by Kelsey Messner
“Do you know why we invited ourselves over tonight?” Aggie asked me.
I glanced up at Aggie from my nest-like papasan chair. Despite her diminutive size, Aggie’s militant posture and downward-slanted brows made me feel like a delinquent in my own apartment.
“To watch the Braves cream the Phillies.” I mumbled.
Aggie’s loafers clapped on the linoleum as she strode from the postage-stamp sized entry into the living room while her brother, Will, shucked his sneakers behind her.
Aggie grabbed the remote, clicked the power button, and stamped the remote on the table. She anchored her hands at the waist of her pleated pants, brows raised and eyes wide.
“This has nothing to do with baseball, Wren,” Aggie said.
I wriggled deeper into the seat, nearly sloshing my pasta from the bowl in my lap onto my sweats.
Truth was, I had an idea the moment Aggie pounded on my apartment door. She usually had a date with Jack on Fridays, and she’d threatened multiple times to drag me out of my apartment on the weekend to find a “prospective boyfriend” for the YMCA Christmas party.
If only that prospect could be Will.
“It’s game one of the National Division League Series. Can we at least leave it on mute?” Will sighed and dropped onto the duct-taped loveseat beside my papasan, adjusting his baseball cap over mushrooming brown curls.
He reached for the remote.
Aggie’s head swiveled toward him, her shiny, balayaged waves fanning around her shoulders as her eyes narrowed.
She swatted his hand.
“Don’t you dare get on Wren’s side, William.” She enunciated each syllable of his name, as if using his full name wasn’t enough indication of her current mood, and quite possibly, menstruation status.
“Didn’t know I was on a side.” Will rested his feet on the coffee table. His crisp white socks brushed my toes.
Warmth rushed through me. I froze, not wanting to lose contact. “I thought we were all Braves fans.”
Aggie threw her hands up and plopped onto the loveseat beside Will. She crossed her arms and legs, foot bobbing as she shook her head at both of us. “You two are impossible.”
After a beat, Aggie scooched forward and planted her bridged fingertips between her knees like she was about to explain the use of a trash can to her kindergarten class or launch into a hair-raising pep talk.
Neither option sounded like the chill TGIF I’d counted on.
Aggie rolled her glossed lips, eyes pleading with me. “You talk about having a relationship with someone. Someone ‘special’ since the word ‘boyfriend’ is repulsive to you. A guy to dominate the party games with at the YMCA Christmas party. Which, by the way, you have just over a month to train for.” She pulled a face, a shadow of a line between her waxed eyebrows. “Look at you. Eating Chef Boyardee on a Friday and wearing the same sweatpants you’ve had since high school. Those things should have an expiration date.”
I petted the supple cotton. “Leisurewear doesn’t expire. It’s like a fine wine that gets better with age.”
Will raised his Coke. “I’ll drink to that.”
“You aren’t helping,” Aggie said.
Will burped in his throat and set the empty can on the coffee table. “Just because you iron your jeans doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.”
I snorted and raised my spoon like a picket sign. “Make protein shakes, not pressed clothes! Also,” I said, pointing my spoon at her. “Don’t diss Chef Boyardee. He may offer bloated ravioli in a sauce that is suspiciously orange, but you know what you’re gonna get with Chef Boyardee.”
A breath wavered from Aggie’s nostrils as she closed her eyes. After a cleansing breath, she announced, “I’m making you an online dating account.”
I gulped down a scalding, unmasticated bite of beefy pasta.
This time, what I was going to get from Chef Boyardee was third-degree burns from my throat all the way down to my esophagus.
“Online dating in Hixton?” I coughed. “Half the twenty-somethings in this city already see me at the YMCA, and the rest either work at the gas station, have a record, or consider mall shopping a recreational sport.”
Besides, I couldn’t imagine being with anybody like that except Will. But he’d never shown interest in “that way.” No smelly roses or balloons or whatever guys do when they have a thing for you.
Aggie snatched my phone from its cocoon between my thigh and the seat cushion. “This is happening. We’ve been friends too long. From now on, I’m your emotional POA. You are no longer in the state of mind to make decisions about your personal life.”
I stood, hiking up the aged elastic on my sweats and catching Will’s gaze. We rolled our eyes.
