Chapter 10 #2
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 looked beautiful, and Brynn wasn’t going to take the chance that her date would be the first one to tell her that.
And that didn’t make Brynn selfish. It made her a good friend. Brynn had wanted the compliment to come from someone with no ulterior motives.
There was no one quite like Hallie, at least not in Brynn’s eyes. The soft makeup she’d put on made her hazel eyes look more green than normal. Her hair, usually pulled up in a high ponytail, was down and flowed across her shoulders, like she’d worn it to dinner with Sydney and Reese weeks ago.
And even though Hallie looked just as pretty when they were lounging around the apartment and she stuck carrot sticks under her top lip to make walrus tusks—maybe even more so then, since her whole face lit up when she laughed—Brynn wanted to give Hallie a little extra boost of confidence, like Hallie had done for her.
But instead of Hallie’s usual—almost requisite at this point—dismissal of Brynn’s compliments, Hallie had looked at her strangely.
For multiple seconds. But then, her full lips had broken out into a broad smile at the same time her cheeks turned red.
It had made the dimple in her cheek pop, which Brynn took as a sign that she’d said something right.
Or, at the very least, that one of her well-intended compliments had finally landed in some meaningful place in Hallie’s heart.
That feeling had kept her warm for the first thirty minutes that she’d padded around the apartment, looking for something to occupy her time.
In no uncertain terms, Hallie had been a lifeline to her since coming to Stoneport.
Which made it more difficult than she expected to convey the magnitude of Hallie’s impact on her world to someone else.
So, with that in mind, she started rattling off facts.
“Her parents used to own the inn where we work. They sold it to Reese over the summer. And Hallie and Sydney have been best friends since childhood.”
She could hear Gregory’s movements stop. “How tangled. And Hallie and Sydney never…”
Brynn blushed, and then she felt… Well, she didn’t really know what exactly she was feeling, but she didn’t like it.
It was jarring, how quickly her body rejected the idea that Hallie and Sydney had ever been something romantic.
“I don’t think so.” Her voice was much less decisive than she’d hoped, but she had to believe that Hallie would have mentioned that.
“But Hallie is into women?” Gregory pushed, never one to leave a rock unturned. Usually, Brynn appreciated that about him.
Right now, she found it more annoying than anything.
She didn’t like that even though she wished Hallie all the happiness in the world, something about thinking of her with another person romantically made Brynn’s insides squirm.
She pushed the feeling down. “I’d assume so, since she’s on a date with one tonight. ”
“Interesting…”
Brynn pinched the bridge of her nose; there was no way to stop herself from feeding into whatever Gregory was getting at.
She herself was desperate to see what he was seeing.
This conversation was cracking something open inside of her, and she needed to make it make sense in order to put the pieces back together.
It was the only thing, in her mind, that could quell the strange, uncomfortable feeling that had taken up residence in her stomach. “What’s interesting?”
Gregory’s ridiculously expensive espresso machine whirred to life in the background. That man had never met a moment of the day that didn’t call for caffeine. Over the noise, he said, “You’re dating women. She’s dating women. It seems like you two get along really well…”
“Exactly. Hallie is on a date, right at this moment, with a woman named Ruby,” she reminded him before adding, “We’re roommates and friends and—”
The whirring stopped, and it made his next words boom in her ears. “And what?”
In the last three weeks, she’d been on three dates.
Jake, which, yeah, she understood why that had gone the way it did.
Then Natalie, the barista who had asked Brynn on another date, which they were in the process of scheduling.
A few days ago, she’d met up with Chris, who lived about halfway between Stoneport and Boston, for coffee.
Spending time with all of them had been fine, but she felt like, at the end of the day, she’d have had a similar, if not better, night on her own. And she definitely would have had a better night if she’d been hanging out with Hallie.
Hallie always seemed to get what Brynn was saying. And whenever she didn’t, she never made Brynn feel stupid about it. She’d make some funny joke, never at Brynn’s expense, and they’d quickly get on the same page. Even if that page was Hallie looking at Brynn with a playful, exasperated smirk.
