I leaned back against the sofa, exhausted. It wasn’t even the running that had wiped me out. It was trying to manage Will. And I had a bad feeling the anxiety gnawing at my insides like a tiny but persistent termite was guilt, not fear of loss. Because I’d just thought of a synonym for manage. Manipulate. And if that was the right synonym, it made the termite hungrier.
Chapter 6
“Am I manipulating him, Sophie?” I wailed into the phone.
“Hello to you too. What are we talking about?”
“Will,” I said.
“Right. Don’t know why I asked. Are you manipulating him?”
“I called you so you could tell me.”
“Define manipulate,” she said, sounding like she was breaking down the SAT word of the day with her eleventh graders. “Are you making him do anything he doesn’t want to do?”
“I’m nudging him to go on dates he wouldn’t normally choose.”
“But that’s what he wants, right? I mean, that’s why he decided on this whole online dating marathon?”
“No, he wants to get married.”
“Right, but if he were dating his usual type, he wouldn’t get married, would he?”
“No,” I said, uncertain because I could feel myself getting caught in the web of her brilliant English-teacher reasoning. “He’d get bored.”
“So by pointing him toward women outside his usual, you’re increasing his chances of finding someone he could marry. Right?”
“No! I don’t want him to do that! I want him to see that any girl he picks that’s not me is the wrong girl.”
“Then you’re manipulating him.”
“But I don’t want to manipulate him!”
“Then you’re helping him expand his dating pool to improve his chances. Right?”
“Right. Yes. That’s what I’m doing. Thank you? I think? I can’t tell if you made me feel better or not.”
“You totally feel better. I’ve got a stack of essays longer than my arm waiting for me. Forsooth, I must needs go grade them.”
“Fo’ shizzle.” We hung up, and I stared at the phone, trying to feel through the confusing emotions scrambling my brains. No matter what Sophie said, I probably was manipulating Will. But was there such a thing as benevolent manipulation? It was for his own good. It’s not like I was going to make the women he met act a particular way. Everyone had their own free will there.
I wasn’t making him do anything either. He could disagree any time he wanted to. I wasn’t holding anything over his head. Yeah, I’d promised him I’d help him find a wife, and that was exactly what I was doing. I just understood him well enough to know who that wife should be and the roundabout way that I hoped, prayed, and wished would bring him to me.
* * *
You’re 0 for 1.
I stared at the text from Will like it was the winning Powerball lottery numbers. He must have finished lunch with RealChillPill, the one whose profile suggested she was the least chill woman ever. That was the first lunch date that had worked out. She’d liked his description of himself as “spontaneous.” Leigh, as her name turned out to be, appeared not to be the woman for Will. I’d never been so happy to have a losing score. Grinning, I tapped out some pseudo encouragement. I could go 0 for 99 as long as I’m 1 for 100. You just eliminated a variable. That’s a good thing.
A minute later, he called my cell phone. “Nothing about that date was a good thing.” His irritation rumbled out of the phone. He was almost a baritone, and the vibrations of his voice tickled my eardrum and sent a shiver down my back.
“What went wrong?”
“The selection process, apparently. I’m all for adventures or whatever, but this Leigh person takes it to a whole new level. Five minutes after we sat down, she suggested blowing off the pho place and catching the next Greyhound bus out of town.”
“Aw, but you love pho.”
“Stop it. I can hear you trying not to laugh.”
I let the laugh out. “Why did she want to catch a bus?”
“I don’t know. She thought it would be fun to catch the first bus leaving, ride it for a hundred miles, and see where we ended up. She said even with gas station snacks, it would still cost less than a steak dinner to have an adventure.”
“She’s right.”
“I like a different kind of adventure,” he growled. “And then she got this pitying look on her face when I said I thought I’d better go back to work. The bus thing I could maybe overlook, but trying to separate me from pho, plus being condescending? Pass.”
“Did you really think you were going to knock it out of the park the first time at bat? This is field research. We’ll look at key words she had in her profile that should have been a clue and filter out anyone else who uses them.”
“All right,” he said, and I could almost hear the circuits humming in his brain. “Tomorrow is the other end of the spectrum, the quiet-ish one.”
“Dallasgirl?”
“Her name is Leslie. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Can’t wait.” Especially not if she tanked as badly as Leigh had.
* * *
CALL ME.
The message came in halfway through the Leslie lunch. I dialed immediately, worry making my hands clumsy. Will had never sent me a panicked text before.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded as soon as he picked up after the second ring.
“Hey, Dave. Is something wrong?”
“What? You told me to call.”
“You’re kidding. She did? Is everything okay? Can I do something to help?”
“Will, what are you talking about?” I asked, but I was figuring it out on my own pretty quickly.
“Whatever you need, buddy. Hang on.” He spoke to someone else for a minute. It sounded muffled, like he had his hand over the phone, but I still caught, “Sorry . . . Emergency . . . Take this . . . In a minute.”
Thirty seconds later, he was talking to me again, only I couldn’t hear any ambient restaurant noise. “O for two, and this one is so bad I’m hiding in the men’s room. I need to splash water on my face, or I might resort to clawing it off.”
