Annie Says I Do

Aghast, she tried to reject his words. “I—I w-wasn’t—”

“Annie.”

That’s all he said. Just “Annie.” But those two precisely uttered syllables—plus the directness of his gaze—were more than enough to silence her stammered denial.

Annie sustained Matt’s steady, blue-gray stare for the space of a few heartbeats. Then she looked away. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, not entirely certain for what she was apologizing.

“Don’t be.”

Easy for him to advise, impossible for her to comply.

Annie made an awkward gesture, torn between the need to explain herself and the conviction that doing so would only make things worse. The former finally won out.

“Look, Matt,” she began. “I don’t want you to think that—I mean, I wasn’t really...well, yes. I guess I was. But I’m not...not—” She gestured again, frustrated by her inability to express herself. She struggled for several seconds, then blurted in a rush, “It’s just that I get concerned about you, you know?”

“Of course I know.”

The reply was quick and unequivocal. Yet for all its undeniable swiftness and seeming simplicity, something about it triggered an odd jolt of emotion deep within Annie. It also drew her gaze back to Matt’s face.

“I...I don’t...understand...” she faltered.

Matt leaned forward. “Your ‘getting concerned’ got me through hell, Annie,” he told her. “If you hadn’t been there for me after Lisa died, I might not be here now.”

Annie’s throat tightened. This was the first time she’d heard Matt indicate that he realized how dangerously close to the emotional edge he’d come in the wake of his wife’s passing. It was also the first time she’d heard him acknowledge her role in bringing him back from the brink.

“We’re friends, Matt,” she said, hoping her inflection communicated how much the word meant to her. “Friends help friends when friends need it.”

“Yes,” Matt agreed, nodding. A comma-shaped lock of sandy blond hair fell forward onto his forehead. He forked it back into place with an unthinking sweep of his right hand. “But it’s important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change.”

Annie hesitated, sensing that they were entering into uncharted emotional territory. Uncharted for her, at least. There was an expression in her best buddy’s eyes—a tempered, disconcertingly tough expression—that suggested he’d been exploring this ground for some time.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she finally asked.

“I’m trying to tell you that I’m all right,” he answered. “Not one hundred percent, but I’m working on it. Yes, I have moments when I miss Lisa so much it hurts. And I think about her. I think about her a lot. But I don’t obsess the way we both know I did right after she died.”

“So?” Annie could barely get the word out.

Matt remained silent for several seconds, the look in his eyes softening. “So,” he finally replied, “it’s time for you to stop ‘getting concerned’ about my mental stability whenever I mention my dead wife’s name.”

As gentle as the implied reproach was, it still hurt. Annie’s first instinct was to dispute it. She opened her mouth to do just that, but closed it without uttering a sound.

What are you going to say? she challenged. That you’re a better judge of Matt’s state of mind than he is? Are you going to suggest he’s some sort of basket case? Just a little while ago you were thinking how much better he seems!

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to her.

What if she didn’t really want Matt to recover from his grief? What if, in some dark corner of her soul, she was relishing his dependence on her? What if—

No, she denied. No! It couldn’t be. It absolutely, positively, could not be. She knew herself better than that. And she knew her feelings for Matt better than that, too.

Annie took a deep breath and looked the man sitting across from her squarely in the eye. “You’re saying I overreacted when you started to talk about what Lisa would have done if she’d been the one to catch Eden’s bouquet.”

“I’m saying you’ve saved me from myself more times than I can count since Lisa died,” he corrected without missing a beat. “But the kind of help you gave me during the past fifteen months—the kind that involved your being part nursemaid, part psychotherapist and all-round guardian angel—isn’t the kind I need now.”

Annie let several seconds slip by, watching Matt’s face intently. “What kind do you need?” she finally asked.

Matt smiled. Grinned, almost. The expression was shatteringly familiar to Annie. It was a passport back to a carefree past she’d thought was beyond reclaiming.

“I need you to be my best buddy again,” he responded with disarming candor. “And to help me get a social life.”

* * *

It took Annie most of the rest of the meal to determine precisely what Matt meant by this.

