Posted on 2022-01-28
Blurb: Chris Brandon's coffee run is interrupted by meeting the Dashwood sisters. A modern S&S one-shot.
"Chris, Chris, Chris," said Maggie Dashwood as she grabbed his arm and yanked him down into the seat beside her, "you gotta help me."
Chris Brandon glanced briefly at the cashier he had been walking toward before turning to the young woman. While he had informed his officemate that he was only leaving the office to grab a quick cup of coffee, he was unable to ignore a call for help. "What do you need, Maggie?"
On Maggie's other side, her sister Marianne scoffed. "She needs to ovary up and go talk to that cute guy behind the counter."
Maggie turned pleading eyes to Chris. "Tell her she's being crazy," she said. "Tell her Drynuary has addled her brains."
Chris Brandon had known the Dashwoods since they moved to Barton at the start of his senior year in high school. Their father had died suddenly and their mother had uprooted them to be near her extended family. His best friend, John Middleton, was their cousin and he tried to include his cousins in everything he did, such as asking Nora to be his lab partner even though he had already planned to pair up with Chris.
John had been too gregarious for the Dashwoods when they arrived in town. They were in too much shock from the rapid, destructive changes in their lives to have moved past grief and into normalcy. They didn't want to go to movies, or grab lunch at a fast food restaurant, or hang out at the shops, or toss a frisbee at the park, or shoot a round of mini golf, or go to so-and-so's house for a party. But John asked anyway. And because Nora had been better at compartmentalizing her grief, she was the one who agreed to go while her mom and younger sisters stayed at the apartment that was now supposed to be their home and tried to figure out how to go on.
Chris suspected it was his quietness that drew Nora to him. John tried so hard to be friendly in the only way that made sense to him, but Nora needed a different kind of friend and Chris happened to fit the bill quite nicely.
To be absolutely clear, there was never any romantic spark between Chris and Nora. No matter how hard people teased them, the two didn't feel that way about each other. And Chris was man enough to admit that he was happy that Nora was currently engaged to someone she had been pining over for a lot longer than she would ever admit. The Dashwoods deserved happily ever afters.
But he had no idea what Nora's sisters were talking about. "Drynuary?" he asked.
"I am doing just fine with Drynuary," Marianne said. "In fact, now I have the clarity to look around me and see what a coward my little sister is."
Maggie's mouth fell open. "You take that back!" she hissed.
"Prove me wrong," Marianne shot back. "Just talk to the guy."
"He could be a serial killer!" Maggie whisper-shouted.
"Serial killers don't live in Barton," Marianne reasoned. "Isn't that right, Chris?"
He blinked before he spoke to buy some time. It was a habit he picked up after the deepest bout of mourning wore off and he realized that quiet Nora was nothing like the rest of her voluble, almost manic family. "Um, serial killers? Drynuary?"
Marianne huffed. "See that guy over there?" She discreetly pointed to the cashier. She waited for him to nod. "Do you think he's a serial killer?"
"Ryan? No." The idea was ludicrous.
Marianne poked her sister. "See? Not a killer."
"There's plenty of gray area between homicidal maniac and good guy," Maggie defended herself.
"Ryan's a good guy," Chris said, feeling obligated to say something. "I was in scouts with his older brother, and Ryan used to hang out with us."
"See?" Marianne said, poking her sister again. "The Christopher Brandon seal of approval! What more could you ask for? Now go talk to him or I will."
"Ha, Drynuary!" Maggie practically shouted. "You're not allowed."
"I didn't say I was going to talk to him for my own sake, did I?" Marianne said with a devilish grin. "I'll just tell him about my poor, little sister who can't get a date to save her soul and maybe he knows someone who takes on charity cases."
"Ugh!" Maggie shoved herself away from the table in defeat. "You're impossible." With that, she stood up and stormed off to the counter.
Chris briefly watched her before leaning closer to Marianne. "I hate to ask, but what is going on?"
Marianne shook her head and sighed. "My very dear sister is helping me get through a breakup."
Chris hitched up his eyebrows. "Really?"
Marianne Dashwood had been dating for longer than he had, despite him being older. She tended to fall quickly in and out of relationships. In fact, if any of the Dashwoods was going to end up dating a serial killer, it was Marianne.
"Yeah," she sighed again and took a long drink from her macchiato. "I thought he was 'the one.' Turns out, he did too, but for somebody else."
