Chapter 3 #2
“Right, I know. You’re going to be a professor,” Lily said, waving her hand. “But maybe if you two hit it off, he’ll reconsider his plans? Nothing is ever set in stone when you’re twenty-five. I’ve already been through a failed engagement, remember?” Lily reminded her.
Shelby felt her smile fall. “Right. Of course.” She could feel the intensity of Lily’s gaze on her, urging her to go on a single date. “Sure. If he wants to go out with me, I’ll go.”
Lily arranged for Shelby to meet with the handsome lawyer the following evening at the little seaside restaurant ten minutes away from the Sutton Book Club.
Shelby fixed her makeup in the bathroom mirror, then asked her mother, Aunt Valerie, and Grandma Esme if she looked all right.
They all gushed, “You’re beautiful!” and wished her luck.
Shelby felt floaty with panic. How was she twenty years old and only now going on her first date? During the walk to the restaurant, she tried to tell herself how normal this was, that she’d been busy during her teenage and college years, and hadn’t put love first.
But when she walked into the restaurant and found the lawyer sitting on his own near the sand, Shelby’s stomach flipped over. She knew already in her heart of hearts that she was going to be weird.
“Hi,” Shelby said, reaching out to shake his hand. “I’m Shelby?”
“Shelby, hey. I’m Hank,” the guy said, smiling in a way that told Shelby that he’d never had any trouble with women. Why did he need a matchmaking service? It didn’t make sense.
“So,” Shelby began, sitting across from him and fidgeting with the menu. She knew from books and movies that you were supposed to ask people questions on dates. “You’re a lawyer?”
“Yep,” he said. “Real estate. It sounds lamer than it is. Honestly, the minutiae can get pretty fascinating, but it’s a lot to get through.”
“I’m sure.” Shelby smiled wider, then wondered if she was smiling too big and fixed her face.
The server arrived and took their drink orders: a beer for Hank and a Diet Coke for Shelby, as she wasn’t yet twenty-one and didn’t have a fake ID.
“I don’t think they would card you here if you want something else,” Hank said.
Shelby furrowed her brow. The last thing she wanted to do was get a bit tipsy on a date and say all the wrong things.
Unless not drinking was weirder than drinking?
Her palms were sweaty, and she realized she’d begun to overthink everything.
When he asked her a question about her time at Columbia, she found herself talking a mile a minute about one of her professors, who’d told Shelby that she’d written a very academic if “terribly boring” paper that would “set her up well” for applying for grad school.
“He said it was boring?” Hank looked briefly confused.
“I mean, he said it ‘fit’ what grad schools want,” Shelby said.
“But I guess it wasn’t really a compliment?
” She wasn’t sure why that was the story she’d chosen to tell.
There were numerous other Columbia-related stories she might have chosen instead.
Stories that made her seem interesting and smart and creative. Probably.
Her stomach tightened into knots. She’d sort of assumed dating was like anything else—an exchange of information and then saying “goodbye.” But she now understood something: Hank had agreed to this dinner thinking that maybe something would brew between them, that there would be sparks.
Maybe he’d imagined kissing her at the end of the night.
Had she imagined kissing him? She filled her mouth with Diet Coke and told herself she couldn’t go into the bathroom and call Lily for help.
That would be the most pathetic thing of all.
Somehow, some way, Shelby and Hank made their way through dinner before Hank either faked or really had a phone call that tugged him away. He paid the bill, then told her he had a really good time. “Let’s do this again,” he said.
“Really?” Shelby blinked at him. Had he had a completely different experience than she did?
“Yeah,” Hank said, leading her out of the restaurant. “It was cool to meet you.”
Back at home, Shelby sat on the sofa with Chad and a few of Chad’s friends, watching a basketball game.
It was raining, and lightning rocketed across the Nantucket Sound.
She knew that it was standard protocol for Lily to talk to her clients before and after their dates, which meant that Hank had probably called her and told her what he thought one way or the other.
Lily was out with Mick, but she’d be home soon.
Shelby told herself not to hide in her room.
When Lily came into the living room, her eyes were falsely bright and shining. “Shelby?” She said happily. “How was it?”
The last thing Shelby wanted to do was talk about her date with Hank in front of Chad and his friends, so she followed Lily to Lily’s bedroom, where Lily closed the door and tried to maintain a feeling of positivity and “good energy.”
“So I don’t know if Hank is a perfect match,” Lily said. “But that was only your first date!”
Shelby, who’d never failed at anything outside of social situations, felt her heart crumple in on itself. She sat at the edge of Lily’s bed and put her head in her hands.
“He didn’t like me,” she said into her palms. She suddenly felt so stupid and naive, like those girls at Columbia University who gave away their hearts and minds to men.
“That isn’t it,” Lily said. “Plenty of people go out, talk, and find they have nothing in common.” She rubbed Shelby’s back, then asked, “Did you think you had things in common?”
“I mean, no,” Shelby said. But her eyes were filled with tears, and she understood: rejection was what she’d been avoiding all these years, not romance, not love.