snug little booth in the corner of the restaurant. The lighting inside was dim, small glass globes resting above each individual table. The place was packed, mostly with older couples on a date night, wearing clean-pressed clothes and suits. I would venture to say Bree was the youngest one in the restaurant, including all of the wait staff.
Once our drinks were ordered, I had to help her choose what to get for her entree. She tried telling me she didn’t want anything, but I wasn’t going to take that for an answer. I explained to her what everything on the menu was, and she was unreadable. It was like nothing at all in particular caught her eye or sounded good to her, so in the end I made the choice, well aware that she probably wouldn’t eat it, but oh well.
At least I tried, right?
After our waiter came back with our drinks and took our order, along with taking the leather-clad menus away, I watched as Bree ran a finger down the side of the glass in front of her. She got water, big shocker there.
The more I stared at her, the more I wondered about her. She certainly didn’t remind me of any twenty-year-old. She looked so…serious, so lost in her own mind. And sad. Very, very sad.
“So,” I started, giving her a small grin.
Bree was cautious in meeting my stare, whispering as she repeated, “So.”
God, it felt like so long since I’d had to do this, talk on a date. Get to know someone else. I caught myself about to ask if she’d ever been here, but I knew she hadn’t. Instead, I found myself saying, “Kyle mentioned you don’t get out much.” Shit. Probably not the best thing to bring up on a date, her nonexistent social life. “How come?”
Her eyes had widened a bit at my question, and she looked like she wanted to fold into herself and disappear. That wouldn’t happen on my watch. Not tonight. Not now. Right now this girl was my responsibility, my date, and I would not let her pretend she didn’t exist.
Her teeth nibbled her bottom lip, something that I knew was a habit of hers when she was nervous. She did it an awful lot last weekend, while I was too busy wishing I wasn’t there. “I don’t know. I just…don’t.”
Ah. Right. That made sense.
I realized then I’d have to pry every single word out of her tonight. This was not going to be easy.
“Why not?” I leaned on the table, studying her posture. She did not sit with her shoulders squared; she sat hunched into herself, again, making herself appear even smaller than she already was. “You never go out with friends?”
“I don’t really…have friends. They all went to different colleges, and I—” Bree shifted her weight, looking immensely uncomfortable telling me this. “—I didn’t keep in touch.”
With social media and cell phones, not keeping in touch was not an excuse these days. I knew friends drifted apart—hah, yeah, I knew that too damn much—but surely out of every single friend she had, one or two tried to keep up with her?
“You’re going to SCC, right? What about anyone there?” I couldn’t say why it bothered me to know that she was pretty much alone, but it did. If there was one thing I wanted in this moment, it was for Bree to have a friend. Someone, anyone. Living life lonely was not really living, if you asked me.
Then again, what the hell did I know? My ex and my best friend had thought it was a good idea to get together behind my back, so I wasn’t the best judge of anything.
Bree let out a tiny laugh. “Were you briefed by my parents? You sound like them. They’re always pushing me to make new friends.” She let out a sigh, her expression falling. “I just don’t see the point in trying to make friends when, in the end, they’ll just leave.”
What a depressing way to look at things. This girl…what was I going to do with her?
“Not everyone leaves,” I told her, meaning it.
She shook her head. “They do. They always do.” Bree quieted for a moment, those green eyes zeroing in on me, as if wordlessly challenging me to argue with her about what she was about to say. “You’re going to leave—so, really, this date is pointless, too.”
While it was true I couldn’t stay in town forever, I had to go back to my place