"So, Drynuary?" Chris still didn't understand what that was about, but he thought it would help explain things.
"Do you seriously not know what that is?" she asked, but without malice. "Drynuary is when you set aside the month of January to dry out and abstain from alcohol after you have overindulged for the entire month of December," she explained. "And I am going through a Drynuary for hookups."
"That sounds --" he said, searching for a word both complimentary and sincere, before giving up and fumbling with, "Hookups?"
She had the self-awareness to laugh. "Maggie's terminology, not mine. I had thought that I had been serially dating through college and beyond, but my little sister informed me that people her age consider my behavior to be hooking up. And Wankerby just proved it."
Chris just furrowed his brow, but he didn't interrupt her.
"Wankerby was my last boyfriend and I actually thought he would be my Last Boyfriend , that I was done looking, that he was 'the one'. And then right before Christmas I found out he was seeing someone else," Marianne said. She had obviously had some time to process the betrayal. "So I confronted him, right? I told him I found out all about the chick he was seeing on the side. Right? I mean, that's what I'm supposed to do. And he told me…"
She paused to draw a deep breath and Chris realized that they were still getting to the worst part.
"He told me that I was the one on the side." Her voice is tight and restrained. There are tears in her eyes.
Chris shot a quick look to the counter where Maggie and Ryan were having far too good of a time considering the unhappiness unfolding at the table.
"Hey," he said and reached for her hand. "Hey, it's okay. He doesn't deserve you." Despite her flaws, he didn't know anyone who deserved her.
Marianne was silent for a while, gathering her calm. "So that was that. We were done," she said. "And then, because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I went to the other woman and told her about me. I figured she deserved to be warned about what kind of man she was with."
Chris felt his mouth fall open. This was a train wreck in the making.
"Joke's on me, because she already knew about it," Marianne said bitterly. "At least, he's been unfaithful to her in the past and she doesn't care. And I, I nearly lost it, you know? The cheating, I've been cheated on before. But the cold acceptance? Neither one really cares about the other and they're both okay with that." She shook her head and sniffed. "And then Maggie found me at my low point, pasted me back together, and made me agree to this stupid Drynuary."
She forced a laugh up her throat and Chris smiled in response. His hand, still resting on hers, gave it a comforting squeeze.
"This was the first New Year's Eve that I haven't had a boyfriend since I was 15. Which is a pathetically traumatizing realization, by the way. Moreso when I realized I've never had a boyfriend last long enough to be there for two New Years' Eves in a row. It's January 28th already and I haven't kissed anyone yet. All month, I am in a guy-free zone," she said. "No flirtatious banter, no simpering smiles. No sexy, smoky eyes. No getting a guy's number or giving him mine. No texting, no insta-stalking. No going to bars and flipping my hair until someone buys me a drink. No going to clubs to find a guy to dance with. No swiping right, no swiping at all. No bend and snap. No singles nights at the poetry slam --"
"Wait," he stopped her. "You do all that?"
"Don't judge me," she told him.
"I'm not judging," he backpedaled. He had thought that men naturally flocked to her, that they were lined up and waiting for the chance to date her. It was eye-opening to think that Marianne did so much work to find a boyfriend. Then again, she wasn't the sort of old-fashioned wallflower who waited for the guy to make the first move.
Then again, Chris had firsthand experience with being a guy who was attracted to Marianne yet never asked her out. In his defense, she had been grieving the death of her father and the loss of her home when he had first met her. As she came out of her shell, he thought she was a little young for him -- he was a senior and she was only a sophomore when they first met. He ended up asking Nora to prom as friends.
When he came home for Christmas break after his first semester of college, he had gone to the Dashwoods' home, ostensibly to see Nora but really to ask Marianne on a date. He tried to keep it casual; a holiday blockbuster was coming out soon and he wanted to know if she had plans to see it since it seemed like the sort of thing she liked. The goal had been to ask her to see it with him . "Oh, yes," she had told him instead, dashing his hopes, "my boyfriend is going to take me next weekend." And she kept having one boyfriend after another every time they had crossed paths.
This was perhaps the first time he had seen her when she wasn't in a relationship since high school and she was currently sworn off men. Clearly fate was telling him that his continued attraction was doomed to be unrequited.
"I'm not judging you," he repeated lamely. "I'm just surprised that you have to do that much work to find a guy."
