Chapter 12 Teagan
TEAGAN
I take a half-day on Friday, powering through the morning with a flurry of scheduled posts of articles, lists, and tips we’ve run this past week and want to highlight again.
That includes a popular column on Made Connections, a relatively new dating app that’s been taking the scene by storm, since it lets strangers post about someone interesting they’ve seen in passing, or perhaps met briefly but never exchanged numbers with, like Bryn and Logan, who got together exactly that way.
Our site runs a weekly story about couples who’ve met through the app.
A guy and a gal who spotted each other on the Whole Foods escalator, one going up, the other going down.
A man who chatted with a woman in yoga class, exchanging tips on meditation and wine, only to be interrupted by a fire drill.
A painfully shy UPS driver who crushed so hard on a regular customer but couldn’t bring himself to ask her out till he got on the app.
He’s still shy, but that’s okay. He found his person—and he said falling in love taught him he didn’t have to be shy about expressing his heart to her.
Talk about swooning.
Their story is the sweetest, and they’re getting married in a few weeks.
I schedule all the social media posts for those pieces, and then a few more links to scientific articles—since science is awesome.
Studies on things like the chemistry of love and keeping the spark alive when you’ve been with someone for a while are vital to the site’s reputation as both a fun and intelligent resource for dating tips.
As my half-day nears its end, I check in with Summer, shooting her a text to see how her piece on dates for married couples is going.
Summer: This is a dream come true—plotting dates for my sexy-as-sin husband. I love it.
Teagan: All righty, then. Carry on.
Summer: We will! And I promise the piece will be epic. Want a hint?
Teagan: Do I? Hmm. Wait, of course I do!
Summer: Remember how my misadventures started with The Dating Pool?
Teagan: With your ill-fated letter. Yes, of course.
Summer: Yes. But in retrospect, was it so ill-fated?
Teagan: Considering you’re grotesquely, disgustingly, obscenely happy to be married, I’d say no, it wasn’t ill-fated at all.
Summer: Exactly! So that’s your hint. And I’ll be raining down likes, clicks, and shares with my plans.
Teagan: Oh, baby! You’re talking my language. See you tomorrow!
I close the text app, say goodbye to Matthew, Rosario, and the rest of the team, then head out of the office to meet up with Bryn at a nearby cruelty-free nail salon that smells like a garden.
It also serves wine—another reason I like Daisy Nails.
Bryn arrives at the same time and gives me a hug.
“Does the boss know you’re skipping out early?” she asks me clandestinely, only after whipping her head from side to side to check who might be listening.
“No. Please don’t tell Logan when you see him tonight, okay?”
She narrows her eyes, then gives me an I’ve got you nod. “It’ll be our secret.”
Bryn’s boyfriend bought The Dating Pool a year ago as part of his media firm, and he oversees it as the CEO.
Technically, he’s my boss, even though I’m not his direct report.
But since he signs all our paychecks, he’s yet another way we’re all tangled up together.
We’re like a pile of puppies on top of each other, and I don’t want to disturb the pack’s slumber.
Bryn and I settle into the cushy leather pedicure chairs, dipping our feet into the warm foot tubs and catching up on our week as Daisy brings us glasses of chardonnay.
“Next week, Logan and I leave for our train trip across Canada,” Bryn says between sips.
“I want pics and souvenirs. I bet it’ll be amazing.”
“I can’t wait. I do love a road trip of sorts.”
“Even better since no one has to drive,” I add, then swallow some of the white wine.
“Exactly,” she says, and then she shares the latest on some of the new clients at her consulting firm, including her work with the sex-toy company Joy Delivered.
That’s her flagship client, and I know her work with them well, since Joy Delivered and The Dating Pool share content—we provide dating tips for their site and Joy Delivered offers suggestions on battery-operated friends for the spicy side of our site.
“And how is everything going with the foundation and your fundraising goals?”
“Great,” I tell her as the petite blonde who runs the shop asks me to take my right foot out of the water.
“Ransom’s event was perfect timing. It helped me hit some of my benchmarks for the year, and the board already approved additional funds to give away for the second half of the year, so that makes me very happy. ”
She lifts her glass to me. “You are both a social media rock star and a fundraising rock star. Your parents are insanely proud—you know that, right?”
I love when she refers to them in the present tense.
She does that sometimes, and it’s because we both try, in our own ways, to keep the memories alive.