“Uh, why?”
“I need some way to keep myself awake, and so far pinching my leg under the table isn’t working. If I have to stick this out much longer, I might move on to stabbing myself with a fork.”
“Why are you so mean?”
“Why are you picking bad dates for me?”
“Let’s not talk about us. Let’s talk about Leslie. What’s the problem? Is she not cute?”
“Remember how she said she likes jazz? It’s more like she likes to talk about it. But only so I know how much she knows about it, not in a she-loves-it kind of way. And she likes acid jazz. Which is noise. So I’m listening to her talk about noise. And that’s becoming its own kind of noise. It’s very meta.” He paused. “I feel like I’m trapped in an artsy short film about the futility of existence.”
It was a full minute before I could stop laughing enough to speak. “So it’s zero for two. No big deal. That means I’ve got ninety-seven more chances to find you the right match. I totes got this, yo.”
“I don’t think so. If you strike out a third time, I’m going to have to reevaluate your technical-advisory capacity on this project. I might need to scrap your input and try a new data set.”
“Right now, you need to go back to your date.”
“And inform her that the emergency we’re discussing is going to call me away from lunch? Permanently? Don’t mind if I do.”
I snorted. “I’m going to doubt all motives of all guys from this point forward.”
“Have I not been telling you to do that for years?” he said. “Men are fine except for the ones who want to date you. Those men are dogs, and you should stay far away from them.”
If only that was coming from a place of jealousy. “I’m really glad I didn’t start going on dates until college and you boys were far, far away.”
“Pr
obably a good thing,” he agreed. “Gotta go handle Miss Acid Jazz now.”
“Good luck.”
“What I really need is a good exit. I’m not kidding, Hanny. Number three better be a major improvement.”
Oh, she wouldn’t be. Not if I could help it.
* * *
Strike three. You’re out. No more picking for me.
You’re kidding. I can’t believe Letterbox was a bust.
We are so talking about this after work.
Only if you catch me. I’m going on a run.
Have I mentioned I hate running?
Have I mentioned I hate listening to you whine?
Oh, it’s on, H. I’m going to be right on your heels. Whining.
Not so much. You won’t have the breath for that.
Mean but true. See you 6-ish.
* * *
He pounded on my front door at six sharp. I opened it to find him in another worn-out T-shirt.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping into the hallway and hoping he noticed my new running shirt. It was a lemon-colored tank top, and I loved it. He didn’t say anything though. Maybe he was afraid I would start lecturing him about polymers again.
We’d barely hit the sidewalk for a warmup jog to the lake before he started in. “You know how you thought that Letterbox’s fascination with mailboxes suggested an intensity I might understand?”
I’d made up a pretty great theory about how her ability to elevate what other people found mundane into an art with her photographs suggested that she saw the world in a deeper way and could connect with Will’s super-smart brain. “Not so much?” I asked, keeping my tone bland.
“Not at all. There is literally nothing more to it than that she likes mailboxes. It’s like how some people collect salt and pepper shakers. She collects pictures of mailboxes. She doesn’t have any deeper thoughts about them.”
“Maybe she was too intimidated by you to articulate them. Maybe she has some sad backstory about the destiny of the letters that do and don’t arrive in them. Maybe there’s some tragic letter she received—ooooh, or, better yet, never received in her past, and that’s why she loves them.”
I could feel his measuring gaze on me, but I kept my eyes on the sidewalk. “No,” he said, finally. “You would think that way. But not her. Your brain is full of possibilities. Let me put it this way. We went for sushi, and I asked her what she wanted. She said whatever I thought was good was fine. But it wasn’t in an adventurous, surprise-me way. It was in a giving-no-thought-to-it kind of way.”
I smothered a smile. Will couldn’t fathom people who weren’t interested in food. Not that he was a foodie. But passiveness toward food was beyond him.
“Anyway, I ordered, and she didn’t touch it. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t like fish. But she suggested sushi! And when I asked her why, she said it was because everyone says they like sushi on their profile, so she figured it was a safe bet. I don’t understand the thinking. At all.”
“So that’s three down. You’re ninety-six closer to your goal.”
“Well, you’re fired,” he said, and I stumbled. He reached out a hand to steady me, and his hand sent delicious shocks up and down my arm.
“You can’t fire me,” I said. “Your project will never work.”
“It’s not working now. I’m going to pick some women this time. I can’t possibly get it more wrong than you did.”
“Yes, you can. That’s why you’re not married yet.”
He made an annoyed rumble in his throat. “If I trip you in the next ten seconds, I swear it was a total accident.”
“Give it a few more tries before you give up,” I said. I needed more time to make him see me. We ran in silence then. It was the good kind, the kind that always fell between us, the easy kind.
When we rounded the lake toward home, he slowed down about a block from our complex. “Keep going if you want. I need more lead time to get my breath back.”
I slowed with him. “I’m done too. You did well today, kiddo.”
“Kiddo? I’ve got a million years on you.”