"Yeah, well, it's exhausting," she admitted, slumping forward. "I had no idea how much of my life was tied up in finding someone else to be with."
"So what are you doing with all your free time now that you're not going to poetry slams?" Chris asked.
"I'm still going to poetry slams," she said with absolute seriousness, "just not for singles night. And I'm also pestering my little sister to get off her duff and actually talk to a cute guy once in a while," she said with a smile.
Chris spared another glance at the only other two in the shop. Ryan was leaning over the counter, showing Maggie something on his phone and she was holding the phone and his hand in her hand as she looked at the screen. Whatever she saw made her laugh.
"Looks like a good call on your part," Chris smiled at Marianne.
She looked smug in reply. "It wasn't hard to figure out when I started paying attention. I think she has his work schedule memorized. Every time she drags me here to get coffee, this Ryan guy is at the counter."
"What happens in a few days when the month is over?"
She scrunched up her face in a way that was not meant to be adorable but still was. "Having got this far into it, I know I need a little more detox. I'm giving myself a pass until Valentine's blows over, so I'm not trying too hard to get a date for the holiday. For a while I'm going to focus on being 'Just Marianne' rather than 'Marianne and Someone Else'."
"Don't sell yourself short," he told her. "Just Marianne is still better than most people."
Even as he heard the words leave his mouth, Chris worried that he had been too open with his appreciation. He had only come in to grab a coffee and go, perhaps it was time to leave before he said anything worse.
He pushed away from the table. "I should probably get back before they come looking for me."
"Oh, but you never got your drink!" she protested.
"I mostly just wanted to get away from my desk for a bit," he said with a shake of his head. Maggie and Ryan were getting along too well for him to break it up. "And it was good to see you again, you and Maggie. We'll have to hang out when Nora's back in town."
"Or we could just meet for coffee again. Same time next week?" Marianne suggested with a hopeful shrug. "I promise I'll even let you order."
He agreed quickly just so he could get out of there before he did something obvious like blush. Calling out a goodbye loud enough to be heard by Maggie and Ryan, he waved and headed back out into the cold.
It was better than a caffeine rush.
Notes
In my head, a modern Marianne falls in love early and often. I don't see her as the sort to weed out potential time wasters before dating them (gotta find that diamond in the rough), so she's kissing all the frogs in the hopes of finding her prince.
"Chris, Chris, Chris," said Maggie Dashwood as she grabbed his arm and yanked him down into the seat beside her, "you gotta help me."
Chris Brandon glanced briefly at the cashier he had been walking toward before turning to the young woman. While he had informed his officemate that he was only leaving the office to grab a quick cup of coffee, he was unable to ignore a call for help. "What do you need, Maggie?"
On Maggie's other side, her sister Marianne scoffed. "She needs to ovary up and go talk to that cute guy behind the counter."
Maggie turned pleading eyes to Chris. "Tell her she's being crazy," she said. "Tell her Drynuary has addled her brains."
Chris Brandon had known the Dashwoods since they moved to Barton at the start of his senior year in high school. Their father had died suddenly and their mother had uprooted them to be near her extended family. His best friend, John Middleton, was their cousin and he tried to include his cousins in everything he did, such as asking Nora to be his lab partner even though he had already planned to pair up with Chris.
John had been too gregarious for the Dashwoods when they arrived in town. They were in too much shock from the rapid, destructive changes in their lives to have moved past grief and into normalcy. They didn't want to go to movies, or grab lunch at a fast food restaurant, or hang out at the shops, or toss a frisbee at the park, or shoot a round of mini golf, or go to so-and-so's house for a party. But John asked anyway. And because Nora had been better at compartmentalizing her grief, she was the one who agreed to go while her mom and younger sisters stayed at the apartment that was now supposed to be their home and tried to figure out how to go on.
Chris suspected it was his quietness that drew Nora to him. John tried so hard to be friendly in the only way that made sense to him, but Nora needed a different kind of friend and Chris happened to fit the bill quite nicely.
To be absolutely clear, there was never any romantic spark between Chris and Nora. No matter how hard people teased them, the two didn't feel that way about each other. And Chris was man enough to admit that he was happy that Nora was currently engaged to someone she had been pining over for a lot longer than she would ever admit. The Dashwoods deserved happily ever afters.
But he had no idea what Nora's sisters were talking about. "Drynuary?" he asked.
"I am doing just fine with Drynuary," Marianne said. "In fact, now I have the clarity to look around me and see what a coward my little sister is."