“You want me for fix you up with someone?” she asked, rolling up her final fajita.

Matt paused in the act of forking up the last few grains of tomato-tinged rice that had come with his entée. He seemed genuinely startled by her question. Then, astonishingly, he began to laugh. There was a definite edge to the sound.

“Fix me up?” he echoed after a few seconds. “God, no! The last thing I need is anybody else trying to ‘fix me up.’”

“Anybody...else?”

“I’m up to my ears in people who want to introduce me to ‘nice’ girls.”

“Who?” The question popped out, unbidden and unconsidered.

“I don’t know.”

“How can you not know who wants—”

“No, Annie,” Matt cut in, shaking his head. “It’s the prospective dates who’re the strangers to me.”

“Oh.” She paused, mulling this over. “But the people who want to introduce you—”

“Them I know.”

Annie reached for her glass of now lukewarm ice tea and took a sip. “Do, uh, I, uh, know any of them?”

“Oh, definitely.” The response was wryly ironic. “The list includes my mother, Lisa’s mother, Lisa’s older sister, my brother’s wife—”

“Eden?” Annie replaced her glass with a thunk. She’d spoke with Eden about Matt over lunch just two days ago. Her friend had been sympathetic and full of advice. Yet not once had she mentioned that she was attempting to play matchmaker for her brother-in-law. She hadn’t even hinted at it.

“None other,” Matt affirmed, picking up his beer bottle and draining it.

“I see.” And maybe she did, Annie thought. Then again, maybe she didn’t. One thing seemed plain enough, though. While she’d been “getting concerned” about Matt’s emotional state, other people had been judging him sufficiently recovered from Lisa’s death to allow them to start pitching potential replacements at him.

Friends help friends when friends need it, she’d told her best buddy earlier.

Yes, he’d agreed. But it’s important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change.

Annie drew a steadying breath.

“Okay,” she began evenly. “You say you need me to be your best buddy again and help you get a social life. But you also say you don’t need me to fix you up with anyone because you’ve got eligible women coming out of your ears. Exactly what is it that you want me to do, Matt?”

“I want you to clue me in about being single.”

“Huh?”

“You know the scene, Annie,” Matt explained earnestly. “You’re a veteran of the battle between the sexes. You’ve been going out with guys for years.”

“Not that many,” she retorted, stung by what he seemed to be implying. “I’m only thirty-one!”

“But you have been around the block a few times,” he persisted. “You’ve got some mileage on you.”

Was Matt trying to be insulting? Annie wondered. She could live with him describing her as a “veteran” of the dating wars. She’d used the phrase herself once or twice, joking that she had the scars to prove her claim. But when he resorted to automotive analogies...

“I don’t know what kind of social life you think I’ve been leading, Matt,” she observed stiffly. “But I haven’t been cruising the highways or racing in the Grand Prix!”

“You haven’t been sitting in the garage, either,” he countered. “I have.”

Although comprehension didn’t dawn at that point, it definitely began nibbling away at the edges of Annie’s confusion.

“Oh,” she murmured after a moment or two, studying Matt very carefully. His cheeks were slightly flushed and he suddenly seemed to be having trouble meeting her eyes. Yet the squared set of his shoulders signaled determination. So did the stubborn jut of his jaw. “Matt, look—”

He preempted her with a rush of words.

“You and I both know I wasn’t Mr. Suave and Studly before I met Lisa,” he said flatly. “I was a short, hormonally challenged geek in junior high. Even after the testosterone finally kicked in the summer before freshman year, I didn’t pick up any action. Eight inches of height and a crop of zits, yeah. But action? No way, Jose. I hit tenth grade without ever having had a one-on-one date. The only girl I’d ever kissed was you. I didn’t have a clue—”

“Wait a minute,” Annie interrupted. Although she thought Matt’s assessment of his adolescent self was unduly harsh, she was willing to let it pass. Not so, the claim he’d made regarding her. “You never kissed me!”

Matt clenched his right hand and thumped it against his chest, feigning a stab to the heart. “I’m wounded,” he declared with a comic groan. “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten playing Spin the Bottle at Tommy Lombardy’s thirteenth birthday party.”

