Chapter 11 #3
“And I’ll be, what, your sugar baby?” It was rare that Hallie won many points against Sydney, but she was trying to work this one in her favor, knocking Sydney’s slow return into the back corner.
Sydney laughed and crossed the court easily. “Buying you gifts on holidays does not make you a sugar baby, Hal.”
Over the years, Sydney’s gifts had always dwarfed Hallie’s own.
She’d never been sensitive about that. At least not consciously.
Sydney was a multimillionaire, now about to marry another multimillionaire.
Hallie didn’t lose sleep over the thoughtful but clearly expensive gifts that her best friend bestowed upon her.
If there was a designer label in her closet, then it was Sydney’s doing. And when her parents had moved to Colorado earlier this year, it had been Sydney who’d, for Hallie’s birthday, bought her the obscenely expensive but otherworldly comfortable sofa that now lived in her apartment.
Only, now that she was dating again, with more intent than she’d ever had before, she was suddenly looking at her life through a very different lens.
At least she could say that she was dependable. She’d had the same job for the last fifteen years, since she’d barely been a teenager.
The dating she’d done sporadically in the past hadn’t elicited these feelings in her.
That she was fumbling and faltering compared to everyone else.
Back then, she was ahead of her peers, with her college degree and managerial role.
And it was completely normal to still live with one’s parents, especially in a state as expensive as Massachusetts.
In her early twenties, no one knew what they were doing with their lives. The commiseration had been half the fun.
But now, at twenty-eight, a lot of people her age were married. Some even had kids. Had found a way to afford mortgages. And if they hadn’t followed the more traditional path, they had passions and hobbies and careers that they oriented their personalities around.
Hallie returned the ball—hard—and it flew out of bounds, at least ten feet past the line. She put her hands on her hips and asked the question that had been plaguing her for the last few weeks, one that she’d refused to voice until this moment, even in her own mind. “Do you think I’m a loser?”
Sydney, who’d been about to chase down the ball, stopped short and turned around. Her long legs covered her side of the court in seconds. At the net, she pointed her racket menacingly at Hallie. “Why would you say that?”
“My date last night,” Hallie mumbled, chopping her racket through the air to distract herself.
“At the net,” Sydney commanded, and Hallie could suddenly understand how Sydney so easily managed to get teenagers to listen to her.
Like a petulant kid being called to the principal’s office, Hallie walked slowly, continuing to chop her racket through the air as she went.
She was trying to stave off the inevitable, which was Sydney forcing her to confront her feelings.
But clearly, at least on some level, she wanted to talk about them.
She wouldn’t have said the words out loud if she hadn’t.
When Hallie reached the net, Sydney threw her arms around her and wrapped her up in a crushing hug, which Hallie fell into immediately. “Don’t say that about my favorite person. Do you hear me?”
Hallie nodded, tears prickling behind her eyes. “It was a stupid thing to say. I just had a bad date last night. And after everything with my parents… I mean, if enough people in your life make you feel like you’re the one in the wrong, is it so crazy to start to think that you’re the problem?”
“Come with me.” Sydney tugged her along, her longer arm slung around Hallie’s shoulder as they walked to the edge of the court, the net still between them. Sydney looked down at her watch. “The smoothie bar just opened. Let’s go there so that we can talk.”
They picked up their bags, and Hallie wordlessly followed Sydney.
When they reached the front of the building, they took a set of steps that led to an overlook on the smaller second floor, which housed the offices, along with a small snack and smoothie bar.
In the seating area, there was a large window that overlooked the courts.
Sydney dropped her bag at a table right next to the window and pointed to a chair. “Sit.”
Hallie did as she was told, putting her own bag down, too.
Once she was seated, she looked out the large window, at the courts that were starting to fill up for the day.
A small number of group sessions and individual lessons had been going on while they’d been playing, though there’d been a decent number of empty courts, given that it was barely nine a.m.
Sydney, as a coach, was in extremely high demand, and early mornings were the best time for the two of them to build in some one-on-one time.