Maggie's mouth fell open. "You take that back!" she hissed.
"Prove me wrong," Marianne shot back. "Just talk to the guy."
"He could be a serial killer!" Maggie whisper-shouted.
"Serial killers don't live in Barton," Marianne reasoned. "Isn't that right, Chris?"
He blinked before he spoke to buy some time. It was a habit he picked up after the deepest bout of mourning wore off and he realized that quiet Nora was nothing like the rest of her voluble, almost manic family. "Um, serial killers? Drynuary?"
Marianne huffed. "See that guy over there?" She discreetly pointed to the cashier. She waited for him to nod. "Do you think he's a serial killer?"
"Ryan? No." The idea was ludicrous.
Marianne poked her sister. "See? Not a killer."
"There's plenty of gray area between homicidal maniac and good guy," Maggie defended herself.
"Ryan's a good guy," Chris said, feeling obligated to say something. "I was in scouts with his older brother, and Ryan used to hang out with us."
"See?" Marianne said, poking her sister again. "The Christopher Brandon seal of approval! What more could you ask for? Now go talk to him or I will."
"Ha, Drynuary!" Maggie practically shouted. "You're not allowed."
"I didn't say I was going to talk to him for my own sake, did I?" Marianne said with a devilish grin. "I'll just tell him about my poor, little sister who can't get a date to save her soul and maybe he knows someone who takes on charity cases."
"Ugh!" Maggie shoved herself away from the table in defeat. "You're impossible." With that, she stood up and stormed off to the counter.
Chris briefly watched her before leaning closer to Marianne. "I hate to ask, but what is going on?"
Marianne shook her head and sighed. "My very dear sister is helping me get through a breakup."
Chris hitched up his eyebrows. "Really?"
Marianne Dashwood had been dating for longer than he had, despite him being older. She tended to fall quickly in and out of relationships. In fact, if any of the Dashwoods was going to end up dating a serial killer, it was Marianne.
"Yeah," she sighed again and took a long drink from her macchiato. "I thought he was 'the one.' Turns out, he did too, but for somebody else."
"So, Drynuary?" Chris still didn't understand what that was about, but he thought it would help explain things.
"Do you seriously not know what that is?" she asked, but without malice. "Drynuary is when you set aside the month of January to dry out and abstain from alcohol after you have overindulged for the entire month of December," she explained. "And I am going through a Drynuary for hookups."
"That sounds --" he said, searching for a word both complimentary and sincere, before giving up and fumbling with, "Hookups?"
She had the self-awareness to laugh. "Maggie's terminology, not mine. I had thought that I had been serially dating through college and beyond, but my little sister informed me that people her age consider my behavior to be hooking up. And Wankerby just proved it."
Chris just furrowed his brow, but he didn't interrupt her.
"Wankerby was my last boyfriend and I actually thought he would be my Last Boyfriend , that I was done looking, that he was 'the one'. And then right before Christmas I found out he was seeing someone else," Marianne said. She had obviously had some time to process the betrayal. "So I confronted him, right? I told him I found out all about the chick he was seeing on the side. Right? I mean, that's what I'm supposed to do. And he told me…"
She paused to draw a deep breath and Chris realized that they were still getting to the worst part.
"He told me that I was the one on the side." Her voice is tight and restrained. There are tears in her eyes.
Chris shot a quick look to the counter where Maggie and Ryan were having far too good of a time considering the unhappiness unfolding at the table.
"Hey," he said and reached for her hand. "Hey, it's okay. He doesn't deserve you." Despite her flaws, he didn't know anyone who deserved her.
Marianne was silent for a while, gathering her calm. "So that was that. We were done," she said. "And then, because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I went to the other woman and told her about me. I figured she deserved to be warned about what kind of man she was with."
Chris felt his mouth fall open. This was a train wreck in the making.
"Joke's on me, because she already knew about it," Marianne said bitterly. "At least, he's been unfaithful to her in the past and she doesn't care. And I, I nearly lost it, you know? The cheating, I've been cheated on before. But the cold acceptance? Neither one really cares about the other and they're both okay with that." She shook her head and sniffed. "And then Maggie found me at my low point, pasted me back together, and made me agree to this stupid Drynuary."
She forced a laugh up her throat and Chris smiled in response. His hand, still resting on hers, gave it a comforting squeeze.
