Date Next Door

by Gina Wilkins

  “I’ve been too busy eating,” he replied, indicating his nearly empty plate. “I missed lunch today and I was starving.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we ordered so much, isn’t it?” Nic commented, glancing at Aislinn as she spoke.

  Aislinn shrugged, but she didn’t look away from Joel. “Was it a rough day for you?”

  “More long than rough. There’s a virus running through several of the local day-care centers, so my waiting room was full of cranky, dehydrated kids.”

  Nic shook her head. “You’ve just described my worst nightmare. I’d almost rather face an armed crack addict than a room full of sick, whiny toddlers and their hysterical mothers.”

  “The toddlers were whiny,” he conceded, “but none of the mothers was actually hysterical. And I’ve got to admit I have absolutely no desire to strap on a gun and face an armed crack addict.”

  Their respective professions were the basis of a series of running jokes between them. Joel conceded without hesitation that she could probably take him down despite her smaller size.

  He was as easygoing as she was intense, as mild-mannered as she was fiery-tempered. He wasn’t really intimidated by her, since he knew the kind heart and generous spirit behind her posturing—but he didn’t particularly want to make her angry, either.

  Aislinn was still looking at him—not rudely but with what appeared to be concern. “Perhaps you’re just tired, but there seems to be something bothering you. Is there anything we can do?”

  He didn’t know how she did it. Maybe, as she insisted, she was simply more intuitive than most people, better able to read facial expressions and body language.

  “There’s something bugging me a little,” he admitted, “but I’ll work it out.”

  The way she studied his face made him wonder if she could actually read his mind. But of course she couldn’t, he assured himself a bit too quickly. Her extrasensory talents, if that’s what they were, seemed to be more precognitive than telepathic. Not that he believed in stuff like that, of course.

  “Nic and I are pretty good at brainstorming,” she said. “Why don’t you try us?”

  “Yeah, Joel,” Nic seconded. “Aislinn and I are always dumping problems on each other and usually we come up with some sort of solution. We’d be happy to talk about what’s bothering you if you want to discuss it. If not, just tell us to butt out and we’ll change the subject.”

  He had always found it easy to be with Nic. Comfortable. He liked the way she treated him. Like a regular guy. Not an eligible bachelor-doctor. Or worse—a tragically romantic figure. Women usually classified him as one or the other, sometimes an uncomfortable combination. Nic simply saw him as her neighbor and friend.

  Maybe she would understand the dilemma that had been weighing on him for the past couple of weeks….

  “What happened?” she asked encouragingly. “Is it one of your patients?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s—this is going to sound pretty silly,” he said with an irritated shake of his head.

  “Try us.”

  He looked into the two inquiring faces turned toward him and sighed.

  “My high school class back in Alabama is having an informal fifteen-year reunion in a couple of weeks. They’re attending the homecoming football game, which is against a big rival, and then having several activities and a dance the next day, followed by a farewell breakfast on Sunday morning. I’m just dreading it, that’s all.”

  Aislinn’s expression didn’t change in response to Joel’s revelation. Nic looked surprised, but he couldn’t blame her for that. He doubted that she had expected a mere high school reunion to be his dilemma. But then, she didn’t know the whole story.

  “A fifteen-year reunion?” she repeated.

  He nodded. “Our class secretary was Heidi Pearl. Heidi Rosenbaum now. If it were up to her, we’d get together every year. Thank goodness the class confines her to having reunions only once every five years.”

  “Did you go to the last one?”

  “Yeah.” He figured his tone gave her an indication of how awful that had been.

  Nic shrugged. “Last I heard, there’s no law that says you have to attend high school reunions. I’m not sure I’ll go to my ten-year reunion next summer. I’ve got better things to do than to sit around with a bunch of people I barely know now, talking about embarrassing adolescent memories. Aislinn’s the only friend I held on to from high school, and she and I see each other often enough.”

  “Yeah, but I’m kind of expected to go. I was the class president.”

  “Of course you were,” Nic murmured.

  He gave her a mild look, then added, “Besides, Heidi works for my dad. There aren’t any excuses that would hold up to her daily inquisitions.”

  “She sounds kind of scary.”

  “Trust me. She’s terrifying.”

  Nic chuckled, then shook her head. “Still. You should just tell them you aren’t interested this time.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me,” she said again.

  “I think she will understand,” Aislinn said, making him wonder if she had somehow already guessed his quandary. Good intuition, he reminded himself. Nothing more.

  The funny thing was, he thought maybe Nic would understand. One of the few women in the small-town Arkansas police department where she worked, she was well accustomed to trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.

  “Judging from past experience,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully, “if I go, I’ll be greeted with cloying sympathy and treated like some kind of tragic hero. If I don’t go, everyone will be even more convinced that I’m an emotional basket case.”

  “You? A basket case?” Nic’s eyes were wide with surprise beneath her fringe of blond-streaked bangs. “You’re, like, the sanest, most normal guy I know.”

