The Dating Dare
Autor:in
Barbara Dunlop
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One
It wasn’t like I was completely alone.
I had friends at work. Well, acquaintances really. But some of us exchanged Christmas gifts. We went to lunch. We even stopped for drinks in the evening before heading home.
My lifelong friends Layla and Brooklyn might have moved out of Seattle, but I’d rebound from that. People rebounded from absent friendships all the time. They filled their lives with other things, new experiences and new companions.
The companions didn’t even have to be people.
I liked cats. I especially liked kittens. I’d heard once that kittens should be adopted in pairs, littermates if you could get them. That way, they kept themselves company when you were away.
A librarian with two cats.
Perfect.
Exactly how I hoped my life would end up.
I was at the Harbor Tennis Club in downtown Seattle contemplating the latest text message from Sophie Crush, the fourth close friend in our circle. Several games were underway on the indoor courts below me. The frequent sound of balls popping hollowly against the painted surface faded into the background while my herbal tea cooled on a round polished beech wood table in the lounge.
I liked herbal tea. It was a comfort drink, and I didn’t want to give it up. All the same, I was thinking I might have to choose between tea and cats to keep from becoming a cliché.
I had acquaintances here at the Harbor Club, too. I’d been a member since I was a teenager. I’d taken lessons and played matches over the years with most of the other members in my age range.
But acquaintances weren’t close friends. They weren’t the people you could call up to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon with dressed in yoga pants, eating gourmet ice cream and loaded nachos, adding wine as soon as the clocked ticked over to four o’clock. They weren’t the people you could count on when you were feeling down.
I was feeling down.
I told myself it was normal. And it was. I didn’t begrudge Layla and Brooklyn their happily-ever-afters. I was happy for them. But it was hard to be happy for me right now.
I checked my cell phone screen again. The text from Sophie stared back at me.
Her lunch was running late—her lunch with her new guy was running late.
I surmised from the grinning emoji that lunch with the new guy was going great.
I was happy for her, too. Again, just not for me.
She’d canceled our Saturday tennis game at the last minute, so here I was sitting alone in my tennis shorts, my racket by my side, with no plans for the afternoon and none for the evening, either. I found myself wondering how late the animal shelter was open on weekends.
It felt pathetic again, the cat thing. I did like cats. What I didn’t like was what they represented, like I’d given up and started that long, long journey through stoic mediocrity to... I don’t know...retirement or death.
Wow.
I tried to laugh at myself. I’d just gone from a canceled tennis date to death in under thirty minutes. Maybe I needed tequila instead of tea.
One of the games below me ended. Two men shook hands and walked off the court.
I recognized James Gillen—Layla Kendrick’s, née Gillen’s, older brother. If I had to say, he was the one person in the club worse off than me.
I didn’t know if that made me feel worse or better. Better for me, I suppose, since I’m human and not a saint. But worse for him—I definitely felt worse for him. Again, since I was human and capable of empathy.
I wouldn’t wish his life on anyone.
James had been high-school sweethearts with my gorgeous and much sought-after friend Brooklyn. And up until this July, they’d been blissfully engaged.
They’d spent a full year planning one of the greatest weddings in the history of weddings. It would have been magnificent. In fact, it was magnificent—at least at the start, right up to the moment Brooklyn left James at the altar in front of five hundred guests and a stringer for the local newspaper.
I didn’t blame Brooklyn, at least not completely. By all accounts her handsome, successful new husband, Colton Kendrick, was a real catch.
It hadn’t surprised me at all that Brooklyn would have two great guys competing to marry her. Brooklyn sparkled. She always had, and I expected she always would. And that sparkle drew men—flies to honey and all that. It was a gift.
I wished I had that gift.
I pretended for a second that I did. I gave a Brooklynesque smile at my faint reflection in the tennis court viewing window. I tried to toss my hair the way she did, but it was fastened back in a tight braid, so my toss didn’t work out.
I gave a real smile then, a laughing-at-myself smile. I took a sip of the lukewarm tea, wishing it really was tequila.
Librarians didn’t sparkle. We weren’t supposed to sparkle. We were practical and dependable, admirable qualities for sure. But there were no flies coming to my honey.
I removed my sports glasses and reached for my everyday pair as a couple strolled into the lounge. With my glasses back in place, I recognized them. My besieged heart sank another big notch.
