I didn’t have to study it to know the code would be clean and elegant. If he ever got tired of rocket science, he’d make a killer programmer. “I should have known you got more than a list done.”
“I’m writing a program to crawl the top three dating sites and sniff out the profiles for the women who are the best match for me. Then I’ll program each site to send them a personalized greeting.”
“Wait, you’re going to have a computer program automatically send the exact same prewritten message to everyone that it identifies as a match for you? That’s not what personalized means, genius.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds so calculating.” He grinned and punched a fist in the air. “Success. No more messy trial and error.”
If it had been anyone else laying out this plan, I would have found it plain depressing, a cold way to approach what was supposed to be the wild, messy plunge of falling in love. But coming from Will, a sense of dread gripped me.
He’d never taken a serious approach to dating. Sophie’s characterization of him dating whoever fell into his lap wasn’t really wrong; the tall, athletic frame and hazel eyes he’d made into bullet points caught women’s attention regularly. And if it wasn’t that, it was the slightly too-long, sun-streaked gold hair that fell into his eyes until I sat him down in his kitchen and trimmed it the way I used to for Dave.
So, yeah, women were always around, always trying to snag him. The really blonde, tiny ones generally succeeded. At least for a few weeks at a time. But if he came at this from a totally different angle, maybe he would find totally different women. And that could lead to a totally different outcome, where there was no built-in two-month expiration date on the relationship. Well, “relationship.” Will hadn’t mastered the long-term thing since college. Then again, he hadn’t wanted to.
And now that he did . . .
With a shudder, I remembered Brooke. I had known there was something different about her from the moment Will had brought her over to show her off, and he’d been lost to me, even as an honorary brother, the whole time he’d been in the Brooke Vortex, as Dave called it. Will’s whole life had been nothing but Brooke and how smart she was and accomplished she was and funny she was for that whole year until she’d graduated from college—and Will—and moved on to New York and a glamorous career.
Dave and I had picked up the pieces. Or tried to. It had taken six months for Will to go on another date, and ever since then, it had been an unbroken stream of bright, shiny, fresh-faced beauty-pageant runner-ups who lost only because they weren’t ruthless enough to win. Nice. So nice. He dated such nice, vanilla girls.
And strangely, I’d been okay with that. There were no Brookes among them, and as long as there were none of those, Will was safe. And I could breathe.
But not now. The code filling his screen—the neat, precise rows of slashes, brackets, and asterisks—spelled success. And doom. Because once he deployed it, it would work. He would figure out he’d been dating the wrong women for years, and suddenly he’d have an unlimited supply of the right ones.
Sophie’s words flashed through my mind. Drop the bomb.
Maybe it would work. Maybe he would see me in a new light, and we would have a happily ever after. Or maybe he would laugh and give me another noogie.
Or worst of all, maybe I would get Will at a polite, uncomfortable distance, only seeing him when Dave moved back from Qatar and we both showed up for barbecues at his place.
“Hannah? Join me on Earth. It’s nice here,” Will said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“What are you doing now?” Every single thing he did in this plan felt like a nail pounding into a coffin, the one that would bury my hopes and dreams of the day Will realized he’d always secretly loved me. The inside of my head echoed the pounding. I grimaced. Sophie would be ashamed of me for coming up with such a hackneyed cliché. Although she’d probably give me back some points for using hackneyed.
I thought about how the words would sound coming out. I’m madly in love with you, Will. The crazy crush I’ve had on you since I was thirteen never went away. It just turned into something else, like trading Tootsie Rolls for Godiva chocolates. So, how do you feel about that?
No way. The words, or any version of them, would choke me before they ever got out of my mouth. But my stomach percolated with a weird mixture of dread and certainty. And possibly greasy-pizza smell. It was do something or lose Will for real. And I couldn’t lose Will for real. So then what?
Ruin his plans, for one thing. It was the only decent thing to do.
I looked down at my clothes, my baggy running shorts and dingy T-shirt. Step one: change while I figured out steps two through a million, if need be, to derail Operation Find a Bride. “I need to go change,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Why do you have to change?” he asked, glancing over. “You look comfortable.”
Frumpy, more like. Will’s women always looked pulled together. I needed to go that route too. “I don’t want to stay in my sweaty clothes, that’s all. Give your brain a break while I’m gone. I think you’re going about this all wrong, and I have an idea of how to tweak it when I get back.”
“Like what?” he said, his tone offended.
“Tell you when I get back,” I repeated. I had to think of the answer first.
Chapter 4
I took my time meandering down to my apartment door. It took all of thirty seconds. I stripped off my running gear and considered my closet, trying to figure out the right thing to put on while 80 percent of my attention went to figuring out Find-a-Bride Sabotage. I wished I’d done more Internet dating so I could tell Will all the wrong things to do, but for now I’d have to rely on stories I’d heard from friends about their mishaps. And I couldn’t do anything too obvious, or Will would figure it out in a second.
