Every day without Brett was just another day. Ellie got up and went through the motions of work, home, playing ball, and Chalker’s—she even finished her driving lessons with the new guy, Drew Something-or-Other—and most of the time she managed to do it all with a smile. But it still felt like there was a giant piece of herself that had gone missing—a piece she hadn’t even known was there until it wasn’t.
They called, they texted, they even Skyped once in a while, but it wasn’t the same, and they both knew it.
So she kept busy. She helped Regan with the details for the upcoming fund-raiser game, refocused on the orders for fall and Christmas, and as well as feeding Pastor Pete, she now made a point of taking some baking or a decent meal to Dickie a couple of times a week. God only knew what would have happened if he hadn’t been there that day, so it was the least she could do.
Days morphed into weeks, but she was so busy she hardly noticed how Brett’s calls had trickled down from three or four a day to once a day to what it was now—a text every few days. No, hardly noticeable at all. Sure, she checked her messages half a dozen times a day, but that was just being responsible.
Or stupid.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’d started to distance himself right around the same time Jayne started making noise about finding “a nice guy” for Ellie.
Jayne had already tried to play cupid with Maya, Regan, and Brett and, to date, was batting zero, so even if Ellie were interested, which she wasn’t, the chances of Jayne making a love connection for her were slim to none. Time after time, Ellie refused, and time after time, Jayne would come up with someone else.
It was shocking that Jayne even knew that many single guys. So much so that Ellie wondered if she didn’t make half of them up—something Jayne neither confirmed nor denied when they met at Chalker’s the Tuesday before Griffin Game weekend.
“You can’t say no every time,” Jayne complained.
“Of course I can.”
“Don’t even think of it as a date. Meet for coffee. Or lunch. Or what about a beer at the game on Saturday? That’s perfect.”
“If he’s so perfect,” Ellie muttered, “set Maya up with him.”
“Oh no,” Maya said, pushing her chair back and holding up her hands. “No way. She’s already tried with me; it’s your turn.”
Grinning, Regan nodded. “She has a point, Ellie. Time to take one for the team.”
“Don’t throw sports analogies at me,” Ellie laughed, but it had already weakened her defense a little. They were a team, the four of them, and sometimes you had to do things for your team just because your captain asked you to.
“He might be at the game on Saturday,” Jayne went on. “So if he is, that’d be perfect. No pressure, no nothing.”
“No nothing is right.”
“Come on, Ellie. He’s new to town, so it’d be nice for him to meet a pretty girl, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, okay,” Ellie sighed. “You’re right.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Me? No. Maya’s the pretty one.” When Jayne’s frown deepened, Ellie shrugged. “You won’t even tell me his name, Jayne. What does that say about him?”
“It doesn’t say anything about him, but it says everything about you!” Jayne opened her eyes wider and proceeded to do an insulting impersonation of Ellie: “I can’t date a guy named Bob because I had a fourth cousin twice removed named Bob, and that’d just be creepy. Can’t date a Steve—too Blue’s Clues–ish. Can’t date a dentist because they have their fingers in other people’s mouths all the time, can’t date a teacher because Dickhead’s a teacher and that ruins all of them for all of us, can’t date someone with green eyes or brown hair or someone with a crooked tooth or who wears…I don’t know…yellow shirts.”
By the time she finished, her face was a little red, Regan and Maya were both snickering, and Shelley was staring at Jayne openmouthed as she delivered their next round.
“Just ignore her,” Ellie said, tucking a few extra bucks into Shelley’s tip glass. “She’s just having a bit of a breakdown. And for the record, Jayne, most of those issues were Regan’s, not mine. I mean, the yellow shirt thing, yeah, of course. Very few men can pull off wearing yellow, so you can’t dog me for