This document provides a summary of Brittney Cannon's first date with her best friend Will. The date included an expensive dinner at a steakhouse where they tried exotic meats like rattlesnake and wild boar. Brittney felt awkward and uncomfortable during the date as it highlighted the changing nature of their friendship. After dinner, Will surprised Brittney with a horse-drawn carriage ride through downtown Dallas. While the gestures seemed romantic, Brittney did not feel the same way towards Will as she had for her ex, and was eager for the date to end.

1. Cannon 1
Brittney Cannon
Catching Brittney
Pericardial Catch Syndrome—a benign disorder I diagnosed myself with after
less than a minute of googling. Every now and then a breath catches painfully in my
chest and I flinch, but with each increasing breath, I’m able to breathe deeper. It’s
like a layer of ice forms over my lungs, and I just have to bite the bullet and inflate
my chest in one fell swoop to shatter the calcification.
As I laid on my stomach on my mom’s bed next to my snoring black lab, I
scroll through Wikipedia to see that apparently it has a name, and it’s a benign
“syndrome” with no cure, which is, I’m assuming, doctor code for, “Fuck off, we’ve
got better shit to work on.”
I rolled over onto my back and exhaled from the furthest wall in my stomach.
The pursuit of my Lifetime movie overwhelmingly underwhelming, as their TV
melodramas never centered around a benign college student craving serendipitous
tragedies to fall into her lap. I wanted fatality. Doesn’t everyone want to feel like
they stop hearts, steal breaths right out from the lungs of strangers?
“Can I take you on a real date?” The words felt heavy, like a thick syrup that
would linger with its sticky residue on the air. “This Friday?” I glanced away from
the red light to my best friend whose vulnerable face caused heat spread quickly
through my shoulders. My pause provoked him to continue, “We always talked
about dating eventually, and you’re finally completely broken up with Oatman. I’ve
waited a year an a half for you to be single again, and I want to take you on a date.”

2. Cannon 2
The passenger seat of my best friend’s shitty Oldsmobile no longer felt like a
couch with a chauffeur, but like an interrogation room. My skin felt scalding under
the debilitating spotlight, and through force of will I feigned calm composure,
especially at the mention of the relationship I ended weeks prior—a relationship
that sparked a tense rift between Will and me.
“Yeah,” I squeaked, and reflexively followed with an abnormally deep laugh
that can most accurately be transcribed as “Huh-huh-hyuk!” Will and I deliberately
fixed our eyes anywhere but on each other, refusing even to register the information
provided by our peripheral vision. I can’t speak for what he was thinking, but there
wasn’t a thought going through my head as my mind came up with nothing to
explain what just happened.
“Hey, I’ll pick you up at seven Friday,” Will called through the open door as he
dropped me off at my house. “Does that work?” I held the frame of the door, but
stepped back to subtly curtail the conversation and responded, “Sure!”
That night my roommates sat beside me on our plush leather sofas, each of
us armed with a pint of ice cream and a spoon.
“Hey, so Sigma Chi Graffiti is this weekend,” Genna offered between
mouthfuls. “I got us on the list. We should go; we haven’t gone to a mixer yet this
semester, and I can actually go out, because school hasn’t gotten to crazy yet.”
“What night is it?” I asked, not as graceful in timing my question with
swallowing. She held her wrist up to her mouth and turned her blue eyes upward,
to indicate that she was working on an answer while she cleared her mouth.

3. Cannon 3
“Friday, I think!”
Immediately, my thoughts began choreographing how I would manage both
my date and making it to the mixer. “Fuck, my date with Will is this weekend. What
are the odds that we’re back in time for me to get dressed super quick, then pound
shots?”
Sam and Genna furrowed their brows skeptically. “Do you know what y’all
are doing?” Sam asked, humoring me. “Like maybe if it’s just dinner or something…”
I snatched my phone off the coffee table in front of me and began texting
furiously. The response was less than encouraging, and hinted of being offended.
No we won’t be back by then.
A self-serving voice whimpered pathetically in my head. Why did I have to
say yes? The honest part of my mind knew I was losing out an opportunity to
potentially get attention from more than just the one guy and the potential for a
steamy dance floor make out with an attractive stranger, who, in the dream scenario
quickly fading in my mind, would then invite me to more parties and mixers.
Because of this date, that was bound to be awkward and end in an obligation kiss, I
felt like I was closing a door to a new horizon of popularity. That was my malignant
desire, and instead I’d be on the safe, benign date with the guy I spent the majority of
my terminal life with.
A fool’s dream, as I’d been to plenty of mixers and met plenty of guys, none
resulting in this perfect world, but you can’t stop a girl from dreaming.
I dropped my phone onto the table in a huff, turning to my computer to look
preoccupied while I wallowed in my disappointment.

