AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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"He's handsome," Andrea said, after Carol had scolded her for not being nearly as invisible as she had promised to be. "I see where the rugged thing came in."

"He's…" Carol started and broke off. She smiled to herself, and then broke to laugh quietly to herself, when she saw Andrea's expression.

"Don't try to deny it," Andrea pressed. "You told me that you liked what you remembered of how he looked. You know you think he's handsome."

"Fine," Carol ceded. "He's handsome. Does that make you happy?"

"It seemed like you had a pleasant conversation," Andrea said. "Even if it was too short."

"He seems—nice," Carol ceded.

"Then why do you say that like he offered to dismember you?" Andrea asked with a laugh.

"He asked me out on Friday night," Carol said with a sigh. "To dinner."

Andrea raised up in her chair like she might crawl across the table. She reigned in her excitement, though, and lowered herself back into the chair.

"Where are you going to dinner?" Andrea asked.

"I don't know where," Carol said. "I told him that I don't pick."

"There's a new buffet place that just opened up outside of Chester," Andrea said. "I heard they've even got crab legs. The drive would give you the chance to talk and you can tell a lot about a person by the way they eat at a buffet, Carol." When Carol simply stared at her, Andrea shrugged her shoulders and drank a long swallow from her second or third cup of coffee. "Of course—they say that McShae's in Chester is a really nice restaurant. If you wanted something really fancy."

Carol laughed to herself.

"I don't think Daryl struck me as a really fancy kind of guy," Carol said. "I'm sure it'll be steak and potatoes."

"Do you suddenly have something against steak and potatoes?" Andrea asked. "If you're willing to drive thirty minutes in any direction, you can eat just about anything you want. I'm sure he knows that. If you told him what you wanted? He'd probably take you wherever you wanted to go."

Carol sat back in her chair and frowned to herself. She drank down some of her own coffee. It really was her favorite blend—even if they had to always have the two choices because the strong coffee fanatics just didn't care for Carol's choice. Her blend was smooth, and it was never bitter. It was an oddly comforting cup of coffee, and it made her feel like being wrapped in a cozy blanket—all in a warm morning drink. Keeping the blend available every day was, in some ways, something that felt like an act of rebellion on Carol's part. But she loved it, and there were others who loved it, too. They validated, without knowing it, her tastes and desires.

"Steak and potatoes is fine," Carol said. "You know I like steak and potatoes. I just—don't know if I'm going to accept the invitation."

Andrea looked at her with genuine shock and surprise—and, perhaps, even a touch of injury. If Carol had flung the hot coffee directly into her face, she doubted that Andrea could have looked more surprised.

"What do you mean you don't know if you're going to accept it?" Andrea asked. "It's dinner."

"He seems nice," Carol ceded, addressing her own thoughts outside of her head and with Andrea as an audience, "but what if he's not? What if we start this and…"

She broke off. Andrea picked up her phone and typed furiously. Carol sunk back into her chair and chewed on her thoughts and her concerns. She'd thought that Ed, when they'd first started dating—way back when they were practically children—seemed really nice. She'd found a million and one ways to excuse every red flag that popped up from the time they'd started dating until she'd finally sat down and realized, one day, that it was never going to get any better, he wasn't sorry, and one day he wouldn't stop until he'd actually killed her.

Carol shivered just remembering some of her life with Ed.

"Looks can be deceiving," Carol said. "And people aren't always what they seem."

Andrea nodded. Brow furrowed, she stared at her phone. She hummed.

"I'm listening to you, Carol Ann," Andrea offered. "I hear you. I can multi-task. I've got a big brain—despite what the hell Shane might tell you. And you're right. Looks can be deceiving. I was Al's date to a boring doctor party thing two weeks ago, and I got an oatmeal raisin cookie that I would have sworn was chocolate chip. But, really, it was a damn good oatmeal raisin cookie, so I got another and, maybe, one or two more."

Carol rolled her eyes at Andrea when Andrea looked up from her phone and grinned at Carol with satisfaction.

"That's a cookie, Andrea," Carol said. "We're talking about—people."

"My point remains the same," Andrea said. "Maybe you see something, sometimes, because you want to see it so badly. I know you're thinking of Ed. Maybe you saw him and you thought you wanted chocolate chip. You saw chocolate chip. He wasn't what you saw and he wasn't what you wanted."

"Although you're the poet laureate of the Gypsy Rose Café," Carol offered, "your analogy doesn't really work when it's extended. I'll accept that Ed wasn't what I thought I saw, and he certainly wasn't what I wanted, but I never ended up thinking that—even though he wasn't what I thought I wanted, he turned out to be the most incredible man either."