It was Henry Reginald Paulson III with his pretty, bubbly girlfriend clinging to his arm.
She was tall, thin and blonde, with shiny white teeth and luscious eyelashes that seemed to blink too often. I thought her name was Kaylee or Candi or something. I’d never seen her play tennis, but nobody cared about her tennis skills. Athletic ability was obviously not on the top of Henry’s wish list for a girlfriend.
The Paulson family, with Henry’s parents at the center, practically ran the Harbor Club, hosting fund-raisers and sitting on the board. They were third-and fourth-generation members of the private club. Henry was the crown prince.
He was also my ex. He’d unceremoniously dumped me back in May, May 25 to be exact. It was the same day the Northridge Library had celebrated my fifth anniversary as an employee. It meant I was entitled to an extra week’s holiday leave, and I moved up to parking lot B—two blocks closer to the civic building. I’d looked forward to those perks, and I’d been excited to meet Henry to cap off the day.
But our celebratory dinner at the Tidal Rush Restaurant turned into a lonely cab ride home in my blue crepe dress before the appetizers had even been served. I’d tossed the Northridge plaque into my bottom drawer and left it there.
Henry had said that night we’d stay friends. He told me I had many good qualities. He said he admired me and that one day I was going to make some man very happy.
He hadn’t complained about my plain brown hair, my glasses, my understated wardrobe or my modest height. But since he’d replaced me with my physical and stylistic opposite, I could draw my own conclusions.
Henry spotted me from across the lounge.
He smiled and waved as if we had, in fact, remained friends. We hadn’t even spoken since the breakup.
I wished I wasn’t sitting alone right now.
I wished I was out on the court playing tennis with Sophie.
I wished I was anywhere or anything but—
“Hi, Nat.” It was a man’s voice directly beside my table.
I looked up to see James.
Thank you, James.
If James would only stand still and chat for a minute or two, then I wouldn’t have to look completely pathetic while Henry and Kaylee joined a boisterous clique of members at a central table.
“Hi, James,” I said.
“Waiting for someone?” he asked, with a glance around the expansive room.
I lifted my phone as evidence. “Sophie just canceled. I’ll have to give up our court time.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Something came up.” Something better than me.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“No, please.” I pointed to one of the other chairs at the table for four. I honestly could have kissed him right there and then.
“I’m dying of thirst,” he said. He signaled to the waiter and glanced at my little teapot. “You want something else?”
The waiter promptly arrived.
“A beer,” James said to him. “Whichever local one you have on tap today.”
Then James looked to me, raising his brows in a question.
“Sounds good,” I said.
It wasn’t four o’clock yet, but on a day like this, I was in.
It took him a second to get settled into his chair.
“Good game?” I asked.
“Caleb’s a strong player. I got a serious workout.”
James had obviously taken a quick shower. His hair was slightly damp and he’d changed into a pair of charcoal slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
He was a good-looking man, tall and fit. He didn’t have Henry’s flamboyance or gregariousness. He wasn’t tennis-club royalty. But he’d always been respected for his playing skills.
Now...well, now he had to contend with the tactless gossip over Brooklyn running from St. Fidelis in her wedding gown. Consensus had it that James had been marrying up, and it came as no huge surprise to some that Brooklyn had dumped him for a better offer.
I could only imagine they were saying similar things about me. My relationship with Henry had only lasted a few months, but people probably assumed I was a quick fling for him, a roll in the hay, a temporary detour to the short and mousy side.
I wondered when it would stop feeling so humiliating.
I hoped James hadn’t heard the worst of the Brooklyn gossip. I really didn’t subscribe to the misery-loves-company school of thought. Nope, the fewer people in the world who felt the way I did right now, the better.
“I might have to do some biking later to make up for the lost game,” I said, switching my thoughts to something more productive.
I wasn’t a fitness freak by any stretch, but I did count on my Saturday tennis games for a weekly workout.
“Where do you ride?” he asked.
“Along the Cadman lakeshore, mostly. My apartment’s only a few blocks from Green Gardens.”
“I’ve ridden there,” he said. “It’s nice in the fall.”
The waiter arrived with two frosty mugs of beer.
“Can you cancel Ms. Remington’s court time?” James asked as the waiter put coasters under the mugs.
“Certainly, sir.”
I thanked them both with a smile. Then I gripped the handle of the generous mug. “It might not be a very long bike ride after I finish this.”
