Annie Says I Do. Carole Buck
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