The spoon in my bowl rattled against the rim of the bowl as I padded toward the kitchen. “Technically, Will and I have been friends longer, so he should be my POA.”
Aggie raised a brow. “If you make a man your emotional POA, you’ll flatline.” Her nails tap-tap-tapped on my phone. “You two can’t be trusted to start this. Need I remind you of the nearly fatal beginning of your relationship?”
I glanced back with a smirk as Will’s face prairie-dogged over the back of the loveseat.
A laugh bubbled out of my nose. “Fatal might be an exaggeration.”
Aggie shook her head, face illuminated by my phone screen as she typed away. “He threw your six-year-old body across a basketball court.”
Will stood and grabbed his empty can. “She wanted me to.”
“Oh, yeah, and I’m sure she also wanted a broken arm and a cast she had to wear for six weeks.”
I set my bowl in the stainless steel sink and flicked the faucet to fill it with water, a grin tugging on my lips.
It was quite a way to strike up a friendship, soliciting Will’s height and basketball clinic skills to launch me from the free-throw line so I could dunk like some ill-advised, Dude Perfect. That was the beginning of a long friendship, innumerable competitions, and a growing appreciation for the man who worked beside me as a personal trainer at the YMCA.
Will pulled the trash cabinet open and tossed his empty can inside.
I caught his eye. “Other than ending my discus career, the whole thing was rather humerus.” I nudged him hard in the shoulder with an aggressive wink-nod combo that pulled his pursed lips into a cute little side smile.
I could get him to do anything when he smiled like that.
If only starting a romantic relationship could be as seamless as starting a childhood friendship.
“Okay then, here’s your Small Town Singles profile.” Aggie walked into the kitchen with her chin high. She leaned against the counter next to Will, and the three of us sidled up close to see the small screen, the smell of Will’s forest-fresh soap filling me with that deep-breath feeling of a long hike in the perfect Fall hoodie.
“Wren Habbersmith. Twenty-five. Personal Trainer. Sports Enthusiast.”
Aggie had completed a profile using the only photo of me in which I did not wear athletic apparel, circa the LulaRoe years. May they rest in peace.
Aggie glanced around Will at me. “Anything else I should add?”
“How about, ‘Sappy applicants need not apply?’”
Or, apply if your name is William Kent.
Aggie shook her head and tapped on the phone again. “Now we search within a ten-mile radius.”
My arm brushed against Will’s.
“Could we tighten that radius to zero?”
“How ‘bout you tighten a grip on the attitude?” Aggie quipped.
After a few creeps from high school who’d either put on significant weight or lost substantial amounts of hair and a Starbucks barista who looked twice his listed age, Will’s face appeared.
My breath caught at the base of my throat.
“She made you do this too?”
Will lifted his eyebrows in affirmation.
My stomach gurgled.
Since when had Will started swimming in the dating pool, and why hadn’t he told me he was taking a dip?
He was ready for things to change. First Aggie with her Jack-in-the-box, the optician with an extensive collection of vintage frames and too much energy for someone who plays long-distance word searches for a living. Now Will.
That left me. The odd duck out. Swimming in a vacant pond without the moxie to waddle my sorry tail feathers somewhere else.
Or maybe no desire to swim anywhere that wasn’t with Will.
Will adjusted his Braves cap and tilted his chin toward the screen. “I hate that picture.”
“You look cute!” Aggie cooed.
He did look cute. Moss green was his color. It set off his pale skin and dark hair. What girl wouldn’t see his wide smile, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed like he was laughing at a joke, those droopy, hooded eyes, and not ask what was wrong with him?
Answer? Nothing. Besides liking barbecued chicken on his pizza, Will was perfect.
“My smile’s too big.” Will pushed off the counter, his movement drawing the warmth away from my side. “I look like I’m selling something embarrassing, like flatulence underwear.”
I snorted. “Any takers?”
Will loped toward the loveseat and made a trust-fall on its untrustworthy frame. “Doesn’t look like it.”
The TV clicked on, and the Braves jogged onto the field.
Aggie slid the phone onto the counter behind her. “New plan. Blind date. Tomorrow night.”
I moaned. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out.”
“Wren.” Aggie braced her hands on my shoulders and angled me to face her. “You are no longer in control of your own destiny.”
“Is anyone?”