Annie frowned, trying to remember. After a few seconds of concentrated effort, she began to recall the event under discussion. All things considered, she would have preferred not to.

“That wasn’t a kiss, Matt,” she stated.

“Oh, really? What would you call it?”

“A head-on collision with teeth. You nearly broke my nose!”

“And you split my top lip with your braces,” he riposted. “But don’t worry. I’ve forgiven you. I’ve also acquired a little finesse since that episode. At least...” Matt paused, a smile ghosting the corners of his mouth. “I never had any complaints from Lisa.”

An odd, edgy emotion stirred within Annie. Not envy, exactly. But unnervingly close to it.

“She was a happy woman,” she said quietly, meaning it. “And it was because of you.”

There was a pause.

“You didn’t like Lisa at first, did you?” Matt said after a few moments.

Annie blinked, taken aback by the assertion. “I didn’t dislike her,” she responded, grappling with feelings that were nearly a decade and a half old. “Lisa just seemed... different...from me. She was so feminine, you know? So girly. She was perky and pretty and she looked like she perspired cologne. Assuming she perspired at all, of course. I, on the other hand, was a flat-chested tomboy who sweated like a horse. She made me feel—oh, I don’t know exactly. Self-conscious, I guess. And then there was the way she affected you. I mean, you took one look at her the first day of junior year and all of a sudden you were walking around like a character in Invasion of the Body—”

She stopped abruptly, fearing she might have gone too far. “No offense meant, Matt,” she tacked on awkwardly.

“None taken.”

“You don’t mind me, er—”

“Joking about my relationship with Lisa?”

Annie nodded warily.

“Not at all.” The answer sounded sincere. “I know how careful you’ve been the past fifteen months, Annie. But you don’t have to tiptoe around my sensibilities anymore. As special as what Lisa and I had together was, the memory of it doesn’t have to be treated like a holy relic.” Matt paused, then started to chuckle. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers, huh?”

She smiled. “Your reaction was pretty radical.”

Matt smiled back at her. “Yeah, well, true love has always hit the men in my family like lightning.”

There was another break in the conversation. Annie found herself savoring a buoyancy of spirit she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“Lisa didn’t exactly like you at the beginning, either, you know,” her dining companion suddenly remarked.

“She didn’t?” This was news to Annie. Lisa Davis had always been extremely nice to her.

“She was jealous.”

“Of me?”

“Yeah. She used to talk about how smart you were. And about how you always stood up for your convictions. Like the student protest you organized when the school board tried to ban a dictionary from the library because it supposedly contained lewd definitions. She said you made her feel inferior.”

“I certainly never tried—”

“Of course her real problem was you and me.”

“You and me?” Annie shook her head. “There wasn’t any ‘you and me,’ Matt!”

“I know,” he replied with a rueful look. “But it took Lisa a while to accept that. She had trouble believing what I kept telling her.”

“Which was?”

“That I’d never really thought of you as a girl.”

Annie chewed this over for a bit. Then, perversely, she asked, “Not even at Tommy Lombardy’s thirteenth birthday party?”

The question clearly took Matt by surprise. “Uh...uh—”

“Never mind,” she said, letting him—or was it herself?—off the hook.

“What did you tell Lisa you thought of me as? One of the boys?”

Matt tapped a fingernail against his bottle of beer. “It’s hard to put into words,” he admitted. “I guess—well, you always seemed to have your own special category. Sort of, uh, genderless.”

Genderless?

Jeez!

“Thanks a bunch, Matt,” Annie said sarcastically.

“Oh, come on.” His voice held a combination of defensiveness and accusation. “Be fair. Are you going to sit there and tell me you used to think of me as a guy?”

“Not thinking of you as a guy isn’t the same as thinking of you as some kind of—of neuter!”

Matt made a quick, conciliatory gesture. “I realize that. ‘Genderless’ was a poor choice of words. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Like I said, defining our relationship is hard. It’s just...there!”

“‘Just there,’” Annie repeated slowly. Then she frowned, harkening back to the revelation that had diverted them off in this direction to begin with. “Did Lisa finally understand about us?”

