Non-Linear Progression #2
“I was going to wait until Monday,” he said, sounding faintly amused with himself. “That was the plan.” Riley listened. “But I keep thinking about you, so apparently that didn’t last very long.”
Her fingers adjusted slightly around the phone. Across the table, Dee made a strangled noise and immediately covered her mouth with both hands.
Riley ignored her. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course. Actually,” Declan said, and there was a subtle shift in his tone that drew her attention immediately, “there was something I wanted to ask you.”
Riley straightened slightly in her chair, her fingers settling more firmly around her coffee cup. “What is it?”
“There’s an AFL charity function next weekend.” For a moment she assumed there would be additional information, context to why he was telling her. When none arrived immediately, she waited.
“I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”
Across the table, Dee stopped moving entirely. Riley became aware of it without looking directly at her. She could practically feel Dee staring at her from the other side of the table, and when she eventually glanced up she found that impression had been entirely accurate.
Dee’s eyes were wide. Very wide.
Riley looked away before she could become distracted by whatever silent performance was about to follow and returned her attention to the question instead.
A formal charity function was not an insignificant variable. Large social events rarely were. They involved unfamiliar environments, unfamiliar people and a degree of unpredictability that generally made her avoid them whenever possible.
There would almost certainly be expectations she did not fully understand, conversations she would be required to navigate and an entire evening spent surrounded by individuals whose social fluency far exceeded her own.
Ordinarily, the answer would have been simple. Ordinarily, she would have declined before the analysis had even finished. The difficulty was that Declan asked, and she wanted to say yes.
Across the table, Dee had apparently abandoned any remaining commitment to subtlety. Riley could see her now, nodding enthusiastically enough to qualify as a health and safety concern, her expression making it abundantly clear what answer she believed should be given.
Riley ignored her, or attempted to.
“Riley?” Declan’s voice carried a faint thread of amusement.
“Yes?”
“You disappeared for a second.”
She considered denying it. “I was evaluating.”
A quiet laugh came through the phone.
“I figured.” The warmth in his voice settled somewhere unexpectedly soft inside her chest. “And before you start catastrophising,” he continued, amusement threading lightly through the words, “I wouldn’t leave your side all night. If you wanted to bring Dee as emotional support, she’s invited too.”
Riley’s gaze lifted automatically. Across the table, Dee apparently heard enough to recognise her own name. She was already pointing at herself with both hands, eyebrows raised expectantly.
Riley looked away again. The offer should not have altered her assessment as significantly as it did.
The event itself remained complicated, a lot of variables she couldn’t predict, that her whole life she’d actively avoided. But what caught her attention wasn’t the event.
It was that Declan seemed to have anticipated every concern before she’d voiced it. Across the table, Dee pressed her hands together beneath her chin and mouthed what was almost certainly say yes.
Riley resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Okay,” she said.
The silence that followed was brief but noticeable, then she could hear the lilt in his voice, and she knew he’d be smiling.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
His exhale sounded suspiciously like relief. “I’m so glad,” he said softly. “I’d really like that.”
Something shifted again beneath her ribs at the uncomplicated sincerity of the response. Across the table, Dee immediately slapped both hands over her mouth as though physically restraining herself from making noise.
“I’ll tell you more about it when I see you Monday, okay?”
“Okay.”
There was a brief pause. “I can hear you’re out somewhere, so I’ll leave you to it.”
Riley glanced down at the coffee in front of her. “Okay.”
“Bye, Riles.”
“Goodbye, Declan.”
Neither of them hung up immediately. The silence lingered for a second longer than it probably needed to before the line finally disconnected.
Riley lowered the phone onto the table. When she looked up, Dee was staring at her, her mouth agape in a similar fashion to Munch’s The Scream.
Riley watched her for several seconds, then frowned when she realised Dee wasn’t moving. “Did you hear the part where you were invited as well?”
The question seemed to snap Dee back into her body. “What?”
“You were invited.”
“I know I was invited.”
Dee stared at her for another second before letting out a strangled laugh and dragging both hands down her face. “You said yes.”
Riley blinked. “Yes.”
“No, but you actually said yes.”
The distinction remained unclear. “I am aware.”
Dee looked at her like she had personally chosen to become a different person during the last thirty seconds. “Riley,” she said, leaning forward slightly, “you agreed to go to an AFL charity function.”
“Yes.”
“With Declan.” The grin that spread across Dee’s face was slow enough that Riley had several seconds to become concerned by it. Dee leaned back in her chair. “You do realise this is a date.”
Riley sighed. “There has been no formal agreement regarding relational status.”
The objection barely seemed to register. “Riley, that’s not what makes something a date.”
Riley opened her mouth, prepared to explain why labels without agreed parameters were inherently unreliable, but Dee was already pushing forward. “No, seriously. Think about what just happened. He called you because he was thinking about you, because he wanted to talk to you.”
Riley’s fingers tightened slightly around her cup. “That is not necessarily indicative of—”
“And then he invited you to something important to him.”
“He invited me to a charity event.”
“Exactly.”
Dee pointed at her as though Riley had somehow just proven her argument.
“Something important to him and his family, which he could have attended perfectly well without you. And when you immediately started mentally calculating seventeen different ways the evening could go wrong, he invited me too.”
Unfortunately, the more she replayed the conversation, the harder it became to argue with the underlying observation. Across the table, Dee was watching her with entirely too much satisfaction.
“See?” she said.
“I have not agreed with you.”
“You don’t need to.” When Dee spoke again, the humour had softened. “I am definitely coming, by the way.”
The response left Riley immediately. “I wouldn’t go without you.”
Something shifted in Dee’s expression. The smile remained, but there was something gentler beneath it now. “Good,” she said. “Because you’re not doing that alone.”
The certainty of it settled quietly inside Riley. There had never been a version of events where Dee wouldn’t show up. The thought felt steady enough that she let it remain where it was rather than pulling it apart.
By the time she looked up again, Dee already retrieved her phone and was scrolling with alarming concentration. Riley watched her for several moments. “What are you doing?”
“Planning outfits.”
Riley blinked. “For who?”
Dee looked up. “For you, obviously.”
“Why?”
The look Dee gave her suggested the answer should have been painfully obvious. “Because if you’re going on a date with a famous Montgomery brother, we’re not leaving wardrobe decisions to chance.”
Riley immediately frowned. “It is not a date.”
Dee simply returned to her phone. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe.”