My heart hammered in my chest, and my breathing went shaky.
What if Will met someone?
Aggie pressed on, her wide-set eyes glittering with this new, unfounded hope. “Let me steer this ship. Take a test flight tomorrow, and who knows where you’ll go?”
“Wait. Are we going on a plane or a ship?”
Her lips split into a horrifying smile. “You, my too-comfortable friend, are going on a date.”
#
The next night I procrastinated until T-minus 30 minutes, scrolling through lists of illnesses for an excuse to skip the date. I liked the neutral cop-out of a sudden chest cold, but also the finality of sharing that I’d just been diagnosed with a terminal disease and dating was no longer in my future. Or, I could plead insanity by dumping pasta on my head and yodeling the puppet bit from The Sound of Music. At least then the ball would be in his court.
I scraped hangers across the rail in my closet, looking for something that wasn’t cotton or elasticized and didn’t advertise a sports team. Maybe I should have taken Aggie up on her offer to shop, but while slurping my Wheaties, the nerves hadn’t set in yet.
Should I even go?
I had to. If I kept putting it off, instead of finding someone ‘special’ to team up with at the Christmas Party games, Will would have his own plus-one and I’d be the only solo player.
My stomach twisted.
Why hadn’t Will told me he was on the hunt?
And what kind of girl was he looking for, anyway?
He certainly had plenty of options at the Y. What girl wouldn’t be attracted to a guy who trained to be a bodybuilder but decided he didn’t want the spotlight and shared his passion for wellness with everyday people? When Will was on the clock, it was like America’s Next Top Model meets Pumping Iron meets The Bachelor. Women in shrunken spandex like shrinky-dinks around their muscles, lashes too long to be real, high ponytails of bleached waves, and of course, these chicas weren’t doing the nitty-gritty, sweat-through-your-bra cardio. They were using the weight machines that best showcased their posterior muscles.
But every time someone cozied up to him, sipping from their big dumb water bottles with a trendy duffle bag slung over their shoulders, flashing electric white smiles, he met their flirtation with polite conversation.
Why?
This wasn’t the time to think about Will.
I cranked the hangers back to the left side of the closet to replay the lineup.
It was time to get ready for my blind date and to think about what I was looking for. Or not looking for.
That list came easily. I couldn’t be with a man who styled his hair beyond brushing it or whose body had ever been touched by the heat of wax. I couldn’t be with someone who owned more shoes than I did. I couldn’t spend time with someone who wanted to go out to fancy dinners just to sit and talk and be boring all the time.
Why were we meeting at Giovanni’s anyway?
My head started pounding, and sweat collected in my pits.
This was Aggie’s fault. Not only was I meeting a stranger for dinner, but I was about to be locked in a booth, likely lumpy, watching a stranger eat dinner, a horror in itself, while being forced into soul-sucking small talk about nothing during Game two of the Braves-Phillies series.
This was stupid.
New plan. Go, act polite, feign a sudden headache, cut out in twenty minutes or less and make it home for the game.
What guy could I possibly meet who would fit me better than Will?
After trying on the two dresses I didn’t even remember owning, I chose my plain black tee and the only pair of jeans in my possession. To complete the semblance of effort, I mustered a couple swipes of mascara from a dried-up tube, doused my hair in dry shampoo that smelled like musty baby powder, and set off for the date, promising my trusty papasan that I’d be back soon.
Giovanni’s entrance was dimly lit and poorly decorated with fake, dusty vines over a latticed-arbor and terracotta pots burgeoning with dusty, plastic grapes and ferns. But it smelled like legit, non-orange, tomato-based sauce infused with basil and red wine.
“Hey, good evening, how are you?” The petite hostess tilted her head, tapping her dry-erase marker on the seating chart. “How many will be dining with us tonight?”
I swallowed over the dry patch in my throat.
“Just me. I mean, two. Actually, I’m not sure if the other of the two is already here?”
She blinked her wide green eyes and drew a bangled hand up to toss her copper curls over her shoulder. “Oh! You’re Wren, right? From the YMCA!” She giggled and stepped out from behind the counter. “He said he was waiting for you, but I didn’t recognize you at first! You helped me with the pop-pin thingy on the chest press the other day, remember?”