“Yeah. Sort of.” Matt’s mouth twisted. “She ended up deciding there was no reason to be jealous because the two of us were just like brother and—”

“Y’all done?”

It was Rudi, the waiter, eager as ever.

“I am,” Matt responded after a fractional pause. “Annie?”

“Me, too.”

Rudi began clearing the table. Annie and Matt sat in silence until he finished the task and inquired whether they wanted dessert or coffee or both.

“Just the check, I think,” Matt answered, glancing at Annie for confirmation. She nodded.

As the waiter hustled away, Annie decided it was time to get down to brass tacks.

“You know, Matt,” she remarked. “I’m still trying to figure out what kind of help you think you need from me.”

“It’s simple, really,” he replied. “I need you to go out with me.”

Annie’s heart lurched one way. The rest of the world seemed to lurch the other. She put her hands on the table, seeking some kind of stability.

“Go out?” she eventually said. “Go out as in...on a date?”

“Not a real date.” If Matt sensed the tizzy he’d thrown her into, he didn’t show it. “A practice one.”

Annie opened and shut her mouth several times. Finally she stammered, “I, u-uh, don’t, uh, think—”

Reaching forward, Matt covered her hands with his own.

“When people first started offering to fix me up,” he said, “I was shocked. And more than a little angry. It was as though they were suggesting I cheat on Lisa. But after a while, the shock faded and the anger went away. I began to understand that people were making the offers because they cared about me—because they wanted me to move on with my life.”

Annie swallowed, acutely conscious of Matt’s touch. “Lisa would want that, too,” she stated quietly.

“Do you honestly think so?” His fingers tightened around hers. He clearly placed a great deal of importance on her answer.

“Yes,” she told him. “I honestly think so.”

Matt exhaled on a long, slow sigh. His grip relaxed.

Annie eased her hands out from under his. She waited a few moments, then carefully tried to steer their discussion back on track. “About this practice date...”

“One probably won’t be enough,” Matt said, picking up the cue. “More like three or four.”

There had been many times in her life when Annie had felt as though she could read her best buddy’s mind. This, unfortunately, was not one of them.

“I don’t get this, Matt,” she confessed. “You’ve apparently got a huge pool of available women waiting for you to dive into. Why in heaven’s name do you want to go out on three or four ‘practice’ dates with me?”

“Because those practice dates might save me from drowning in what you so picturesquely call that ‘huge pool of available women,’” he answered bluntly. “It all comes down to one thing, Annie. I have no real experience being a single guy. I hooked up with Lisa in my junior year of high school and that was it. For all intents and purpose, I’ve been out of circulation for fourteen years. When it comes to the contemporary male-female thing, I’m lost.”

“And you think going out with me can help you, er, find your way?”

“Don’t you?”

This was not a question Annie was prepared to answer. She parried it by asking, “Exactly what do you mean when you say ‘practice’?”

“We go out. I do what I think a single guy should do on a date and you critique me.”

The scenario had a certain logic to it, Annie decided after a few moments of reflection. A certain twisted logic, to be sure, but logic nonetheless.

Still, she couldn’t help questioning Matt’s basic premise. Based on her familiarity with the “contemporary male-female thing,” she seriously doubted that his self-proclaimed lack of experience would cause him any problems once he started meeting the allegedly nice girls to whom everyone was so anxious to introduce him.

Hmm. Maybe she could match him up with a few—

No. Scratch that idea.

“Annie?” Matt prompted.

She focused on him again, a strange quiver of awareness skittering up her spine. She found herself imagining his impact on some of the unmarried females of her acquaintance. It wasn’t a soothing scenario.

And then Matt smiled at her. It was a smile Annie couldn’t remember having seen before. Then again, maybe she had...but without ever having registered the sensuality it contained.

She certainly registered it now.

Annie cleared her throat. “What do you want me to say, Matt?”

“A simple ‘yes’ would be sufficient,” her best buddy declared.

Two

“No.”

“No?”