James smiled at my joke and held his own beer in a toast.
I bargained with myself out loud. “Maybe I’ll go tomorrow morning instead.”
Then as I clinked my glass to his, I caught sight of Henry, his arm around Kaylee as he regaled the four other people at their table with some kind of a story.
“Something wrong?” James asked me.
I realized I was frowning. “No. Nothing.” I turned my attention back to James.
But he looked over his shoulder and saw Henry.
“Ahhh, Paulson. That’s got to be aggravating.”
Aggravating wasn’t exactly the word I’d use.
“It is,” I said.
James’s dark blue eyes turned sympathetic.
I didn’t want his pity. And I didn’t want him to think I was wallowing in my own misery, either—even though I was. To be fair, I was wallowing in more than just my breakup with Henry. I liked to think I’d made a bit of progress from the breakup. But on aggregate, there was a lot to wallow in about my life right now.
I tried to shake it off. “It’s nothing compared to you.”
The words were out before I realized how they were going to sound. I’d managed to be both tactless and insensitive all in one fell swoop. I tried to backtrack. “I mean... I didn’t... I’m sorry.”
“I’d rather you blurted it out than silently thought it—or whispered it like everybody else around here.” He scanned the room. “And it is nothing compared to me. I was dumped on a much grander scale, an epic scale, the scale to end all scales here at the Harbor Club.”
I wanted to disagree. I should probably disagree. But he was right, and if I said anything other than that, I’d be lying.
“How are you holding up?” I asked in a quieter tone.
“It’s weird,” he said. Then he took another drink. “I keep finding her stuff in my apartment. I don’t know what to do with it. Do I send it to her? Do I store it for her? Do I burn it?”
“Burn it.” The words had popped out. “Wait, I shouldn’t have said that.”
But James chuckled. “I like your style.”
Brooklyn was my close friend. But even close friends did bad things. And James deserved to be angry with Brooklyn. He deserved to light something on fire.
“Then can you explain your gender to me?” I asked James.
Somehow one beer had turned into two.
“I doubt it,” he said.
“Are they just shallow?”
“Mostly.”
“I mean, look at Candi over there.”
“I think her name is Callie.”
“Not Kaylee?”
“Should we ask?”
“No!”
James chuckled at my panicked-sounding tone. I wasn’t really panicked. I was just...well, self-conscious about even caring who Henry-the-cad was dating now.
I lowered my voice and leaned in. “Is she really what all men want?”
James slid a surreptitious glance to their table. “Some do.”
“Some or most?”
“Okay, lots.”
I heaved a sigh. I wasn’t exactly disappointed, since I’d known the answer all along. Still, it didn’t renew my faith in men in any way.
“Women are no better,” James said.
“We’re not obsessed with looks.”
“You’re pretty obsessed with looks, but you’re even more obsessed with power and prestige.”
I couldn’t completely disagree. “We also want compassion and a sense of humor.”
“A sense of humor is pretty hard to quantify.”
“I suppose. And you can’t exactly see it coming from across the room.”
James tapped his mug on the table as if for emphasis. “See? Women are just like men. It’s human nature to start with looks. Maybe it’s because they’re the easiest benchmark when you first meet.”
“I wish I had them.” The minute I made the admission, I wanted to call it back.
James wasn’t my best friend, and this wasn’t a heart-to-heart Saturday afternoon talk in yoga pants.
Now he was scrutinizing me, and I wished the floor would open right up and swallow me whole.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
The answer was painfully obvious. “Because it would be nice. You must get it. You were with Brooklyn all those years.”
Anybody who fell for Brooklyn understood the appeal of a beautiful woman.
“I mean, why do you think you don’t have them?”
It was my turn to stare back at him.
“Hello?” I said. I pointed to my chin. “Plain Jane librarian here.”
“Well, you’re not exactly glamorous,” he said.
“Thank you for making my point.” I tamped down the ego pinch. I hadn’t really expected James to insist I was beautiful. Still, blunt honesty was hard to take sometimes.
“But you’re pretty.”
I shook my head. “Oh, no. You can’t backpedal now. Your first reaction is your true reaction.”
“My first reaction was that you have the raw material.”
“Be still my beating heart.”
He grinned at me.
I had been joking. Well, I was mostly joking. I could make light of my looks or I could get depressed about them. I wasn’t going to get depressed.