What I needed was to design the perfect profile for him so he’d think he was getting the women he liked, but they’d actually be the kind of women he’d lose interest in quickly. And then I’d have to step up my game. I’d always been the right girl for him, so there was no point in changing things about myself. But I’d have to figure out how to draw his attention to me in a good way, to make him see that I was what he needed, not another pocket blonde. I had to make sure he had dates so miserable that being with me was a refuge.
I’d trailed along once on a post-college graduation trip he and Dave had taken to the Bahamas, where they’d swum with the sharks. It was one of the few times I’d seen Will genuinely nervous, but with Dave jumping into the water without any fear, Will wouldn’t back down from diving in too. It had taken the guide, a grizzled dive master named Roger, who was incredibly patient, to get him there, talking him through every bit of the process: the design specs of the underwater cage that would protect him from the sharks, the exact genus and species of the chum they were using to draw the sharks, the science of their dive gear.
Only after the guide had nailed every answer did Will’s shoulders relax, and he’d dropped into the water without another word. I’d followed right behind him, and we’d been rewarded with a spectacular view of reef sharks.
I’d be his Roger and his shark cage, the person who made everything okay, who made it so he could breathe, and the defense against the predatory women who would come after him for all the wrong reasons, not for the qualities only years of knowing him would reveal.
I winced. Sophie would flunk me for that metaphor too.
* * *
I walked back into Will’s place, and his eyebrows rose. “You going somewhere?”
“Just here.”
“Why are you dressed up?”
I looked down at the yellow knit dress I had agonized over choosing. “This isn’t dressed up. It took about as much energy as pulling on a T-shirt and flip flops.” Granted, they were bejeweled sandals. But at the most basic level, I was wearing a T-shirt and flip flops.
“But I have to make you nachos, and you always spill wh
en you eat them.”
Thanks for making me feel twelve again, dude. “I’m not that hungry. I’m taking a rain check. I’m going to demand them on a day when it’s super inconvenient for you to make them.”
“Of course.” He grunted. “You had ideas for my profile?”
“Let me look at it again.” The second he posted his picture, it was going to be game over unless I planted some red flags to make his potential matches think twice—but only the potential matches he would like. The rest of them I wanted pinging him in droves. Annoying, whiny droves. Like gnats. That he wanted to flick away.
“I think the main thing here is that you want to tell the truth about yourself, but you want to tell the best version of the truth you can,” I said, pulling out my cell phone and tapping the camera. “You should avoid putting stuff like ‘rocket scientist’ out there and save it for a first date.”
“Why wouldn’t I say that straight out? That’s what I’ve spent the most time being.”
“Yeah, but telling someone you’re in the sciences, especially astrophysics, will give them the impression that you’re analytical and detached. Besides, you know the joke: how do you know someone is a rocket scientist?”
He sighed. “He’ll tell you. Fine. We’ll save it for later dates. But I am analytical. That needs to be there. I need someone who can handle the fact that I believe in logic because . . . logic.”
I played out the possibilities. Something like that could draw equally hyperanalytical women. If they had a fun streak, that was bad news. A highly logical person who also had a sense of adventure was exactly what Will needed. That was me in a nutshell. If he got someone who was as analytical as himself but who wasn’t fun, that would be ideal. Will would convince himself for a few dates that he should like Miss Logic before the boredom would win out, but those few dates would buy me time.
It was a gamble worth taking. I’d screen the candidates for anyone whose hobbies were fun and convince Will that those matches were a bad choice.
All right, phase one: The Logical Match. Let it begin.
“Let’s put up your profile picture. We need something that shows you looking like a thinker so you’ll attract smart women.”
“I’m not exactly rolling in the selfies.”
“It’s kind of weird when dudes are.” I waved my phone. “I’m a genius problem solver. Smile, but do it thoughtfully. It needs to look candid, like someone snapped it for you when you didn’t know they were taking a picture of you. Act like you’re looking out a window and thinking about something cool that makes you smile a teeny bit.”
“This is stupid.”
I marched over to him and grabbed the front of his T-shirt, pulling on it hard enough that it forced him to look up at me. “I’m the boss. Do it before I make you put on fake reading glasses.”
He didn’t even bat an eye at the manhandling. That’s how it went when people were so used to each other. I let him go, and he sagged back on the couch. “Also, you need to change your shirt.”
He dropped his head back against the sofa and groaned. I ignored him and hurried down the hall to his bedroom, yanking open his closet door to find something better for him to wear. He couldn’t wear a sports jersey and a thoughtful smile. He’d look like a laid-back guy with interesting secrets, and all kinds of mystery-loving, spontaneous women would come out of the woodwork, which was exactly what I didn’t need.
His closet smelled like him, the faintest hint of his cologne hanging in the air. Once a guy from accounting had walked past me, and I’d gone weak in the knees. I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out why the middle-aged man with a borderline comb-over had affected me like that until he had walked back the other way and I’d realized he wore Will’s cologne. Potent stuff.
I took longer to choose a shirt for Will than I really needed to. I liked being in his room. It was so Will. His spare room was a monument to frat boy whimsy, the inside full of an intricate fortress made of empty Gatorade bottles. This room reflected a guy who had some taste. He’d painted the walls a dark gray and picked black furniture with black-and-white bedding in a geometric print—it probably soothed his engineering mind to be surrounded by all the square edges of the blanket’s print, the furniture shapes, and the pristine hospital corners he made his bed with.
