The Non-Date
Bennett
There’s a special kind of lie people tell themselves when they leave town.
Distance makes things clearer, simpler, easier to control.
It’s a nice thought. Very tidy. Unfortunately, all distance really does is strip away the noise until you’re left alone with whatever you’ve been avoiding, sitting across from it in a diner booth with seventeen kinds of pancakes and nowhere to hide.
And if you think calling it a “non-date” changes what it is?
Well. I admire the commitment to the bit.
Playlist: “Out Of My League” by Fitz and the Tantrums
“I need to drive to Riverdale for supplies.”
I look up from the game tape I’ve been pretending to study for the past twenty minutes. Gisele is standing in the doorway of her back room, keys in hand, expression carefully neutral in a way that immediately makes me suspicious.
“Okay.”
“My car is making a weird noise.”
“Call a mechanic.”
“I did. They can’t see it until Thursday.” She tilts her head. “I was hoping you’d come with me. In case it breaks down on the highway.”
Every alarm bell I own starts ringing. This is a trap. It has to be a trap. Gisele doesn’t need backup for a supply run—she’s driven herself everywhere since she was sixteen and rebuilt her first car’s engine with YouTube tutorials and sheer stubbornness.
“You want me to come with you to Riverdale.”
“For safety purposes.”
To talk about the thing which shouldn’t be a thing but most definitely is a thing.
“For safety purposes.”
To force me to expose my soul because you are a sorceress that I can’t resist.
“Mm-hmm.” She doesn’t blink. “It’s about an hour each way. We can work on exercises in the car.”
This is definitely a trap. Not about the car. About me.
“Fine.” I close my laptop. “Let’s go.”
Her smile is entirely too satisfied, but I’m already committed. Following her out to the parking lot feels like walking toward something I can’t see clearly, and my instincts are screaming at me to turn back.
I ignore them.
Gisele’s car is a sensible Honda that she’s had since cosmetology school—scratched up, probably worth less than my gear bag, but meticulously maintained. The weird noise she mentioned is barely audible, a faint clicking that could be anything from a loose heat shield to a pebble in the wheel well.
“This is what you’re worried about?” I settle into the passenger seat, which is smaller than I expected and puts me approximately six inches from her at all times.
“Safety first.” She starts the engine, and the clicking continues. “See? Weird.”
“That’s nothing.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not a mechanic.”
“Neither are you.”
“Which is why I’m bringing backup.” She pulls out of the lot, and we’re on the road.
The first twenty minutes are fine. Normal. She asks about the team, I give non-answers, she pushes for details, I deflect. The usual rhythm we’ve developed over years of friendship, now slightly charged with everything we’re not acknowledging.
Then she merges onto the highway, and the space between us shrinks even further.
It’s psychological, I know. The car hasn’t gotten smaller. But something about leaving Sorrowville—watching the familiar landmarks disappear in the rearview mirror—makes the air feel thicker. Like the rules that govern how we interact in our town don’t apply out here.
“Tell me about your first hockey game,” she says.
“What?”
“Your first game. The very first one you ever played. What do you remember?”
I blink at the unexpected question. “I was five. Maybe six. My dad took me to the outdoor rink behind the community center.”
“And?”
“And I couldn’t stay upright. I spent more time on my butt than my skates.” The memory surfaces, clearer than I expected. “But my dad kept picking me up. Every time I fell, he’d haul me back to my feet and tell me to try again.”
Before the drinking got bad. Before he stopped showing up at all.
“That’s sweet.”
“Yeah.” My voice goes rough. “He was different then. Before everything.”
Gisele doesn’t push for more, just lets the silence hold the weight of what I’ve said. It’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about her—she knows when to press and when to wait.
“What about you?” I ask. “First memory of the salon?”
“Easy.” She smiles. “I was seven, and my grandmother took me to get my hair done at this fancy place in the city. I hated every second of it—the smells, the noise, sitting still for hours—but when they turned my chair around and I saw myself in the mirror...”
“You were hooked.”
“Completely.” She glances at me. “I looked like someone else. Someone who had her life together. Someone who mattered.”
“You were seven.”
“I was seven and already desperate to be more than what I was.” I recognize that feeling.
The drive to be someone who can’t be hurt.
