Melodies of the Heart

Chapter 23

Kassidy

Kassidy stared at herself in the mirror above her vanity. She'd pulled on a lacy pink dress to combat the summer heat, but now she debated changing into something else. The dress showed too much leg and left her arms bare and she didn't feel entirely comfortable revealing either.

She'd already tried on most of the things in her closet in an effort to find something that felt right. It wasn't that she was trying to impress her date, but that everything she tried made her skin crawl with discomfort.

There was anxiety in her gut as she got ready. It was a heavy, rolling kind of nervousness she hadn't felt for a long time. There was no fear, nor was there excitement mixed in. It was pure anxiety and she knew no matter what she wore, it wouldn't go away.

She left her hair long and lose instead of trying to fiddle with it, and she only put on some tinted moisturizer instead of makeup. There was nothing in her that made her want to put in more of an effort, though she had the impression she should.

It was so different than when she got ready to go out with Levi. That had felt effortless, light and easy. It didn't matter what she wore, he always looked thrilled to see her and made her feel beautiful. It didn't matter if it was her church clothes, or the things she wore to work, it didn't change anything.

Paul was different. He had unspoken standards and part of her wanted to struggle hard against them, but the fight wasn't in her anymore. She just wanted to get this over with and hope that he wouldn't want to date her again.

She knew what she was to him. An image, a vision of his past glory in high school. He'd been valedictorian, had a scholarship to Yale, and was on the school's championship baseball team. He'd even made captain of the team after Jacob moved away. A pretty girl on his arm completed the package and now he was trying to reclaim that.

Maybe college made him grow up a bit, Kassidy thought to herself as she smoothed some balm onto her lips.

It was a nice thought, but she didn't believe it. Whether in Pinewood Grove or in Connecticut, he was still a rich boy with a political father, going to a rich school. He was still Paul, a few years of college wouldn't change that.

But she had promised her mother and father that she would at least give him one date. She'd made it clear to him that they were going as friends, and she would split the bill with him. It was a little easier for her to swallow the whole situation that way.

But as seven got closer, it only got harder to fight the voice inside her telling her to cancel. There was only four more weeks until Paul would be moving back to school, and then she'd be left alone until next spring. The bulk of the people left in town between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two would be farmers and they were too busy in the fall to date anyway.

It's also only four weeks that you'll need to put up with this, she reminded herself as well. If she could get away with only seeing Paul once a week, that was only four dates before he was gone again.

You're being too hard on him, she told herself as she ran her brush through her hair one last time. He's a nice guy.

She knew that was true. Yes, he had money and could be a bit of a snob at times, but he could be a really good guy when it came down to it. But that wasn't the problem. She didn't see him as anything more than a childhood friend and she knew she never would. No matter how hard people tried to push them together, she would never see him as anything more than that.