  “Yes, well, I wasn’t in such good shape the last time my class got together, five years ago. My wife, Heather, had died only a few months earlier, and I—Well, I guess I wasn’t ready for a reunion of all my old high school friends.”

  “Heather was in your class?” Aislinn asked, her slightly husky voice warm with compassion.

  He nodded. “We were typical high school sweethearts. We went to the prom together, were voted ‘cutest couple,’ that sort of thing. We attended different universities, but we stayed together despite the odds against long-distance relationships. Then I went to medical school and she to graduate school—again, different schools, different states. We got engaged during Christmas break of our third years but waited until we felt financially ready before we got married.”

  He took a sip of his soda before adding tonelessly, “Six months later, she was killed in a car accident. Broadsided by a semi with bad brakes.”

  Chapter Two

  Nic had known, of course, that Joel was a young widower. He had mentioned once that his wife died in a car accident, but she hadn’t asked for any details, nor had he volunteered any.

  He hadn’t been in any relationships during the months she had known him, and she had wondered if he was still grieving for the wife he’d lost. Now that she knew how long Joel and Heather had been together, she understood exactly how hard that loss must have been for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

  It seemed to be enough. He nodded. “Anyway, I made the mistake of attending the reunion before I’d completely worked through my grieving, and it was a…rough experience. Too many painful reminders, too much emotion and sympathy from my classmates. I was a mess by the time it was over and I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it.”

  “That’s understandable,” she assured him. “It would have been a difficult ordeal for anyone.”

  He searched her face as if trying to tell whether she really did understand. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there, he nodded again. “The thing is, that wa
s five years ago. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve made peace with my past. I’ve made a good life for myself here and I consider myself a generally happy guy.”

  “That’s the impression I’ve always had of you.” Actually, she considered him the most laid-back and easygoing man she knew. She’d often envied him his ability to take things in stride, handling the pressures of his job with apparent ease.

  “It’s not an act,” he assured her. “That’s really the way I feel, for the most part.”

  “That’s good then, right? So your old friends should be pleased to see you doing so well.”

  Joel squirmed a little in his chair. “I’m just not so sure they’ll see it that way. I’m afraid they’ll still view me as the man I was rather than the one I’ve become.”

  “A legitimate concern,” Aislinn agreed.

  Nic shrugged. “So don’t go. Send your best wishes to all your old friends, tell them you’re doing great but you’re too busy with work to join them this time.”

  “That would probably be best, of course…”

  “But it isn’t what you want to do,” Aislinn translated from his expression. “Why not?”

  Looking rather sheepish, he replied, “I think it’s a pride thing.”

  If there was anything Nic could understand, it was a “pride thing.” She had been accused on plenty of occasions of having entirely too much pride for her own good.

  Comprehension clicked in her brain. “You don’t want your old friends to think you can’t handle another reunion. You’re afraid if you don’t go, they’ll think it’s because you’re still too wounded and vulnerable. That’s what you meant by basket case.”

  Wincing a little at her choice of adjectives, he nodded. “I guess that’s it. The only way to convince them that I’m really okay seems to be to show up and prove it. But…well, it still won’t be easy.”

  Aislinn seemed to have a sudden brainstorm. “What you should do,” she said earnestly, “is take someone with you. You know, like a date or something. That way everyone can see that you’re okay, and the attention won’t all be focused on you.”

  “Take someone with me?” The suggestion seemed to startle him. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “What better way to demonstrate that you’ve moved on?” Nic asked, seeing the logic of Aislinn’s idea. She hoped she wasn’t coming across as insensitive to Joel’s loss—but he was the one who had said he’d put the past behind him. And tact had never been her strong point, unfortunately.

  Joel didn’t seem to take offense at her wording. Instead he appeared intrigued by her reasoning. “I wouldn’t want to make any pretense about a relationship that doesn’t exist. No fake romances or anything like that.”

  Nic exchanged a wince with Aislinn before replying, “Oh, agreed. Ick. Just introduce your companion as a friend and leave it at that. The others can make what they want out of it.”

  Still looking thoughtful, Joel toyed with a pizza crust on his plate. “It’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t know who to ask. Unless…is there any way I could talk you into going with me, Nic?”

  Nic could almost feel her jaw drop. “You would want me to go with you?”

  “Well, you would be the logical choice,” he replied. “We’re friends. We have a good time together. If I asked someone else, I’d have to get into sticky explanations, whereas you already know the whole story. I heard you tell Aislinn earlier that you could use a few days away from work. I know attending someone else’s reunion is hardly an ideal vacation, but I’d make sure you have a good time. And I’d owe you big-time.”

  He had spoken so quickly that she’d had a hard time following him. But it all came down to the realization that he was asking her to accompany him to his high school reunion. The fact that she had concurred with Aislinn’s recommended plan didn’t make Joel’s invitation any less startling. “I, uh—”

  Embarrassed now, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Never mind. Bad idea. I can’t blame you for not wanting to have anything to do with this.”

  “Well, it was our idea,” she conceded, motioning toward Aislinn, who was watching them in silence.