Hallie never made Brynn feel too weird either. Or too sheltered. Or like it was wrong to want to talk about some random subject she’d gone down the rabbit hole on the night before. With Hallie, Brynn was always herself, which was a rare quality for her to find in a friend.
She found herself saying, “And yeah, she’s beautiful and smart and funny and makes me feel really good about myself. But I don’t think she likes me like that. She’s just being nice.”
The words caused her heart to flutter before the uneasiness came back, at the same time that Gregory said, “I think you’re underestimating yourself, Brynn.”
But she wasn’t. Not really. Because the part that Brynn hadn’t shared was that even though she was missing Hallie desperately right now, this past week had been a little bit off. And Brynn didn’t know what to do with that.
Usually, Hallie would stop into the apartment throughout the day when Brynn wasn’t working, but she hadn’t been doing it as much.
At all, really, if Brynn thought back. And twice in the last week, Hallie had made plans with Sydney in the evening.
Which did make sense, since Sydney was in the process of starting to plan her wedding.
When they were home together, things were mostly the same, but even though Brynn really did love the plush blankets, there only used to be one on the sofa.
Another had shown up a few days ago, and now they each had their own to cuddle up with while they watched TV.
“Maybe,” she finally responded, pulling the blanket tighter across her body, which she’d stretched out across the sofa.
All of those changes, which Brynn hadn’t realized she’d been cataloging until this moment, caused a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“I’m sure that you’re getting ready to go out, so I’m going to head to bed soon,” she lied.
She had no idea when sleep would come to her.
She’d experienced this before: people pulling away.
Was that what Hallie was doing? It made sense. Brynn knew she could be a lot.
But it didn’t make the crushing feeling hurt any less, even as she told herself that it was bound to happen eventually.
“You okay?”
She appreciated the concern in Gregory’s voice, even if she didn’t want to get into her messy emotions right now. She didn’t even think that a feelings wheel could save her.
If this was, in fact, attraction, then she was very much interested in returning to sender.
“Just tired.” She faked a yawn for good measure.
The quiet on the other end told her that Gregory didn’t quite believe her, but he knew that she preferred to process things on her own and then talk about them when she was ready. “Okay,” he acquiesced, “but you’ll let me know if you need anything?”
She promised that she would, even though she didn’t know if that was true.
Once she was alone with her thoughts again, she stared up at the ceiling, wondering what she’d done to push Hallie away.
Brynn’s dream was murky and distressing. Something she should have understood wasn’t real. Only, as with most nightmares, her brain wasn’t getting the message.
It felt plausible that she’d somehow found herself in a fluorescent-lit hallway, trying to find the right room, but the numbers on the doors kept changing.
She knew, on some instinctive level, that it was a pediatric wing in a hospital.
During her childhood, she’d spent time in almost every medical center along the Eastern Seaboard. Some on the West Coast, too. Her sister, Bridget, had been sick from the time that Brynn was three until she was six.
Bridget probably would have continued being sick longer, but she’d lost her fight with leukemia shortly after her eighth birthday.
They’d celebrated that last birthday in a hospital room Bridget had been living in for months.
That day, it had been filled with balloons and medical equipment and presents and IV drips.
With so many toys that Bridget had never had the chance to enjoy.
A good day mingled with an awful day. But, by that point, most awful days had just become normal days. Brynn hadn’t understood much of it at the time except that Bridget hadn’t wanted to be there, which meant that Brynn hadn’t wanted her sister to be there either.
Most of Brynn’s earliest memories, which she still carried today, centered on the very specific smell that all hospitals seemed to have.
Lighting that was simultaneously too bright and too dim, depending on the time of day.
The incessant beeping of monitors, which were always needed but which never let them forget where they were.
To this day, Brynn still hated grocery store checkout lines and the beeps that happened when items were scanned.