I reached into the closet. All he needed was a plaid button-down, something in a baggy cut, not the trendy slim style. I pulled a shirt from the back. Boxy, drab plaid. Perfect.
“Here.” I walked back into the living room, where he’d turned the TV back on to look for a game. “Put this on, and look thoughtful. You can even stare at the game and pretend you’re thinking about something important.” I flicked a glance at the screen. “The Lions are losing. That should be enough to make you smile.”
He sighed and stood to pull his T-shirt off. I mourned the rippled-ab view that disappeared button by button as he put the new shirt on.
“So what do you want me to do again? Sit here and grin like an idiot?”
“Watch the game and smile,” I said.
He heaved another sigh.
“Careful, Will. You’re going to fog up your windows with all that heavy breathing.”
He shot me a dirty look before switching his gaze back to the TV.
“Good. Now smile.”
He grimaced.
“You look like I’m torturing you.”
“You are. This is dumb. Can’t I use the picture from my work badge?”
Absolutely. It was unflattering. But I shook my head. I was saving that baby for when I tried to get him to draw in the women looking for a reliable, serious guy. Will was reliable until he disappeared into one of his projects. And he was serious then too. But that all went away when he emerged, problem solved and ready to blow off steam on some nutjob adventure.
Will’s post-project adventures were some of the best times I’d had hanging out with him and my brother. That thrill-seeking was another side of Will the ladies of the Interwebz would not be meeting if I pulled this off.
“Just forget I’m here, and smile,” I ordered again.
This time it looked like his sixth- through ninth-grade yearbook photos where he’d clearly been uncomfortable flashing his braces for the camera.
I dropped beside him on the sofa and flipped through the channels until I found a Mythbusters marathon playing. “Have you seen this one?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now think about how you’d redesign the experiment.”
He rested his elbows on his knees and watched as the redheaded Mythbuster explained the design of the propellant they were using to test their hypothesis. Will’s forehead furrowed for a second, and I moved off the sofa to the adjacent armchair where I could get a better shot. Then I waited. As the TV guy ran through the physics of their predicted outcome, the furrows in Will’s forehead deepened.
Wait for it . . . there. His forehead smoothed, and I poised my finger over the camera button. He leaned forward, and a small smile appeared as he corrected the trajectory in his head. I caught the picture I needed right before he sat back, satisfied that he’d figured out the right way to set up the test.
“I’m e-mailing this to you. Hand me your laptop so I can pull it up and post it.”
“You want me to give you my laptop with access to all my password-protected accounts so you can dig into all of it and post stuff?”
“Yeah. When have you ever had a secret from me anyway?”
He looked stumped for a minute, then grinned. “There’s definitely some stuff I’ve kept from your tender, young ears. Stuff you’re never going to be old enough to hear.”
I refused to even think about what that meant about women, about past relationships. Instead, I focused on shaking another one of his pet ideas about me. “Tender, young ears, my right elbow.”
Will grinned. “That was a good Aunt Meryl.” Meryl was actually Grammy, who had died when I was in high school. We’d grown up going out to her house in Waxahachie on
weekends to fish or ride ATVs, and Will had usually sat right next to Dave in the back of Mom’s Forerunner, itchy to get to the bass pond. He’d called Grammy his Aunt Meryl because he’d said she looked like Meryl Streep, and it had stuck. As had a lot of Grammy’s country expressions that Dave, Will, and I all still used with each other.
“Thanks. But my point is that I’m not that young.”
Will shrugged and looked like he was going to disappear into the rest of the Mythbusters episode.
“You know the last three girls you’ve dated have all been younger than me, right?”
His head whipped toward me, his face startled. He didn’t say anything, only narrowed his eyes for a minute as he stared at me before he shrugged and mumbled, “That’s weird.”
“You’re the one who’s cradle-robbing.”
“Shut up,” he said, a smile creeping in. “Every last one of them is out of college. It’s not cradle-robbing. I meant it’s weird that they all seem older than you. More life experience, probably.”
I wanted to throw the laptop at his head. They definitely had different life experiences, namely not growing up next door to Will their whole lives so they weren’t family to him. “I’m not as young as you’re trying to make me, Will, is my point. Now check out your profile.”
I shoved the laptop back at him, waiting for him to check the final result of his phase-one profile: Will, Master of Logic, the guy who would attract incredibly intelligent but boring women.
“You sure this is the way to go?” he asked, looking up. “I feel like I come off kind of dry.”
“You come off as a serious thinker, who doesn’t need to date anyone who would carry a dog in her purse or think a quarter hour means twenty-five minutes.” I grinned when he winced at the memory of the girl from last year I referred to. “Should we leave figuring out what women want to you, the guy in his gym shorts, watching a Mythbusters marathon, or me, the actual woman?”
He shook his head but hit “post” without arguing, sending his profile out to a worldwide web of potential dates.
Always Will Page 3