I hitched a brow, not remembering, but also more focused on the fact that Mystery Man referenced my working at the Y to have the hostess watch for me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Right this way,” the hostess said.
I followed her as she sashayed in her black sheath dress through the arbor, leaving a candy-sweet perfume in her wake.
Who knew me from the Y that Aggie would also know to set me up with?
My heart pummeled my chest like a punching bag.
Oh no. Was it that creepy guy with the skinny legs who focused on his pecs because he was told he had man boobs in college? The one Will said had made a pass at Aggie when she brought him lunch one time?
She wouldn’t do that to me. That guy had premature ear-hair growth and poor hygiene. Plus, he cheered for the Yankees, so that would never be a sustainable relationship.
Who else?
The lights were dimmer in the dining area. The croon of some Rat-pack type singer filled the room with a low hum of conversation and pulses of laughter. All these couples seemed way too happy to eat noodles and pretend they were in Italy under brass chandeliers while wrapped in a mural of an Italian portico that looked as authentic as the grapes out front.
Deep breaths, Wren.
I hummed the puppet number from The Sound of Music until I glimpsed the back booth and burst out laughing.
There was Will, wearing a blazer over a black tee and looking like an uncomfortable broccoli stalk without his baseball cap.
The hostess gestured toward the table with a shoulder shimmy. “Enjoy your meal!”
I cut the distance to the table and tossed my satchel onto the booth.
“Guess the guy backed out.” I plopped down across from him. “Is Aggie in the bathroom?”
“She’s not here.”
“Oh.” I scooted into the booth and grabbed a water glass. “So why come here? We could’ve just watched the game.”
Will stared at me with his too-big, flatulence-underwear-ad smile.
I stamped my glass on the table. “Oh, sweet Caroline. You’re the guy.”
Will laughed. His cheeks flushed, and he drummed the edge of the table. “Guilty.”
I dropped my face into my hands. “Now I really want to gouge my eyes out.”
“Wow, tell me how you really feel.” Will dropped his shoulders back against the booth.
“No, not because it’s you.” I shoved my water glass to the side and hunched over the table. “Because I’m an idiot. Aggie set us up.” My nerves fizzed with sudden awareness. “Wait. You agreed to this?”
“Not exactly.” Will reached to adjust his nonexistent cap and scrubbed the back of his neck instead.
I bridged my hands over my forehead. “I’m so confused. Why am I here? Why are we here and not Aggie?”
Will leaned forward, the scent of his woodsy soap drifting toward me, his dark, hooded eyes pleading.
“I asked her to set it up.”
I dropped my hands to the table.
My breath thinned, heart rioting. I licked my lips, unable to find words, afraid to hope that Will was admitting to having feelings for me.
His pursed-lip smile pulled to one side.
Maybe it was his smile that could make me do anything.
Will draped his arms over the table, his strong hands dangerously close to mine. “I thought you might message me as a joke on the dating account and we could chat our way into a date. Then, Aggie had the idea last night to set this up. She said it was that, or she’d show up at the Y and tell everyone we were dating.”
Will wanted to date me?
Why didn’t he ask all this time?
But here he was, taking the risk, putting it all on the table.
I bit the inside of my lip. “This is scarier than getting launched across a gym toward a basketball hoop.”
Although, with his height and broad shoulders, he could absolutely complete the challenge now. And goodness, those bulked up arms around me?
Put me in, coach.
“You look really nice in clothes.” Will shook his head and mumbled, wow, to himself. He looked at me again, this time with flushed cheeks.
I could do that to him?
“What I meant was that you look nice in something other than gym clothes. But those are nice too, don’t get me wrong.”
A mischievous grin tugged my lips to one side. Maybe my posterior muscles weren’t so bad either.
Will chuckled and reached a trembling finger across the table to trace the edge of my pointer finger.
Jitters. Absolute, electric jitters sprung up my arm, sent shivers down my back.
“Neither of us is good at change, Wren. You, me, Aggie, we’ve been a team for so long, I didn’t know how to ask . . . if we could be partners.”
My pulse volleyed up into my throat.
That was the word. Not a boyfriend. Not some cutesy, lovey-dovey relationship status. Partners. Working together, playing together, fighting against the odds, and taking on the world together.
He watched me, unflinching.
Those eyes. Wow, had he ever looked at me like that before?
Will threaded his fingers through mine.