Plain was fine. It was ordinary and normal, and people led perfectly happy lives with plain looks. In fact, most did—the vast, overwhelming majority of people had looks that were plain in some way or another. The bombshells among us were few and far between.
“You did get a look at the guy Brooklyn married, right?” James asked.
I definitely got a look at him. I hadn’t attended Brooklyn’s wedding to Colton Kendrick, but I’d gone to Layla’s wedding right after when she married Colton’s twin brother, Max. Colton and Max were rich, rugged and handsome. They also seemed to be truly great guys.
I nodded to James.
He made a sweeping gesture down his chest. “Then you can guess how I feel.”
“You have the raw material,” I said.
I tried not to smile. I knew heartbreak wasn’t funny.
James shook his head and seemed to fight his own smile. “Are we going to sit here and wallow in it?”
“That’s the opposite of what I want to do,” I said.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
I gave my racket a pointed look. “I wanted to play tennis.”
“Not this minute. I mean more broadly, in life, going forward?”
“I was thinking about getting a cat.”
“Seriously?”
“No. Not really.”
“A cat’s a big commitment.”
“You don’t like cats?”
He seemed to ponder the question. “I’d probably go for a dog. But I’d have to get a house first.”
I knew he and Brooklyn had planned to go house shopping right after the wedding. I wasn’t going to touch that one.
“A dog does need a yard,” I said instead.
“Maybe I’ll buy a house,” he said. But he didn’t look enthusiastic about it.
I wished I could afford a house. It would be years before I had a down payment saved up for even a condo. I’d be staying in my loft apartment for the foreseeable future.
“Real estate is a good investment,” I said.
James was an economist. I didn’t exactly know what he did on a day-to-day basis in his job, but it seemed to me economists would be interested in good investments.
“It’s definitely a good time to lock in an interest rate.”
“But?” I could hear the but in his sentence.
“It’s hard to know what to look for when you can’t picture your future.”
The statement seemed particularly sad.
While I searched for the right response, my phone rang.
“Go ahead,” James said, lifting his beer and sitting back in his chair.
“It’s Sophie.” I was curious about her lunch date, but I wasn’t about to have an in-depth conversation here in front of James. I swiped to accept the call. “I’ll tell her I’ll call her back.”
“You want privacy?” He made to leave.
“No.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to chase him away. “It’s fine.”
“Hi, Sophie,” I said into the phone.
“Bryce has a friend,” she said.
“Uh...that’s nice. Listen, can I call you—”
“As in a friend,” she said. She was talking fast, enthusiasm lighting her voice. “A friend for you, a guy who wants to meet you. We can go on a double date. Dinner tonight. Does tonight work for you?”
I found myself meeting James’s gaze.
“Nat?” Sophie asked. “Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
I didn’t know why I was hesitating. No, I didn’t have plans for Saturday night, and of course I wanted to meet a new guy. What single girl wouldn’t want to meet a new guy?
It seemed like Bryce and Sophie were hitting it off. I knew Sophie had good taste in men. If Bryce was a good guy, it stood to reason that his friend would be a good guy. I’d like to meet a good guy.
“What time?” I asked.
“Seven. We’ll swing by your place. You might want to meet us downstairs. I mean...you know...”
Sophie was not a fan of my utilitarian loft apartment. She bugged me about fixing it up all the time.
Myself, I didn’t see the point in spending a lot of money on cosmetics. The place was perfectly functional. Then again, if the guy thought like her, I didn’t want to put him off straightaway because of my questionable taste in decorating.
“Sure,” I said. “Seven o’clock downstairs.”
“Perfect!” She sounded really happy.
I ended the call.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
James waved away my apology. “Girls’ night out?”
“Not exactly. Double date.”
James sat forward again. “Blind date?”
“Yes.” I took a sip of my beer “I haven’t been on one of those in a while.”
“I guess your dry spell is over.”
I didn’t particularly like calling it a dry spell. It made me sound desperate—like I was thirsty for a man.
All I really wanted was to move completely and permanently on from Henry. I supposed that made me thirsty enough. There wasn’t much point in dressing it up.
“That’s one way to put it,” I said to James.
He lifted his mug in another toast. “Well, congratulations.”
I touched my mug to his again and laughed at myself. I’d just been moaning about my loneliness. I should be thrilled about having plans for tonight. I would be thrilled. I was thrilled.
“That’s better,” James said. “Smile and be happy.”