"You're too short sighted," Andrea said. "My analogy wasn't meant to end there. And it wasn't really about Ed. Ed's history. We decided that, right? We were going to leave Ed Peletier in the past. There's no room for him here. Not anymore. The last accounts we had of Ed, he'd gone to—where was it? Arizona or New Mexico or something. And he can go straight to hell, right? But this wasn't about Ed. I was going to say that—maybe you think you want chocolate chip, so you're looking at Daryl and you're thinking he looks like chocolate chip…but hunting for chocolate chips didn't really do you any good before, right? Maybe you find out he's oatmeal raisin."

"And I discover that I just can't live without oatmeal raisin," Carol teased, putting on her best "romantic" voice to tease Andrea as the blonde picked at something on her phone.

"Oatmeal raisin has a bad reputation," Andrea said. "People overlook it. They think it's inferior in some way. But you know what oatmeal raisin is? It's really one of the best, underrated cookies that exists. It's comforting. It's warm. It tastes like cinnamon, and holidays—and comfort."

Carol laughed to herself. She drank more of her coffee.

"I do like oatmeal raisin," Carol ceded.

"I know you do," Andrea said. "I also know that I better not let Shane hear my fat ass waxing poetic about cookies." She sighed. "Or let him hear that Alice let me eat cookies unsupervised."

"It's been years since you choked on a cookie," Carol teased. "I think you can eat them unsupervised. And please don't get me started on Shane. Because you and I both know how I feel about him, and that's just going to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. You could do so much better than him."

"The pickin's are slim in Mayberry, ma'am," Andrea drawled out, dramatically, teasing Carol with her overexaggerated words.

Shane was an asshole. He wasn't quite the asshole that Ed had been, but he had a lot of undesirable features as a partner. He was hard on Andrea—physically and emotionally. Verbally and emotionally, he ran Andrea into the dirt with nearly every breath he drew in her presence. He might not hit her, but he'd left his share of bruises on her, and Carol didn't believe that any of them had been welcomed or requested. His favorite thing to do was to belittle Andrea for her figure—pinching and pulling at everything he found that he thought was wrong with her—and everyone knew it was because the woman he was in love with, his best friend's wife, was barely more than a scarecrow whereas Andrea was a much fuller figured woman.

They all hated Shane, but Andrea kept going back to him out of fear that she'd never find anyone else—fear that he'd planted there, over the years, to keep her close.

Shane didn't really want her, but it was clear that she was better than nothing. And that's exactly how he treated her—just better than nothing.

"That's why you've got to jump on this, Carol," Andrea urged, not missing a beat in self-sorrow or self-pity. "You've got to carpe the damn diem or whatever and go to dinner Friday night."

"And if he's not what you think he is?" Carol asked.

"It's dinner," Andrea said. "Not a marriage proposal. You eat food. You have a conversation. If you like him, maybe you eat with him again. If you don't, then you lose nothing and you gain a meal."

"I'm concerned that—what happened Friday, and then coffee on Wednesday, and dinner on Friday night? Don't you think this might be moving too fast?" Carol asked.

Andrea rolled her eyes, looking around her phone.

"Go as slow as you want," Andrea said. "Crawl if you want. Let him know that. You don't like fast, and you hate sudden movements. You wouldn't know anything more about him, though, if you had dinner with him next week, than you're going to know on Friday. I think that's the point. That's his point. Just—eat dinner. Find out about each other."

"I don't know anything about him," Carol said, shaking her head. "I mean—nothing. I don't know this guy. He could be an axe murderer, for all I know."

Andrea laughed to herself.

"He doesn't know you either, you know. Maybe he's just Daryl Dixon," Andrea said. "Long-time resident of Living Springs. He lives outside the city limits. Over on Willow Branch Road. He's got a lot of land, enough for like four people, but he lives in a little trailer. He's in his late forties. He lives with his brother, Merle Dixon, who's ten years older than he is. He's never been married, has no children, but has recently been talking about adopting a puppy since Mrs. Waller had those mutts that she was handing out for free down at the A and P. He likes hunting, fishing, and is a huge fan of routine and repetition. He's good at most things that he tries to do."

"Where is all this coming from?" Carol asked, laughing to herself.

Andrea smiled and turned the phone around. She raised her eyebrows.

Carol laughed to herself.

"My reading glasses are behind the counter," Carol said. "And you know I can't see that from here. What is it?"

