Carole Buck - Annie Says I Do

Annie bit her lower lip and continued to scrutinize Matt. Maybe she’d been wrong, she worried. Maybe his teasing her about Eden’s bouquet had been a smokescreen for his true feelings. Maybe he was suffering inside, haunted by memories of his own wedding. Maybe the fragile, faded flowers had made him think of the baskets of blossoms that had filled Lisa’s hospital room during the awful days near the end of her—

“I’m okay,” Matt interrupted quietly.

Annie stiffened. “What?”

“I’m okay,” he repeated in the same even tone, setting down his fork on the edge of his plate. “You can stop looking at me like you’re afraid I’m going to freak out.”

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.