Without a thought, I curled my fingers around his, the heat of his hand meeting the heat expanding in my chest.
Will leaned in closer, taking my other hand. “I’m your Chef Boyardee. Nothing exciting, nothing new, but you know what you’re gonna get with me.”
He smiled, and my stomach flipped in a delicious kind of way.
I grinned. “Bloated ravioli?”
Will laughed. “I was thinking more Saturday nights in sweatpants and competing on Fantasy baseball stats, but sure.”
“Well, you certainly know what you’re going to get with me.”
“There’s a lot I know, but even more that I’d like to know.” His eyes trailed down to my lips and up again.
I couldn’t breathe.
And apparently, I couldn’t think straight either, because I licked my lips like I was getting ready to eat a steak while looking at his wide smile and wondering if a touch of our fingers could cause such a ruckus, what would it be like when our lips touched for the first time?
I ran my thumb over his, curious and thrilled at this new facet of banter with my best friend.
My partner.
I was about to ask how long Will had been thinking of asking me out when the server appeared beside us, grinning from under thick gray eyebrows and a thin mustache.
“Good evening. Do you two lovebirds know what you want?”
My gaze cut back to Will, and I squeezed his hands. “Something from a can and game two of the series at my place?”
Will wagged his eyebrows. “Anywhere I can ditch this jacket.”
We slid out of the booth, me downing half my water glass and stamping it on the table. “Thanks for the water.”
Will pulled out his wallet and slapped a bill on the table. “Yeah, thanks for the water.”
We skip-walked out of Giovanni’s, hand in hand, waved at the hostess and slipped into the darkening night. The cool air was fresh on my skin, but no match for the warmth that spread through me walking down the sidewalk with Will.
“You realize that I’m one up on you.” Will said.
“How so?”
He squeezed my hand. “I was the one to make the first move.”
“Oh, yeah?” I shoved him toward the alley, out of the lamppost light. I pressed a hand against his pecs and looked up at him. His Adam’s apple swelled in his throat and his chest expanded beneath my hand.
My eyes darted down to his lips and up again.
“What if I’m the first one to initiate a kiss?”
My throat went dry.
I was suspended between the comfort of what we’d been for so long and the desire to find out what could be.
There was no going back.
I inclined my head toward his, unsure, confidence failing, a rookie taking her first swing in the Major League. There was so much potential, but what if I choked?
Will circled a hand behind my back, a hand that trembled, its heat pressing through my shirt. His gaze on me was so soft, so open. Ready. Wanting.
I lifted my weight up onto my toes to reach him, traced my hand up to his neck, felt a vein pulse beneath my fingers.
My eyes drifted closed, and I pressed my lips against his.
Warmth, something sweet, the flare of our breath between us.
Again.
I tilted my head deeper, pressed my lips onto his.
Again.
More pressure, more warmth.
Will pulled me closer.
Again.
Yes, that was how it was supposed to be. A play at his upper lip, a peck on the right where his lips pulled into a smile.
“I can’t kiss you while you’re smiling,” I whispered.
“If you keep doing this, I won’t care about the game anymore.”
Will kissed me again.
“We’re playing our own game.” I ruffled my fingers through his hair. “And it takes practice.”
Will wrapped his arms around my back. “We have lots of time to train.”
He gently pushed me away and wrapped a firm arm around my waist.
We sauntered down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, a new confidence bursting through me.
This was the sort of Saturday night I’d always wanted. Me and Will, baseball, and a dinner of microwave-level effort and equally simple cleanup.
There was only one thing that would have to change.
That papsan was getting shoved into a corner. I needed to move the loveseat front and center so I could cuddle with my very own, too-hot-to-handle, Chef Boyardee.
The End
Kelsey Messner has been an old lady since birth. Rather than rocking out to 90s boy bands or collecting makeup in her Caboodles box, Kelsey gravitated toward the beats of the 1950s and began her collection of vintage teacups at garage sales across northwestern Wisconsin. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with a degree in Creative Writing and Library Science, she married a tire salesman and moved to upstate South Carolina. A whole lot of sweet tea, y’alls, and three kids later, Kelsey stays home with her little crew and writes by twilight, dreaming of readers who will fall in love with her stories. You can learn more about Kelsey at her website or by joining her newsletter.