“You shouldn’t even be driving here,” my mother added.
Grandma looked back at me. “Better to go with you than with them,” she conceded.
I nodded to my parents and my mother’s shoulders sagged slightly in relief, making me realize that I hadn’t been the one they were worried about convincing in this deal. But Grandma and I had always done better together than my mother and I had. Or than she and my mother had, for that matter. Yes, the dynamic changed as we both got older and I didn’t visit or call as often as I should, but my grandmother had always proven an ally against my mother when I needed one. And in my teen years in particular, I had needed one.
“We’ll have fun,” I assured her, and my mother looked at me gratefully.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I had finally stopped looking everywhere for Alex, brushing off the several run-ins as actual coincidence, when Taylor greeted me excitedly at Starbucks a couple of weeks later.
“He left you another note,” she said when I reached the counter. I knew I should give up the morning lattes in favor of coffee at the office to save money, but it was a tough habit to break. Besides, my parents’ offer to pay for my trip to Mexico had bought me enough of a financial reprieve that I could still justify the coffee. And the blog post I had written about dress shopping with Caryn and the wicked bridesmaids of the west had generated enough money for a week’s worth of coffee and gotten me my first two comments. Okay, one of them was spam, but clicks were clicks.
And maybe, just maybe, a little, tiny piece of me was hoping for exactly this. “I’m not sure what it means, but I think he’s asking you out.”
I rolled my eyes at her and went to grab my coffee. So I know what dinner gets me, but what do I get with lunch?
Ugh, why does he have to be so cute about this?
“Can I leave him one back?” I asked. The line was insanely long and I didn’t want to wait in it again. The guy at the front gave me an irritated look.
Taylor looked at the line and nodded. “It’s on the house.” She handed me a coffee sleeve and the Sharpie.
My friendship . . . I wrote back. I started to hand it to Taylor, but I snatched it back at the last second and uncapped the Sharpie again. Text me if that sounds good, and I wrote my phone number.
If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t think I would hear from him. No guy wants to be told he’s in the friend zone. It’s a death sentence if you’re actually interested, despite what When Harry Met Sally would have you believe.
But as I was walking to my apartment from the Metro that evening, I got a text message. Hey new friend, it said.
I smiled. Do you get an afternoon coffee too or did you go to Starbucks just to see what I’d replied?
The latter. I was curious.
Don’t you know you’re supposed to wait a solid twenty-four hours before you text someone the first time?
Why? We’re friends. I don’t have to play stupid games.
Good point.
So lunch? Tomorrow?
Yeah, I replied, marveling at this strange new thing I had found, where I didn’t need to play games and friendship was pre-established as being all that was on the table with a guy. That sounds great.
Megan texted me a link to some bridesmaid dresses that night. She had picked a fabric and color and was going to let us choose from six different styles of dresses. I unwillingly recalled Caroline’s critique that that was tacky, but I put it aside. Her country-club-bred view of weddings wasn’t everyone’s. Besides, Megan had her own issues with her fiancé’s contentious sister, and if this would keep her calm, it was a win.
What else is going on? she asked. How was shopping with your sister?
I told her about Amy’s trip to Mexico and sent her a picture of the cotton-candy dress. But I didn’t mention my lunch plans with Alex.
“Hey,” he greeted me outside the restaurant.
“Hey.”
“Is this weird?”
“Nope. Friends have lunch together all the time.”
“Good.” He opened the door for me.
We sat at our table and perused the menus. I had been good about packing my lunch the past few months, but this wasn’t a restaurant I had been to even when I still went out to lunch. “What’s good here?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I usually just grab a sandwich from the deli next to my building.”
“Which deli?”
“Goldman’s.”
“They have great salads there.”
He grinned. “So I can expect to run into you there too?”
I shook my head. “Not anytime soon. I’m living on a shoestring budget to afford all of these weddings.”
“What do you need to afford? Other than devil bras.”
I grimaced. I had forgotten I was supposed to be looking for a minimizing bra. But I began ticking off expenses on my fingers. “Dresses for all five, shoes for all five, my share of the bridal shower and bachelorette parties, shower presents, wedding gifts, and everything for my brother’s wedding, which is in Mexico.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Guys really do have it easier than girls for weddings, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
“How much does a bridesmaid dress cost?”
“The cheapest one so far was $175. The most expensive was almost $600.”
“Six hundred dollars for a dress? Can you keep the tags on and return it?”
“Not a bridesmaid dress. They’re custom-made in the color and fabric the bride wants.”
“And you’re doing all of this, why?”
“They’re my friends.” I might have sounded a little more defensive than I intended. “Well, and my brother and sister are two of them, so I don’t have a choice there. My parents are paying for Mexico though.”
“That’s nice of them.”
I took a sip of my water. “Kind of. I made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
He laughed when I explained about my grandmother. “She sounds like a riot.”
I shrugged. “I probably would have done it for free anyway. But they offered to pay for me, so I wasn’t going to say no.”
“That’s fair.” The waitress came to take our order. “Do you get to bring a date to them, at least?” he asked when she had gone.
“Nope. All five are strictly ‘no ring, no bring.’”
“Even Tim and Megan’s?”
“Wait. Are you allowed to bring a date?”
“They haven’t said I couldn’t. That’s half the reason I joined Tinder. I figured I should start looking for a date for the wedding.”
I shook my head. “If your invitation doesn’t say ‘and guest’ on it, you don’t get a date.”
“What kind of barbaric system is this?”
“Did you let people bring dates to your wedding?”
“I have no idea. I wasn’t exactly . . . involved . . . in the planning process.”
“By choice or by necessity?”
“Necessity. Lauren was—is—a little intense with that stuff.” He paused. “Who will save you from Justin at the wedding if you can’t bring a date?”
“Hi, friend,” I said with a cheeky grin.
“Walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
I kept grinning. “You asked what lunch got you, after all.”
“What are friends for?” He smiled back.
Alex was funny. I could see why Megan called him a little weird, but we just meshed. Especially once you took sexual tension out of the equation. Not that we’d had that exactly, but once we established the mutual friend zone, I could let my guard down. With potential dates, I felt like I had to play a long game of hide the crazy, which never ended well. Apparently he was having a good time, too, because he started in surprise when he glanced at his watch.