Bryn’s mom was big on sayings and adages, and Bryn often leans on those in trying times.
I try to keep the passions of my parents alive by honoring my dad’s dying wish—to give so much of what he earned as a billionaire businessman away.
Live well and boldly, but give back too, he told me all throughout his life, but also when he knew he was dying.
I choke up briefly as that time seems to smack me out of nowhere. But then, the memory of his advice doesn’t entirely hurt. They are, indeed, words to live by.
“Your mom is proud of you too,” I tell my best friend as I lift my glass to hers and clink across the space between us.
She smiles at me, soft and genuine, then a spark of mischief enters her eyes. “Speaking of perfect timing and Ransom . . .”
I shoot her a curious look, daring her to continue. “What about Ransom and me?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
I roll my eyes because that’s easier than digging into the muddy ground of whatever Ransom and I are. Are we anything? Tomorrow might feel like a date to me, but the invitation was to hang. I’d do well to remember that. A hang is not a date.
“Bryn, we’re not dating. We’re not together,” I say, as much to remind myself as her. I need the reminders more and more these days. I need to stay on the straight and narrow.
“I know, but it feels like you could be . . .” she says, trailing off in a happy tone.
A laugh bursts from my chest. “What does that even mean? We could be?”
Setting her glass down, she reaches across the space between our chairs and places her hand on my arm. “I see you guys together. I just do. And I want you to know I’m fine with you going for it. We all are.”
Her permission tugs on my heart. Pulls and yanks on that organ in a way I’m not sure I want to be pulled and yanked.
“I know that. You’ve been trying to set me up with him for some time now,” I say, trying to make light of her kind words because I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to face what her blessing truly means.
Especially because I don’t know that there’s anything to go for. “But we aren’t really a thing.”
She holds up her hand, moving her fingers together like a mouth. “Blah, blah, blah. Yes, you are.”’
“No, we’re not,” I fire back.
“Teagan.” She says it as cutting as a laser, like she can see through me. And she likely can.
“Bryn.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you don’t explore options with him,” she says. “And I think I am. I think we all are. I know your biggest worry is that dating Ransom might cause our friendship house of cards to crumble.”
The gentleness in her voice makes my throat tighten with emotion. But who is it for? I’m not sure, honestly. I’ve tried to keep emotion at bay for so long. Warding off feelings is safer than having them. When you keep them behind the ramparts, you can’t be hurt again and again.
“I can tell you feel something for him,” Bryn continues. “If you explore that and it goes badly, or if you explore it and it peters out, we’re going to be okay. All of us. Logan and me, Summer and Oliver, Fitz and Dean. We’ll be fine, and we’ll still be here. For both of you.”
Fine.
But would I be fine? And how will I ever know? “It would be awkward. It would be weird,” I say, my voice wobbly, as I try to stay the course.
Living behind the walls is easier. The walls are fortified.
Bryn smiles kindly and squeezes my arm. “Life is awkward. Life is weird. We’ll manage. I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness with anyone.”
I meet her gaze, seeing so much friendship, so much family in her eyes.
It knocks loose some of the fear inside me, casts it aside.
Maybe frees up some of my worries too. I don’t know what Ransom wants, but lately I have a sharper sense of what I want.
I’m not sure I’m ready to pursue it, but perhaps I will if I can remove this one big obstacle.
This fear. The one she’s freeing me of. Maybe I shouldn’t cling to it any longer.
Maybe it’s time to let it go. So I ask, “Are you sure?”
She nods decisively. “I’m positive. Don’t let us stand in the way. If you want to date him and it doesn’t work out, we will be fine. I promise.”
I exhale, big and long, picturing possibilities, seeing options. They’re fuzzy, hazy, but they’re coming into focus. “I don’t know what I want,” I say, but as those words clip out, they don’t feel as true as they did a week ago. “And I don’t know what he wants either.”
And that . . . that also doesn’t seem quite right.
Bryn lifts a brow in curiosity, perhaps hearing the same uncertainty I do—perhaps feeling it too. “Is that true though? That you don’t know what you want?”
I absorb her question, turning it over and inside out. As Daisy paints my toes a bright robin’s-egg blue, I picture tomorrow, and I start to see how I want it to unfold.
I can see the chance I want to take.
Coming back to the present, I turn to Bryn decisively. “Actually, I do know what I want.”
And I proceed to tell her.