The Non-Date #2
We eat in companionable silence for a while, and I find myself relaxing in a way I haven’t in months. There’s something about being out of Sorrowville, away from the constant pressure of expectations and watchful eyes, that makes breathing easier.
“You’re different out here,” Gisele says eventually.
“Different how?”
“Lighter. Less guarded.” She gestures at me with her fork. “You’ve laughed three times since we sat down. I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve laughed in my salon.”
“The salon has Post-it notes and forced emotional exercises.”
“The salon is trying to help you.”
“I know.” I push a piece of pancake around my plate. “But it’s also work. This is just...” I trail off, not sure how to finish.
“This is just us,” she says quietly. “Without the structure.”
The words land in my chest and settle there, warm and uncomfortable.
“I want more of it. Is that bad?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She sets down her fork. “I designed the program to give you something to push against. Rules, exercises, measurable goals. Things your control-obsessed brain could latch onto.”
“It’s working.”
“Is it?” Her eyes meet mine. “Or are you just getting better at performing the exercises while avoiding the actual point?”
The question cuts deeper than she probably intends. Because she’s right—I have been treating this like a game. Checking boxes, completing squares, learning the right things to say.
But right now, sitting in this rundown diner with pancake syrup on my fingers and no audience to perform for, I don’t feel like I’m performing anything.
I feel like myself. Not the captain. Not the son trying to outrun his father’s ghost. Just Bennett. And I don’t know what to do with that.
The realization hits like a check into the boards—sudden, disorienting, leaving me scrambling to regain my footing.
“We should go.” I flag down Carol for the check. “The supplies.”
Gisele watches me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she nods.
“Sure. The supplies.”
We pay—I insist, she argues, I win—and head back to the car. The clicking noise is still there, mocking me with its insignificance.
The drive to the supply store is quieter than the drive to the diner.
I keep catching myself watching her, cataloging small details I’ve apparently been noticing for years without admitting it.
The way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she’s thinking.
The way her hands move on the steering wheel.
The way her voice changes when she’s talking about something she cares about.
This is dangerous.
This is exactly the kind of thinking I’ve been avoiding for three years, and now it’s flooding in. I’m in trouble. Real trouble.
“You’re spiraling,” Gisele says.
“What?”
“You’re spiraling.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “I can see it happening. Your jaw’s doing the thing, and you haven’t said anything for nine minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re retreating.” Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact. “Something happened in that diner that scared you, and now you’re trying to put the walls back up.”
How does this woman see me so clearly? Even better than my brothers. Even better than my own mother.
I want to deny it. Want to produce some plausible explanation that doesn’t involve admitting that I’m terrified of how easy this felt, how natural, how much I want it to keep happening.
“Gisele—”
“I’m not going to push.” She says it simply, without drama. “You opened up, you got scared, you’re pulling back. That’s a pattern. I see it.”
Of course she sees it. She sees everything.
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shrugs. “I’m not going to force you to process something you’re not ready for. That’s not how this works.”
The absence of pressure is somehow worse than pressure would have been. If she pushed, I could push back. If she demanded an explanation, I could construct one that kept her at arm’s length.
But this—this calm acceptance, this willingness to let me have my retreat without fighting for more—leaves me with nothing to resist.
“I had fun,” I hear myself say. “At the diner. That’s what scared me.”
“I know.”
“I’m not supposed to—” I stop, start again. “This was supposed to be about fixing me. Learning emotional skills. Not about...”
“Not about what?”
I can’t say it. Can’t name the thing that’s been building since she kissed me, since before she kissed me, since the moment I sat down in the middle of Main Street and she was the only person I wanted to see.
Then again, she’s always been that person.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
“Okay.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence.
The supply store is exactly as mundane as expected—aisles of professional hair products, wholesale prices, fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look slightly ill.
I push the cart while Gisele fills it, and we don’t talk about the diner or the pancakes or the thing I almost admitted.
The drive back to Sorrowville is quiet, too. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted with everything unsaid.
When she drops me at my truck, I linger by her window for a moment.
The engine is still running. She’s waiting for me to say something or not say something, and I can tell from the way she’s not looking at me—eyes straight ahead, hands loose on the wheel—that she’s giving me room to make the choice.
I should say same time tomorrow. That’s the safe thing. That’s the thing that fits inside the structure we built, the one where I’m the project and she’s the person running it and everything has a label and a place and nothing is messy or exposed.
“I was off the whole trip,” I say instead.
She doesn’t move. “I know. I saw the video.”
“Not just the penalty.” I look at the windshield, the street, anywhere that isn’t her face. “The whole four days. Practice, games, the bus.” I stop then start again. “I keep functioning better when you’re around. I don’t know what to do with that.”
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. It’s just full.
“Bennett—”
“I missed you.” The words come out rougher than I intend, stripped down to just the fact of them. “Not the sessions. Not the exercises. You.” I finally look at her. “That’s what I couldn’t figure out how to text. But I wish I would have.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. An expression moves across her face that I can’t fully read.
“Same time tomorrow,” she says softly.
It’s not a deflection. Coming from her, right now, it sounds like a promise.
“Later tomorrow.” I push off the window. “After practice.”
I walk to my truck without looking back.
The lie I told myself all the way home—that’s not where this is going—tastes like pancake syrup. Sweet and cloying and impossible to scrub away.