4. Cannon 4
All week, a complacent hope settled in that Will would be too shy to argue if I
just acted as if my plans all along were to go to Graffiti, and my confidence would
convince him that I was being mean in doing so.
Will was having none of that.
Thus Friday found me standing in front of my closet unsure of how to dress
for a first date with my best friend of three years; a guy I’ve called my brother more
often than by his own name.
“Sam, can I borrow your sticky boobs?” Sticky boobs are essentially a bra cup
whose inside is adhesive, so a woman can wear strapless or backless outfits without
unseemly bra straps detracting from the outfit’s elegance. She threw the flesh
colored material across the living room from her room to mine. I applied it and did
a few bends and jumps to ensure their security, before throwing on an old top and
checking the arch of my back in the mirror. If I had to have a benign night, I could at
least look deadly.
As the clock neared seven, I inspected the roots of my hair that I hadn’t
washed in days in order to prolong a tedious straightening job. Figuring, I only had
one option, my hands attempted to smooth it back into a ponytail, hoping it
appeared somewhat intentional.
My phone chimed from the couch as I touched up my makeup. “He’s here!” I
called.

5. Cannon 5
“Make him come to the door!” Sam insisted giddily, bouncing into the room
and insisting on calming my fly-aways with a spritz of hairspray. I relayed her
instructions to Will, who no later was heard knocking on the door.
I opened the door with slow caution and smiled up at him and shrugged my
shoulders upward involuntary. He stood in the doorway for a moment before
extending his arm and offering up a mixed bouquet of lilies and roses that I assumed
were not the cheapest bunch at Kroger. The thought warmed my ego, and a natural
smile slipped briefly onto my lips as the two of us stepped in for a shy half-hug.
Genna swooped in. “Let me put those in some water for you!”
“Thanks,” we both mumbled as she fished scissors out of a tin in our kitchen.
I leaned awkwardly on my couch, my shoulders still warming the sides of my neck
as Sam attempted to engage Will in small talk.
“Where are y’all off to?”
He stepped to a place four inches from where I was leaning before
addressing her. “We’re going to go to dinner in Dallas.”
“How nice!” she cooed, tilting her head in a rehearsed gesture.
“You ready?” Will asked, turning his attention to me. That nefarious voice in
my head so desperately wanted to return, Actually, let’s just do this another night. I
kind of want to go to Graffiti. With one last longing-jealous look at my mixer-ready
roommates—who were no doubt about to embark on their infectious event
horizon—I pushed myself off the hard back of the couch.
“Yeah, let’s go.”

6. Cannon 6
The car ride was a comfortable uncomfortable, a non-threatening limp I was
still getting used to. It flowed with all the ease of years of friendship, but did more
than dance around the fact that this wasn’t just another dinner Brittney-and-Will,
the inseparable dream team, were off to. We relied heavily on our well-established
repertoire to distract from the typical pre-date stiltedness.
My phone began to ring, and I smiled warmly and the familiar name from
home. “Kelsey’s calling me.”
To my surprise, Will insisted, “Put her on speakerphone.”
His easy reaction to humor Kelsey surprised me, and I obliged. “Hey, girl.
You’re on speakerphone with Will. We’re on our way to dinner.” The two had met a
number of times: sometimes when Kelsey visited me at TCU, and sometimes when
Will stayed with me in California.
We ended the conversation when our need to Map our destination exceeded
Kelsey’s entertainment.
“Alright, here we are,” Will mumbled absently as he pulled into a parking lot.
“Y.O. Steakhouse,” I read aloud from the neon sign above the expensive
looking establishment. “Do you think it’s ‘yo’ or ‘y. o.’?”
“I think it’s ‘yo’…” As we got out of the car, he took another look. “Or maybe
it is ‘y. o.’ I mean the periods are there for a reason… Right?” I shrugged, genuinely
puzzled.
Will pulled the door open for me a little too swiftly, as if he anticipated it
being heavy and didn’t want to look weak. I giggled mockingly and approached the
hostess. “I think we have a reservation under Will.”

7. Cannon 7
As we settled into our seats, the tension recoiled in the nerves near the
surface of my arms. This was the beginning. In an attempt to shake the
awkwardness, I turned my attention to the menu.
“…. Does this say rattlesnake?”
Will laughed shallowly, and in his best attempt at a composed voice,
admitted, “Yeah, you like weird food, so I figured we could go to a real Southern
restaurant.”
A very real excitement rose up in my stomach, and I devoured the menu with
wide eyes. When the overzealous waiter arrived at our table, I challenged his
energy, bursting, “Okay, Will—you get the Buffalo, because it’s the only thing that
isn’t in the wild game sampler, then I can have some of that. Can we get our meat
medium-rare?” My face snapped to our waiter, who then began to scribble furiously
after recovering from my verbal assault.
Will meekly added from across the table, “Can we also get French fries,
mashed potatoes, and a baked potato?” I shot him a judgmental look with narrowed
eyes, before laughing good-naturedly.
Anticipating the need to preventative measures, I filled the awkward silence
with giddy predictions of what our meals would be like. As an active
gastropornography viewer, I was unafraid when the food was presented to us. My
fork and knife were already poised to attack as the plate descended from the
heavenly tray in the server’s arm.
My review:

8. Cannon 8
The venison melts in your mouth and will ruin all other meats for you,
until you realize you are eating a baby deer, at which point you begin
the wild boar. Not quite as lifechanging, but much less of a hate crime
to consume. Save the quail for last, as it is disappointing and tastes like
raw chicken and poop. When you inevitably reach across the table to
help yourself to your date’s Buffalo, prepare yourself for what is one-
hundred-percent just cow made exceptionally well.
“I couldn’t eat more if I tried,” I groaned, reaching for the button on my pants.
I stopped my hands short, and the honest version of myself safely caged in my mind
rolled her eyes. If this wasn’t a little “date,” I would have unbuttoned my jeans and
slouched down in my seat to ease the feeling of my stomach physically being
stretched as the food made marched diligently downward.
Uncertainly, Will glanced and almost unperceptively gestured toward the
plethora of potato products on the table. “I ordered those for you.”
My eyes slowly trailed toward the plates then back to him helplessly. The
right corner of his mouth cracked open into a smile, triggering a laughing fit
between the two of us in which he hooted and I silently cackled and wiped leaking
mirth from my eyes. “It’s literally so much food!”
I giggled back in a sad falsetto, “There’s so much left!”
The waiter took this opportunity to casually place the check by the food and
offer us boxes. Before Will could remove his card from his wallet, I snatched the bill
away from him mischievously. I slyly demanded, “Let me pick how much you tip!”
“No, you don’t!”

9. Cannon 9
I caught a glimpse of the bill at the bottom before he reclaimed the check.
“Holy shit, Will! That was like a hundred-fifty dollars! You didn’t have to take me
somewhere so expensive, my plate was over fifty on it’s own! And I ordered a soda!
Are you sure you don’t want me to help pay for this?”
He shook his head as he folded his card into the leather criminal. There was
no smile on his face as he sincerely said, “I wanted to take you somewhere nice.”
The gesture evoked a feeling foreign to spending time with Will, but not the
one I began to desperately wish would show up. At that table, I was a child who had
gone too far in pretending she was a grown-up. My eyes felt watery, and I was
thrown back into the mentality of a freshman in high school who snuck out to go to a
senior party. Her phone was blowing up with texts from Mom, and she was sitting
next to an average-looking older guy nursing a joint who she just realized was not
worth the aftermath.
I hugged myself as we exited the restaurant, and Will stepped away to take a
phone call as I told the nausea settling in my stomach to just be patient. The night
had to end sometime.
“Hey, do you want to look at that store over there?” Will reappeared and
jokingly directed me toward a random store across the street.
A glowing spectacle clopped toward us, and Will stopped me short of the
sidewalk with a hand on my arm. Suddenly it was glaringly apparent that the two
white steeds and the wicker creation behind it were intended for us. A stout woman
stepped down from the reigns and shared words with Will about a

10. Cannon 10
miscommunication. I stood in the background pretending not to be able to hear
their conversation and gnawed on my nails.
“They were supposed to be waiting for us outside the restaurant,” Will
explained. I laughed breathlessly and shrugged.
The woman stepped toward me and opened the door. Will offered me his
hand to help me into the carriage. I accepted, and ignored the surreal nature of the
scene around me and erected an ambivalent wall to quiet the frightened child within
me.
After we were settled and seated, an arm came over and I bent at the wrong
angle into the embrace, forcing me to flex the entire hour that the carriage wound its
way through downtown Dallas. Feigned awe at the luminous Dallas skyline was my
pretense for breaking from conversation throughout the ride, which lasted an hour
that I felt every second of. Both the cooing pedestrians and the realization that this
was not at all what I wanted inhibited my participation in whatever Will was trying
to talk about. How I felt sitting here with Will paled in the explosive emotions I’d
felt with Jacob. The skyscrapers made the gray sky look like a fleece blanket draped
over the city, creating for us a pillow fort help standing by the dramatically lit
buildings.
Greens, reds, and piercing golds burned negatives into my eyes, and I thought
to myself, One day I’m going to do this with someone I love, and it’ll all be a fairytale.
As all things must, the ride ended as the coach guided the horses to the side
of the curb. My spine cracked from ass to ears when I finally straightened and