Someone untouchable. We’re more alike than I thought.
Her jaw tightens slightly. “My dad had left the year before. My mom was barely functional. I wanted to be someone who couldn’t be abandoned. ”
The confession hangs between us. I’ve known pieces of this story—everyone in Sorrowville knows the broad strokes—but hearing her say it like this, casual and raw, feels different.
“Did it work?”
“What?”
“Becoming someone who couldn’t be abandoned.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. “No. But it gave me something to aim for.”
The highway stretches ahead, and I find myself watching her profile instead of the road. The determined set of her jaw. The way her fingers grip the steering wheel just slightly too tight.
She’s so beautiful it steals my next breath.
“Pull off at the next exit,” I hear myself say.
“Why?”
“There’s a diner I used to stop at when the team traveled through here. Best pancakes I’ve ever had.”
She glances at me, surprised. “We have supplies to get.”
“The supplies can wait.” The words surprise me as much as they surprise her. I don’t know where this is coming from, this impulse to extend our time together, but I’m not fighting it. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“I had coffee.”
“That’s not food.”
“It’s breakfast-adjacent.”
“Gisele.” I wait until she looks at me. “Pull off at the exit.”
She pulls off at the exit.
The diner is exactly how I remember it—a little run-down, a little too bright, staffed by a woman who looks like she’s been working there since the building was constructed.
We slide into a booth near the window, and I watch Gisele take in the space with the same analytical eye she brings to everything.
“This is very... retro.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Maybe kitschy works better.” She picks up the laminated menu, flips through it. “They have seventeen kinds of pancakes.”
“I told you.”
“Seventeen.” She shakes her head. “That’s a commitment to carbohydrates I have to respect.”
God, I like being with her.
The waitress appears—Carol, according to her nametag—and takes our order with the kind of efficiency that suggests she’s done this approximately ten million times. When she leaves, Gisele turns her attention back to me.
“So. Exercises.”
“We’re not in the salon.”
“The exercises aren’t location-dependent.” She pulls out her phone, opens what I’m now recognizing as her Bingo tracking app. “You’ve got three squares completed. Time to work on a fourth.”
“Right now?”
“Why not? We’re in a diner an hour from anyone who knows us. Lower stakes than Sorrowville.”
She has a point, which is annoying.
“Which one?”
“Your choice.” She angles the phone so I can see the card. “Pick something that feels doable in this setting.”
I scan the options. Most of them are too intimate for a public space—things that require vulnerability I’m not ready to display in front of Carol and the three other diners currently working on their own pancake mountains.
Then my eyes land on one near the bottom: “Admit you were wrong about something.”
“That one.”
Gisele’s eyebrows rise. “Really?”
“You said pick something doable. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things.”
“Name one.”
The challenge in her voice makes something competitive flare in my chest. “I was wrong about you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Five years ago.” I lean back in the booth, forcing myself to hold her gaze. “When you first opened the salon. I thought it was a bad idea.”
Her expression shifts. “You never said that.”
“Of course I didn’t. It wasn’t my place.” I trace a pattern on the Formica table. “But I thought you were making a mistake. Sinking all your savings into a small-town business when you could have gone somewhere bigger. Done something more impressive.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I was an idiot.” The words come easier than I expected.
“You built something that matters. Not just the business—the community around it. People trust you. They come to you with their problems and their celebrations and everything in between. You matter to this town. You matter to—” I stop myself. “You matter.”
“That’s not admitting you were wrong,” she says softly. “That’s complimenting me.”
“It’s both.” I meet her eyes. “I was wrong to doubt you. Wrong to think I knew better. Wrong to assume that success only looks one way.”
The silence that follows is heavy with something I can’t name. Gisele opens her mouth to respond, but Carol chooses that moment to arrive with two plates of pancakes roughly the size of hubcaps.
“Enjoy, sweethearts.” She’s gone before either of us can react.
Gisele stares at her plate. “This is an aggressive amount of food.”
“I warned you about the pancakes.”
“You did not warn me about the pancakes.” She picks up her fork, pokes at the stack experimentally. “This is a punishment disguised as breakfast.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“I’m a dramatic person.” She takes a bite, and her expression shifts. “Oh. Oh, these are actually incredible.”
“Told you.”