  “Yeah, but you weren’t volunteering to be the attention deflector. I understand.”

  “Isn’t there anyone else you can take?”

  “Not really. Like I said, I don’t want to go through a bunch of explanations again, nor do I want to give anyone the wrong idea by asking her to my reunion. It wouldn’t be fair for me to risk using anyone just for the sake of my own pride.”

  There was that word again. Pride. The one argument she understood best.

  Maybe she couldn’t really understand Joel’s dilemma in its entirety, especially since she had never viewed him as a “tragic figure” herself, but she could understand his need to prove himself to other people. She’d been doing that herself for most of her life.

  “Okay,” she blurted. “I’ll go.”

  Aislinn murmured her approval of Nic’s impulsive acceptance.

  Joel blinked. “Um—you’ll go?”

  She nodded before she could talk herself out of the rash offer. Joel was a friend, she reminded herself, and she didn’t have many real friends. Friends came through for each other. “I’ll go if you really think it will help you out. But I warn you, I’m lousy at parties and social events. You might very well regret asking me when I embarrass you in front of all your old schoolmates.”

  His smile made a funny little shiver run down her spine. “Not possible.”

  It wasn’t the first time she had noticed how attractive he was. Not even the first time she’d found herself reacting rather dramatically to that attractiveness. Only natural, of course, with her being a normal single woman and Joel being so darned sexy. But she neither expected—or even wanted—anything to develop between them.

  She liked having him as her friend. And from painful experience, she had learned that nothing ruined a great friendship faster than trying to turn it into more.

  The mental warnings she had been trying to ignore since she’d accepted his offer began to clang more loudly, harder to discount now. As much as she disliked social events, as much as she dreaded attending a reunion of strangers who would be studying her with curiosity, she was beginning to worry that the greatest peril inherent in this scheme wasn’t making a fool of herself or embarrassing Joel.

  It made an interesting—and frustrating—dilemma. By doing Joel a big favor in the name of friendship, was she taking the risk of damaging that relationship that had become so special to her during the past few months?

  Declining the ice cream Nic offered for dessert, Joel left not long after the discussion about his reunion. Aislinn lingered to help Nic clean up the remains of their dinner.

  “It was nice of you to agree to help him,” she said when she and Nic were alone.

  Nic looked at her friend suspiciously. “Why do I get the feeling that you somehow manipulated me into agreeing?”

  “I had nothing to do with it. He needed your help, and you came through—as you always do for people you care about.”

  Nic closed the dishwasher door with a little slam. “Because I’m a sucker, right?”

  “No. Because you have a good heart,” Aislinn said loyally. “And because there’s very little you wouldn’t do for your friends.”

  “Yeah, well, I might have gone a little too far this time. I don’t suppose you knew what he was going to ask me to do?”

  “No. I just had a feeling there was something you could do to ease his mind—and I knew you would do it.”

  “But…a high school reunion, Aislinn. With a bunch of strangers even Joel doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about. Can you imagine how awful that’s going to be?”

  “It would have been worse for him to go alone. We can both understand why he wouldn’t want to be treated as an object of pity. And you and Joel are such good friends that he knows you’ll probably have a good time despite the awkwardness of the situation.”

 
“I’m sure that’s why he thought I’d be the one to take with him. Because we get along well without having to worry about any complicated undercurrents between us,” Nic said lightly, wanting to make sure Aislinn wasn’t getting any wrong ideas. “And, of course, he’s hesitant to take another date because he doesn’t want to lead anyone on—apparently that’s a problem for a single doctor.”

  “Especially one who looks like Joel,” Aislinn murmured.

  A mental image of crowds of hopeful women chasing after Joel made Nic scowl. “I guess that’s why he was comfortable asking me. He can be confident that I see him as a pal, nothing more.”

  “Hmm.”

  Nic frowned more deeply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It didn’t mean anything,” her friend replied innocently. “I was just responding to you.”

  Though she was still suspicious of Aislinn’s tone—they had been friends for too long to deceive each other easily—Nic decided to just let it go for now. For some reason, she felt as though they were edging a little too close to potentially dangerous territory.

  “Maybe you’ll have a good time,” Aislinn said after the silence had stretched a bit too long.

  “And maybe I’ll win the lottery and become the country’s newest multimillionaire—which would be even more miraculous since this state doesn’t have a lottery,” Nic shot back. “But I’m going, okay? And Joel is so going to owe me after this. Big-time.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to pay up,” Aislinn said, now looking just a bit too bland.

  Once again Nic decided to let the comment pass without response.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind doing this?” On the Friday morning of Joel’s reunion, he stood with one hand on the open trunk of his car, studying Nic’s face. He had just placed her bag inside with his own, but he was giving her one last chance to change her mind about accompanying him to his hometown.

  She settled the issue by reaching up to place her hand next to his, pushing down to close the trunk with a decisive snap. “It’s too late to change our plans now. I’ve already arranged to take off work today. I’m not expected back until Monday morning.”