Date Next Door
“I’m really full,” she said, pushing thoughts of Joel to the back of her mind for the moment. “But the dinner was wonderful. It was so nice of you to go to the trouble of bringing it over.”
Aislinn shrugged. “It was the least I could do. I haven’t been much help to you otherwise this past weekend.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t able to warn you about the lanai.”
“Which only proves that you aren’t the psychic Pamela keeps telling everyone you are. You had a feeling there was going to be a problem and you checked on me several times. I know you were concerned about me.”
Aislinn didn’t look significantly comforted. “I was the one who suggested to Joel that he should take you to the reunion. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. Matchmaking is always risky, especially when you’re setting up your best friend.”
“You couldn’t have known I would get hurt at the reunion. You were just trying to help Joel with a problem—after he asked us to offer suggestions,” Nic reminded her.
And then it struck her exactly what Aislinn had said. “Wait a minute. Matchmaking? You were matchmaking?”
Her face flushed, Aislinn nodded apologetically. “I thought it would be a chance for you and Joel to get out of the comfortable routines you’d fallen into and explore the possibilities between you. Now I wonder if I made a mistake.”
“Why exactly?” Nic wasn’t sure she wanted the answer, but she felt compelled to ask.
Aislinn cleared her throat. “Would you like some dessert? I brought brownies.”
“I’ll have dessert later. First I want to know why you think it was a mistake to try to put Joel and me together. Do you have one of your feelings about it?”
Looking miserable, Aislinn crumbled the remains of a crusty roll onto her plate. “Not exactly. I’m just afraid you’re going to be hurt again. And I don’t mean physically this time.”
She really shouldn’t have asked, Nic thought with a sinking feeling inside her chest. Aislinn was pretty much predicting disaster from Nic and Joel’s new relationship. And because that opinion was a bit too close to Nic’s own concerns, she felt any lingering optimism about this latest development with Joel start to slip away.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said, deliberately injecting a touch of bravado into her voice. “I know better than to let that happen.”
“Do you?” Aislinn murmured, and her expression made Nic suspect that Aislinn knew exactly what had transpired between her and Joel earlier that day.
She sighed. “Maybe not.”
Aislinn set down her fork. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Tell me about the weekend.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start there, either.”
“Why not at the beginning?”
That seemed like a reasonable suggestion. After all, she and Aislinn had always told each other almost everything that happened to them.
She started talking, describing her arrival in Alabama, meeting Joel’s brother and parents, attending the football game dressed in the opposing team’s colors, lunch with Ethan the next day, the dance, the kisses by the lake, all the way up to the collapse of the lanai. If she left anything out, it wasn’t intentional. After all, she figured, Aislinn would probably sense anything she tried to hide.
She stopped the narrative at the point where she and Joel had walked into her house that afternoon. Maybe Aislinn had already guessed what happened after that, but Nic wasn’t quite ready to talk about it.
Aislinn had listened in attentive silence, but now she asked, “You said Joel’s parents saw you off this morning. How did they react to your being injured?”
“Oh, they were very sympathetic. Really distressed about the whole thing, as if it reflected badly on their hospitality. And managing to imply that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been such a reckless type.”
“Oh, surely they didn’t—”
Nic held up a hand. “That was unfair of me,” she admitted. “They were perfectly gracious. They even gave me a beautiful box of chocolates when I left. I’m being a jerk when I should be grateful for their kindness and hospitality. I promise I’ll write a thank-you note to them before I go to bed tonight and I’ll put it in the mail first thing in the morning.”
“Nic, have I ever judged you?” Aislinn looked at her reprovingly from across the table. “You can tell me exactly how they made you feel, whether it was intentional on their part or not.”