. It made her feel strong. Like she could do anything. “Fine. If you want to leave me the few normal people that may be left on this godforsaken app, then I’m not going to keep fighting you on it.”
Brynn scoffed and rolled her eyes, which earned her a playful slap on her shoulder. Hallie, at least it seemed to Brynn’s untrained eye, was also having a surprisingly good night.
Over the years, Brynn had managed to maintain casual friendships for periods of time, some with women she’d even considered best friends, but she’d never had this.
A closeness that made casual touches feel comfortable.
Conversations where Brynn didn’t have to pick apart every word before she said it.
It was easy, sitting here with Hallie and talking about whatever came to mind. For all the roadblocks that Brynn’s privilege had removed in her life, things had never felt simple inside of her brain.
But here she was, just hanging out with Hallie, drinking and talking and laughing. It felt better than any fancy night out or over-the-top party she’d ever attended.
There had been so many times in college where she’d wanted this experience, but for whatever reason, it never ended up working out like she’d hoped.
She hadn’t even heard from Jennifer and Carrie, the two women who were supposed to have been her bridesmaids, since she’d left for Louisiana.
Brynn frowned, which made her face feel weird. Wrong. She liked it a lot better when she was laughing and happy, so she pushed the thoughts of her failed friendships away.
When she looked over at Hallie to see what she was doing, she realized Hallie was already looking at her, head leaned against the back of the sofa.
They’d lit candles for the hex and dimmed the lights, and the room was bathed in a soft, comfortable glow that made Brynn feel just as hazy as the alcohol.
“Where’d you go there?” Hallie asked softly, the tone of her voice making Brynn surprisingly emotional.
But even if Hallie’s words made Brynn want to melt into a puddle of honesty, she didn’t want to take Hallie to the place she’d just found herself in.
She didn’t want to let the bad of the past dim the great time she was having.
On top of it all, she didn’t want Hallie to see her the way that other people did.
Which, in spite of Brynn being her weirdest, most authentic self with Hallie over the last few hours, still hadn’t seemed to scare her away.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked, desperately hoping she could change the subject.
Hallie lifted a suspicious eyebrow, but in her slightly drunken state, it also made her eyes and nose scrunch up adorably. “What movie?”
Brynn picked up the remote and navigated to the streaming menu, starting to flip through the categories. “We have Disney. We have horror. We have romance. We have thrillers. We have comedies. We have documentaries.”
“Do you honestly think that you could follow a documentary right now?” Hallie yawned, suddenly looking sleepy, her lidded eyes staying closed longer with each blink.
Brynn was tired, too, but she didn’t want this night to end. Instead, she waved the remote at the TV, like she was doing a spell. “Documentaries are out.”
She hoped that Hallie wouldn’t say horror; she hated scary movies and didn’t know why she’d even suggested the genre.
Probably because when she’d started using the TV a few days ago, she’d noticed there were a few of them on Hallie’s recently watched list. They were dwarfed in comparison to the selection of Disney movies, though.
“How about I put on a classic Disney movie?” Brynn chanced.
Hallie yawned at the same time she said, “That sounds good.” Then she curled her body sideways, toward Brynn, using the back of the sofa as a pillow.
The movie started playing, with characters that Brynn recognized by sight but couldn’t possibly name. She carefully leaned forward so that she could blow out the candles, trying not to disrupt Hallie when she did.
When she relaxed back against the sofa, she was immediately enveloped in the warm combination of the plush blanket they’d been nestled under, Hallie’s cuddled frame, and the alcohol still buzzing in her veins.
She yawned, knowing it wouldn’t be long before she drifted off to sleep, too. And as she felt her eyes fluttering closed, in that in-between place between sleep and awake, Hallie shifted her head, using Brynn’s shoulder as a pillow.
“This ended up being a really good New Year’s Eve,” Hallie said sleepily, cuddling into her like an animal burrowing down for a cold winter.
Brynn smiled and rested her own head on top of Hallie’s, pulling the blanket up higher.
Yeah, it really was.