Austentatious

lesbian. As a result, I’m relatively immune to their charms. So no strings attached. Ingenious, huh?”

“I guess. Define ‘relatively.’”I ignored this too. “Are there gonna be any guys there, trying to coax a few back to our team?” He sounded positively titillated over such an opportunity.

“Nope. And I consider that a definite draw.” My patience was drying up.

“Are men even allowed?”

“Only for the occasional ritual sacrifice. Now I really—”

Gabe’s laugh blasted back over the phone line, and I imagined him throwing back his head to punctuate the jocularity. For someone so obviously opposed to my attending these Friday night get-togethers, he seemed vicariously enthralled.

“Gabe, I gotta go.”

“Okay, but I hear these guys are good. If, as you claim, you are still playing for our team, maybe they could get you off the bench.”

The corners of my mouth began to curl despite my best efforts. “I’ll suit up next season,” I parried, nudging a spatula through the bowl of ganache sitting beside me on the counter, looking dangerously delicious.

“Are you telling me that men are on your agenda for next year?”

“I thought I was being lured out for a night of Austin culture and camaraderie?” As opposed to a night of Austen culture and camaraderie with my traitorous journal.

“Just sayin’ ...”

“Anything’s possible,” I allowed, suddenly distinctly uncomfortable with that admission, given what I’d been dealing with for the past quarter hour. “Bye, Gabe. Have fun tonight.” I hung up before hearing his reply, just as the timer went off.

Retrieving the cupcakes, I set them on the baking rack to cool, swiped a finger through the ganache, and dropped back down at the kitchen table. I glared at the offending journal page and its few remaining survivors and underlined each of them with a short, sharp motion.

Then suddenly I remembered. My one-entry stint as a journaler had sprung from plans to attend a coworker’s wedding this weekend—tomorrow, in fact. And the reality that I’d been going alone.

Miss Nicola James, 1 will attend.

Tentatively at first, I let my mind play through some possibilities. I mouthed the words and tapped my pencil over the page, checking the spacing. Within seconds, I was feeling very deja vu.

I’m going solo. As per The Plan. Sure it’d be kinda nice to have a date, but I’m not sure I’m ready for the complications just yet. Besides, I’ll do just fine on my own.

Dateless, I was a free agent. I didn’t have to stick close to anyone, entertain anyone, or worry about anyone—I could leave when I was ready. I actually loved weddings. And just like that, it all started coming back to me... .

A wedding is the perfect opportunity to dress up in frilly, feminine clothes and far-from- sensible shoes,

Not to impress anyone—just for me. Well, maybe one other person...

to mingle and indulge in a plate of fancy little hors d’ oeuvres, and enjoy the  heady sense of romance without getting tangled up in any of it myself.

That last part was a little vague (not to mention over-the-top), but I’d remembered the general gist, and it fit the space, more or less, so I wasn’t going to worry about being too precise. And I suppose the rest of it really didn’t matter, as no words beyond “romance” had been deemed keepers. There’d been a vague mention of flirting, but that was it.

Tipping the book up off the table to read away from the glare of the pendant light, I slowly scanned the words. Definitely close enough.

It felt slightly cathartic, as if things were marginally back to normal. And yet ... they were sooo not. Twenty minutes into this little mystery, and a logical explanation still escaped me. I didn’t have a hypothesis, a theory, or even a guess. All I could claim was a shifty version of the original entry, and it didn’t comfort me nearly as much as I’d imagined.

Thrumming my eraser on the table, I decided to lay a trap. Flipping forward a page, I started with the prompt I’d been offered.

Miss Nicola James will be sensible and indulge in a little romance....

Not with a man, with a dress. A fabulously out-of-character peacock blue party dress, complete with a flirty skirt and a daring neckline that, miracle of miracles, provides just a hint of cleavage.

This was starting to sound a little like a J. Peterman catalog, but honestly, it was just that kind of dress. It was a whim of fancy with an almost audible siren song. It had cut in on my long-standing arrangement with my little black dress and impelled me to buy it—and the matching shoes too. Both were impractical, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

She’ll go bare-legged and carefree, sliding her whimsically painted toes into the cramped but vamped sequined sandals that she miraculously found on sale.

Okay, the whimsical toes were probably a stretch, but if a girl couldn’t live it up in her journal, then what was the point?

Nicola is bravely ignoring the unpredictability of March weather in Austin and will no doubt end up shivering in her spaghetti straps, frozen as a Fudgsicle. At which point her cleavage may just get its big break.... She’s kinda hoping it does.

A quick reread, and I was done. It felt a little weird referring to myself in the third person, but no weirder than sparring with a journal.

Take that, Mr. Darcy.

I flipped back a page, just confirming that my recent rewrite hadn’t disappeared, and then realized that I should probably recopy today’s entry somewhere else, just to be on the safe side. Evidently you can’t be too careful.

After dashing off the entry on the back of that week’s grocery list, I shut the journal with a snap. Then, counting out ten Mississippi-seconds, I whipped it back open, tussled with the pages, and held my hand flat down on page two, staring at my still-familiar words, all of them still intact.

Edging out a relieved little smile, I tipped the book closed and stood to replace it on the shelf, because I definitely didn’t want to leave it out—exposed—on the kitchen table. Then again, I wasn’t certain I wanted to slide it back in amongst The Collected Works either, given the parallels my overactive imagination was busily drawing between my own situation and Elizabeth Bennet’s. Giving my options for a new hiding place some quick and serious thought, I decided to be cautious and stash it between a couple of favorite cookbooks. Crazy as it was, it helped. I felt marginally better, having moved past frantic to the problem-solving, data-collection stage.

Even so, the only thing keeping me from curling up on the couch with the entire bowl of chocolate ganache was the fact that these cupcakes were expected next door.

Cupcakes, with their happy little faces in tidy little packages, usually centered me. Not tonight. Work was driving me crazy—I was tired of my efforts being rewarded with catchy phrases, shoulder squeezes, and personalized glass statuettes. I’d taken the job right out of grad school with the intent to learn the basics of the