“You mean three? And only three? Everyone knows that if you’re twenty-one and older, age differences only matter in five-year increments. So we’re practically the same age.”
“What are you making up now?” he asked, genuine curiosity peeking through his labored words.
“I’m not making anything up. It’s a true thing. Think about it. There’s a massive difference between an eighteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old. But there isn’t that much of a difference between a twenty-five-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old.”
He thought about it for a minute, or maybe he was trying to get his breathing under control. “I feel like if I played that out, I’d poke it full of more holes than your colander, but I don’t have the energy, so I guess I’m going to agree with you. But speaking of colanders . . .”
I grinned. “You want me to make pasta for dinner?”
“You’re so sweet to invite me. I’d hate to disappoint you by turning you down, so, yes, you can make me some pasta.”
I slugged him, and he rubbed his arm. “You can march yourself over and help. That’s my condition.”
“Be there in fifteen.” He rubbed his arm again. I waved him off and skimmed up the stairs ahead of him, but I thought about the punch. We’d always had a sibling way of interacting with each other. Affectionate pokes and jabs and noogies. No one noogies someone they’re interested in kissing. Not unless they’re in middle school.
The next phase of my plan unfolded in front of me in an instant: I had to change our vocabulary of touch to something besides the language of old friends.
* * *
“So this is my question,” Will said after he’d downed half his pasta. “Why am I taking Internet-dating advice from someone who’s had zero success with Internet dating? You’re still fired.”
“You’re taking advice from me because I have a lifetime of experience of being a woman. I know what they want. The Internet-dating thing doesn’t matter.” He looked unconvinced, and I sighed. “Who said I haven’t had any success in Internet dating, anyway? You don’t know everything about me, Will.”
He leaned over and tapped my bare ring finger. “I could know nothing about you and still know Internet dating hasn’t worked out for you.”
“That’s assuming my goal was marriage. I’ve had two entire relationships with guys I met online. So now I have double credibility: my gender and my track record.”
He grunted. “I never saw these guys.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” I said. His expression caught me. If I didn’t know him so well, I might not have noticed the tiny twitch in his cheek that meant he was irritated. But what had irritated him? Was it the mention of my other relationships? I tested him. “They were good relationships and perfect for what I wanted at the moment.”
He did it again, a tiny twitch when I said “relationships.” A half-formed idea, conceived of the marathons of teen movies I’d watched through high school, burst out of my mouth before I could hold it back. “Look, I’ll join you. I’ll set up a profile on this site, and you’ll see. I know what I’m talking about.”
“You’re going to do online dating?”
He sounded curious, not annoyed. The bubble of hope in my stomach burst, hollowing it out despite all the pasta I’d eaten. I didn’t know who was stupider at the moment—him for his cluelessness or me for my crush. My twelve-year-long, pathetic, ridiculous crush.
I pushed the pasta around, suddenly not hungry, even though we’d made it with my favorite fresh-pesto recipe. The garlic left an ammonia taste in my mouth, and I shoved the bowl away.
“This should be funny,” he said.
And that did it. “It’s funny that someone would want to date me? No. What’s funny is me. I’m hilarious. Did you know that? It’s why guys want to date me. A lot of them.”
He laughed, and I resisted the urge to dump my rem
aining pasta over his head. I didn’t know why he was laughing, but all the possibilities made me mad. “You can’t fire me as your technical advisor because I quit. Let’s see who ends up with better dates now.”
“It’s not a competition,” he said. His cheek twitched.
“You better believe it is. And it starts now.”
I shoved away from the table to fetch my Macbook out of my bedroom.
“What are you doing?” he asked when I flopped on the sofa instead of coming back to the table.
“Schooling you, son,” I said in a voice of icy calm without looking up. I was torching my own plan to set Will up with women he couldn’t stand and practically shoving him into looking for women he’d dig, no question. But I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was to shatter his sisterly image of me.
“Geez, Hanny. I was just messing with you. I’m sure you can get all the dates you want.”
“No, you aren’t. But you’ll see.”
“Seriously, you don’t need to prove anything.” All the laughter in his voice was gone, and that finally made me look up. “I’m sure a lot of guys would go out with you, but besides me, every last dude on the Internet is trolling for hookups, and their motives are shady.”
I clacked on my keyboard and ignored him again.
“Don’t. Dave is going to kill me.”
“Right. Dereliction of surrogate-big-brother duties.”
“Exactly.”
I typed faster.
“Hannah, you—”
“You’re distracting me. Make yourself useful and clear the table or something,” I said, not looking up from the screen.
He was quiet for a second before reappearing with a glass of water for me.
“I’m fine,” I said, waving it away.
“Drink it, or you’ll get a headache.” He hovered until I accepted it, then he disappeared into the kitchen.
I paused in my typing to drink, trying to figure out how I wanted to present myself in the profile. What kind of guy would make Will realize that he was the only person on the planet besides Dave who looked at me in a brotherly way? I smiled and typed even faster, filling out my registration before I hopped up and headed down the hall.
Always Will Page 5