Sydney slid into the seat across from her and pushed a smoothie in her direction. Hallie hadn’t realized that minutes had passed. She’d been busy watching the people below, who, from this vantage point, looked like they were part of a miniature tennis court diorama.
Sydney eyed her. “Okay, spill.”
Hallie feigned knocking her drink over. “You just got me this smoothie. That seems pretty silly.” Brynn would have loved that one.
From Sydney, she earned a winged brow and a grimace. “I’m going to let you have that because it’s clear that you’re in a bad place.” Then, Sydney extended her hands and flexed her fingers, like she was beckoning Hallie. “Now, unburden yourself to me.”
Hallie maneuvered uncomfortably in her chair, wishing that she could make herself smaller.
Especially with the way Sydney’s eyes were trained on her, studying her every micro-expression.
She took a long, forceful sip, trying to buy herself time, but it was futile.
Sydney played tennis matches that lasted for hours.
She could sit in a chair and wait Hallie out.
The worst part was that they both knew it.
Finally, under Sydney’s unwavering stare, Hallie gave in. “Well, I went on a date last night.”
“Did she do something? Say something?” Sydney had the same tone that a protective older sibling would have, and Hallie loved her all the more for it.
God, where did Hallie even start? The date had been a total and unmitigated disaster.
But after twenty years of friendship, she knew that Sydney would want details. “She just seemed so incredibly underwhelmed by everything. The place that I picked. My conversation. That I work some customer service job at an inn—”
“First of all,” Sydney cut in, “she sounds like a jerk. And secondly, I can’t imagine that you lied about anything on your profile, so it sounds like a her problem more than anything.”
Hallie frowned and ran her fingers along the smooth, white table. “Well, she didn’t exactly make me feel that way.”
Ruby had just seemed so… bored, for lack of a better word. It was like she’d expected Hallie to pick her up on a Harley and whisk her away for the wildest, most wondrous night of her life.
Unfortunately, seafood tapas at a new restaurant a few towns over had not met the standards of the “surprise me” request that Ruby had put in her profile.
Ahead of the date, Hallie had spent hours looking for a unique, interesting activity or restaurant they could enjoy in the dead of winter in small-town Massachusetts.
She’d been pretty pleased with her selection, especially once she’d combed through the reviews and noted that people had called it “the newest hidden gem within fifty miles.” In the summer, when tourists flocked to the area, it was likely going to be the hottest reservation around.
But then she’d actually gone on the date and had seen the look of disdain on Ruby’s face, like Hallie had taken her to Red Lobster for never-ending shrimp and then told her that they had to sneak sharing a single order.
The really annoying part was that Brynn would have loved that tapas place. So many small plates to try, where Brynn could have compared them all to one another and categorized them by different ratings systems. She might even have made a spreadsheet.
Hallie could picture it so clearly: taste rankings, presentation rankings, probably some insane ranking system that included quality based on distance the main ingredient would have had to travel from its natural habitat.
She wished that she’d been there with Brynn. And that was the real rub, even if it was also true that Ruby had made her feel like gum on the bottom of a shoe.
Now that she wasn’t fighting for every point on the tennis court, it was easy to slip back into thinking about this morning.
About Brynn, specifically, and all the reasons her ill-advised crush needed to be tamped down on as soon as humanly possible.
Thankfully, Sydney cut Hallie’s thoughts off before her mind could wander too far. “And that part, my friend, is a you problem. There is always going to be someone smarter or cooler or more talented or wealthier or insert-adjective-here than you.”
Hallie lifted a brow and smirked. “Says the smartest, coolest, most talented, wealthiest person that I know.”
“Then I feel like it bodes well for you to listen to me,” Sydney chirped back, leveling her own, equally pleased smirk in Hallie’s direction.
Hallie deflated, sinking back against the chair. “I’m trying.” She rapped her knuckles against her temple. “It doesn’t seem to be sticking.”
Sydney leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table. “This feels bigger than a bad date. What’s going on? Something with Brynn?”
Anxiety welled up in Hallie’s gut so that her words came out rushed. “Why would you think there’s something going on with Brynn?”
Was she that obvious? Did she have crush-struck fool written across her head in permanent marker?