“Wha— Oh, no. Not you, Matt,” Annie said. Matt thought she sounded frazzled and more than a bit fed up. “Look, somebody just shoved the copy for a new TV spot under my nose. Can you hang on while I check it over?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. This shouldn’t take long.”

There was an abrupt click followed by the tinny strains of a familiar pop tune.

Matt wedged the phone receiver between his shoulder and chin. Swiveling his chair to face his desktop computer, he hit the function key that called up one of the many on-line databases to which he subscribed. His older brother and business partner, Rick, kidded him about harboring delusions of omniscience.

He typed a series of letters, frowning thoughtfully at the information that flashed up on the screen. He typed a bit more, his frown relaxing into a satisfied smile.

“I was speedin’ down the information superhighway,” he sang, improvising nonsense lyrics to go with the mind-numbing telephone music as his fingers danced across the computer keyboard. “When a cyberspace policeman—”

Click.

“Matt?” It was Annie again. Her tone was considerably mellower than it had been. Matt deduced that whomever had been unwise enough to shove ad copy under her nose had had it summarily shoved back for a rewrite.

“Still here,” he told her.

“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

“No problem. I figured you were giving me a taste of the nineties’ version of playing hard to get.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then, “I beg your pardon?”

Matt leaned back in his chair, smiling. “A guy calls a modern career woman up and asks her out on a date,” he elaborated. “But instead of responding with a quick yes or no, she leaves him hanging on hold while she cuts some poor underling off at the knees.”

There was another short silence. Then Annie started to laugh. The sound was tantalizingly husky. It insinuated itself into Matt’s ear like a warm breath.

“Not a bad scenario.” The acknowledgment was wry. “But if this particular modern career woman had been cutting this particular underling off anywhere, it wouldn’t have been at the knees.”

“Ouch. What was the copywriting crime? Dangling participles?”

“Worse. Much worse.”

“But nothing you can’t handle.” Matt made the assertion with unalloyed sincerity. Annie was one of the most competent people he knew. She also had a knack for kicking butt when butt-kicking was required.

“Well...”

“Hey, you got me through Miss Kolodzy’s sophomore composition class, didn’t you?”

“That was quid pro quo for your coaching me in math the year before. Besides, you weren’t the literary equivalent of tone deaf.”

“Really? I seem to remember you telling me that if abusing the English language were a federal offense, I’d be on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”

A second laugh rippled down the line. Funny, Matt reflected, reaching up and jerking loose the knot of his tie. He must have heard Annie’s laughter a million times in the past thirty-one years. Yet he’d never noticed how...provocative...it sounded.

“I was exaggerating to make a point.”

“Mmm.”

There was a pause.

“I think you mentioned the word ‘date’ a few minutes ago?” Annie eventually prompted.

“Yeah, I did.” Matt shifted, experiencing a sudden prickle of nervousness. “We, uh, left things undecided when I brought you home from Rio Bravo on Saturday. I was wondering how tomorrow night was for you.”

“Tomorrow night,” Annie repeated. Matt heard a rustling sound, as though she were paging through a calendar. “Hmm. That’s Friday...”

She’s already got a date, he thought, his body tightening. And not a “practice” one with a pal, either. A real one.

Well, why the heck shouldn’t she? he demanded of himself a moment later. Annie had devoted the past fifteen months to taking care of him. She’d gone above and beyond the call of duty, even for a best buddy. She had every right to decide that enough was enough—that it was time to start tending to her own long-deferred needs.

If only he’d thought the situation through before he’d blithely picked up the phone and punched in her office number. If he’d done so, he would have realized that it was very likely she’d have plans for tomorrow evening. As ignorant of the ins and outs of the singles’ scene as he might be, even he knew that Friday nights were prime dating time.

Matt spent a surprisingly unpleasant few seconds speculating about the identity of the man Annie might be seeing the following evening. Could she have gotten back together with that architect she’d been dating around the time Lisa had gotten sick? he wondered. Or maybe she’d take up with the gallery owner he recalled her discussing in connection with her fundraising work for the Atlanta Symphony. And what about that hotshot local newsman, Trent Barnes? Hadn’t she made several admiring references to him in recent weeks?