"It's a text message," Andrea said. "From Mich. I noticed his shirt when he came in. I've seen that shirt a billion times—maybe it didn't say Daryl every time, but…how many times have I dropped something off for Ty's lunch when Mich couldn't get off work? So, I sent a text to Michonne to find out what she could. I expected it to take longer, but it turns out that she's with Ty right now. She had to go pick up some files from the courthouse in Union, and he didn't have anything pressing for the morning, so he decided to take off with her—get some breakfast and have a little morning date in Union without the girls hanging around."

"So, Tyreese is telling you all of this?" Carol asked.

"Tyreese is telling Mich all of this," Andrea said. "And Mich is relaying it to me. You know Ty texts like a caveman. Listen—this guy has worked for Ty for over a decade. He's a home to work kind of guy, most of the time. We've all probably crossed paths with him like a million times over the years without knowing it, Carol. Michonne says that Ty's absolutely excited that you even ran into him, and he's absolutely advocating for this guy." Andrea put her phone on the table and folded her hands in front of her like she was about to tell Carol something very serious. "You know Ty's a good guy. We've said, since Michonne met him, that— that he's one of the few genuinely good guys left in the world."

Carol smiled to herself and nodded. Tyreese had won them all over quickly and completely. After the way that Dean had treated Michonne, she'd really deserved to find a man like Tyreese.

"Ty's a good guy," Carol agreed.

"And that good guy is telling you that—Daryl's a good guy," Andrea said.

"It's hard to believe that there's such a concentration of good guys in such a small area of Living Springs," Carol mused.

"You don't believe Ty?" Andrea asked. "You're suggesting that Tyreese Williams would ever lie to you, Carol? He adores you."

"I'm suggesting that this is a friend of Tyreese's. He works for him. And—Ty is his boss. He's going to show a different face to his boss than he shows to everyone else. You know how that is. I mean—there were so many people who even said that I was lying about Ed because they didn't know him to be like that. They'd never known him to be that way. Look at Shane…"

Andrea hummed and nodded.

"But this is not about Ed," Andrea said. "It's not. And it's not about Shane, and it's not about Dean. This is just about—about Daryl. And it's about dinner, Carol. When's the last time you ate dinner with a man?"

Carol looked around, checking out the café and gauging how busy it was getting. Andrea sighed across the table.

"That's what I thought," Andrea said. "You haven't been out with anyone since Ed."

"That's not true," Carol said. "I had dinner with—what was his name? I'm always forgetting it. Works at the Home Depot."

Andrea laughed to herself.

"Tobin doesn't count," Andrea said. "At all. I don't even count him. He has the personality of wallpaper paste and he's twice as bland."

"But safe," Carol offered.

"That's the only reason you went out with him," Andrea said. "And the only reason we supported that choice was because we thought he might—he might be like human training wheels. He might get you riding again. But you can't keep the training wheels forever, Carol. And you don't need them. Besides—you didn't even like Tobin. That's why you never go out with him."

Carol laughed to herself.

"He's perfectly wonderful," Carol teased. "In fact—if I ever feel like I'm just not going to be able to sleep, I could call him. He'd put me out, just like a light."

"That's only a good thing when the sex is so good you pass out afterwards," Andrea said. "Not when—not when the conversation is so fucking boring that you prefer a state of unconsciousness to having to endure even one more boring ass word about why a certain brand of Kilz is really worth the extra money if you're serious about redoing your deck."

Carol laughed to herself, and maybe in spite of herself. As she settled on the fact that she would, in fact, accept the invitation to dinner, the fluttering in her stomach rose up again.

"I'll give him a call at lunch," Carol said.

"Jesus, Tobin? What the hell have I done?" Andrea lamented. Carol laughed.

"Daryl," Carol said. Andrea's demeanor and expression changed entirely. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair like she was set on preparing herself for a date.

"Yeah?" She asked. "Dinner?"

"I'll—tell him I'll go to dinner," Carol agreed. "I'll give him a—a chance. To show me what he's like."

Andrea clapped her hands together in excitement before she snatched up her phone.

"I've got to tell Mich, so she can tell Tyreese!" Andrea declared.

"Please tell him not to say anything!" Carol said, her face suddenly growing warm and the uncomfortable feeling in her gut intensifying.

Andrea smiled at her.

"No worries," Andrea said. "Nobody would dream of stealing your thunder. Just don't forget that you've got something to do over lunch. I have a feeling that—this is the kind of guy who'll be waiting for that confirmation."