"This was the first New Year's Eve that I haven't had a boyfriend since I was 15. Which is a pathetically traumatizing realization, by the way. Moreso when I realized I've never had a boyfriend last long enough to be there for two New Years' Eves in a row. It's January 28th already and I haven't kissed anyone yet. All month, I am in a guy-free zone," she said. "No flirtatious banter, no simpering smiles. No sexy, smoky eyes. No getting a guy's number or giving him mine. No texting, no insta-stalking. No going to bars and flipping my hair until someone buys me a drink. No going to clubs to find a guy to dance with. No swiping right, no swiping at all. No bend and snap. No singles nights at the poetry slam --"
"Wait," he stopped her. "You do all that?"
"Don't judge me," she told him.
"I'm not judging," he backpedaled. He had thought that men naturally flocked to her, that they were lined up and waiting for the chance to date her. It was eye-opening to think that Marianne did so much work to find a boyfriend. Then again, she wasn't the sort of old-fashioned wallflower who waited for the guy to make the first move.
Then again, Chris had firsthand experience with being a guy who was attracted to Marianne yet never asked her out. In his defense, she had been grieving the death of her father and the loss of her home when he had first met her. As she came out of her shell, he thought she was a little young for him -- he was a senior and she was only a sophomore when they first met. He ended up asking Nora to prom as friends.
When he came home for Christmas break after his first semester of college, he had gone to the Dashwoods' home, ostensibly to see Nora but really to ask Marianne on a date. He tried to keep it casual; a holiday blockbuster was coming out soon and he wanted to know if she had plans to see it since it seemed like the sort of thing she liked. The goal had been to ask her to see it with him . "Oh, yes," she had told him instead, dashing his hopes, "my boyfriend is going to take me next weekend." And she kept having one boyfriend after another every time they had crossed paths.
This was perhaps the first time he had seen her when she wasn't in a relationship since high school and she was currently sworn off men. Clearly fate was telling him that his continued attraction was doomed to be unrequited.
"I'm not judging you," he repeated lamely. "I'm just surprised that you have to do that much work to find a guy."
"Yeah, well, it's exhausting," she admitted, slumping forward. "I had no idea how much of my life was tied up in finding someone else to be with."
"So what are you doing with all your free time now that you're not going to poetry slams?" Chris asked.
"I'm still going to poetry slams," she said with absolute seriousness, "just not for singles night. And I'm also pestering my little sister to get off her duff and actually talk to a cute guy once in a while," she said with a smile.
Chris spared another glance at the only other two in the shop. Ryan was leaning over the counter, showing Maggie something on his phone and she was holding the phone and his hand in her hand as she looked at the screen. Whatever she saw made her laugh.
"Looks like a good call on your part," Chris smiled at Marianne.
She looked smug in reply. "It wasn't hard to figure out when I started paying attention. I think she has his work schedule memorized. Every time she drags me here to get coffee, this Ryan guy is at the counter."
"What happens in a few days when the month is over?"
She scrunched up her face in a way that was not meant to be adorable but still was. "Having got this far into it, I know I need a little more detox. I'm giving myself a pass until Valentine's blows over, so I'm not trying too hard to get a date for the holiday. For a while I'm going to focus on being 'Just Marianne' rather than 'Marianne and Someone Else'."
"Don't sell yourself short," he told her. "Just Marianne is still better than most people."
Even as he heard the words leave his mouth, Chris worried that he had been too open with his appreciation. He had only come in to grab a coffee and go, perhaps it was time to leave before he said anything worse.
He pushed away from the table. "I should probably get back before they come looking for me."
"Oh, but you never got your drink!" she protested.
"I mostly just wanted to get away from my desk for a bit," he said with a shake of his head. Maggie and Ryan were getting along too well for him to break it up. "And it was good to see you again, you and Maggie. We'll have to hang out when Nora's back in town."
"Or we could just meet for coffee again. Same time next week?" Marianne suggested with a hopeful shrug. "I promise I'll even let you order."
He agreed quickly just so he could get out of there before he did something obvious like blush. Calling out a goodbye loud enough to be heard by Maggie and Ryan, he waved and headed back out into the cold.
It was better than a caffeine rush.
Notes
In my head, a modern Marianne falls in love early and often. I don't see her as the sort to weed out potential time wasters before dating them (gotta find that diamond in the rough), so she's kissing all the frogs in the hopes of finding her prince.