11. Cannon 11
eagerly prepared to exit, but Will stopped me. “Can we take pictures through the
heart in the back?” And take pictures we did, through the fluorescent heart-shaped
porthole through the back of Cinderella’s revamped pumpkin.
Encouraged by the assumed conclusion to the night, I allowed myself to ask
Will to ask our driver if I could take a picture with the horses. Realizing how absurd
I came across, I buried the bottom half of my face into my fists as Will called out,
“She also wants to take pictures with the horse.”
I gathered up my proverbial balls and approached the snorting beast, nerves
apparent in the photo evidence by my crazed eyes and posture that indisputably
arched away from the colossal mammals.
We thanked the woman, poked the horse goodbye, and loaded ourselves into
the car, glad to be Fort Worth bound.
As we flew down highway 35, my phone vibrates in my lap. “Hey, Kira said
we’re on the meet and greet list for Mat Kearney?”
Carbonated excitement returned to my stomach in muted form. We could
transition back into friend mode in the safety of a crowd of our peers.
“Fucking Kira,” he growled under his breath. “It was supposed to be a
surprise.”
My heart raced from that moment until we arrived at the Bluu Auditorium.
“What should I say?” I asked, wringing my wrists and bouncing on tip-toes.
“Should I tell him how much I like his music? Or should I just say ‘hi’?”

12. Cannon 12
“Say whatever you want,” he answered as we stood in line, not twenty feet
from one of my high school heroes as Mat shook hands and posed with
acquaintances and students I didn’t quite recognize.
It was our turn. We stepped up and posed for the picture, during which I was
gathering the cajones to confide in him how his music rescued me from my angst
years. “Hi, I like really like your song Learning to Love Again. That song like got me
through high school,” I blurted.
“Oh, that’s a good one. I should play it tonight,” he responded amiable and
socially. “I wonder if I even remember the lyrics, anymore...”
Will joked, “You could just call Brittney up on stage, and she could sing it for
you.” As they laughed, I entertained the idea in a daze.
Starstruck and dreaming, we left the hall to find a seat for the actual concert.
Alas, “Sam’s looking for you… She’s texted me like five times.”
I turned away from the empty stage and accepted Will’s phone from him. I
dialed my distressed roommate and the phone rang twice, before a shrill,
intoxicated voice ranted, “Brittney, you need to come pick up Genna now. She is like
throwing up on the bus, and she is not okay. We just got back. Meet us here. NOW.”
“Uh… We need to pick up Genna.”
Will accommodatingly drove to bus pick up, not mentioning the missed
concert or the incomplete date, and found a plastic bag in his backseat. “Well,
there’s Genna,” he groaned. I looked up from my phone and saw blonde hair
dangling over the gutter, spitting and heaving while we waited at a stop sign.

13. Cannon 13
As we pulled toward them, they flung open the door of the rolling car and in
they came, and out they went, and down they went in a mad dash for the nearest
toilet in my house. The severely intoxicated Genna trembled violently despite the
four blankets we laid on top of her. Meanwhile, Sam began screaming, dwarfing our
living room with her wild gesticulations.
“I wanted to go to the mixer. Is it that bad that I wanted to just have fun at a
mixer? I just wanted to go out and have fun, and I can’t fucking go back now, and I
didn’t even get inside.” She swiped at moisture on her cheeks. “I know I’m being a
drama queen, but I don’t fucking care.”
Unsure of how to handle my frantic roommate, I let Will step in as source of
comfort. I watched and helplessly mused on if this night could have possibly gone
worse. After a hug and a reassuring pat of the hair, Sam disappeared into her room
to call her Big and give the same rant audibly through her door.
“So like, I think I’m going to go to bed.” I yawned and glanced longingly
through the door to my room at my bed as I stood stiffly in the center of my living
room.
“Thanks for coming out with me.” He hugged me, and backed toward the
door.
“Sorry we had to cut it short to pick up Genna,” I shrugged.
“I can hear you guys laughing at me!”
We stared in confusion towards Sam’s room, then shifted our raised
eyebrows to each other, before an easy laugh broke between us.

14. Cannon 14
Without a backward glance from will, I closed the door walked slowly to my
bed. I’d just had the most elaborate and romantic date I’m guaranteed to ever have,
a night most people will never experience. Sitting on my bed, the night felt benign.
“We’ll leave you where you are,” the text read. “Please just let us know you’re
okay.”
I felt the bile rise up in my throat and saw the furniture around me, and the
large mirror just above the bed. Immediately, I knew the figure shifting next to me
was my ex-boyfriend. Memories flooded into my mind of shots and shots, bawling
on busses I should have not been allowed on, sneaking out the window of my house
while friends partied unknowingly in the other room, climbing into my ex’s truck,
skin on skin, lips clashing, fingers clawing.
The sheets slid across my shoulders as I pulled my knees up into my chest.
Toxic. Fatal. Malignant. Seeing Will’s name light up my phone, knowing where I had
stumbled drunk while he mingled unsuspectingly in the other room the night after
he treated me to the night of my life, I was the cancer I didn’t realize I never wanted
to be.