Chapter Seven
She knew immediately that she’d made a big mistake offering to show him how to date.
And not just because she had no real idea how to date herself.
She always talked too much, ordered the wrong food, wore the wrong clothes.
Made mistakes she couldn’t even guess at, like laughing too loudly.
Or talking about a weird interest in too much detail.
She overshared for one. Undershared for the next.
But that wasn’t the problem.
She could fudge a few basic things, after all. Steer him away from mistakes she would have made. Give him suggestions for things someone like her would enjoy on a date. It was doable, just about. It was just that being around him a lot probably wasn’t.
She would have to be in a lot of date-like situations with him.
When even situations that weren’t date-like had started to affect her a little.
More than a little, if she was being honest.
For a second, she’d actually let herself believe it was her he wanted to impress.
When all rational sense told her that was impossible.
He clearly found her a little annoying and unserious.
And even if that wasn’t the case, she couldn’t see any reason why he wouldn’t have simply confessed when she’d given him enough of an opening.
Most men walked through when there wasn’t even an opening there.
They scoffed at her for thinking she had a chance with them, when she hadn’t even wanted anything of the sort.
Or made a pass when it seemed unfathomable to her that any might come.
But not him. Even though he was far more worthy of that kind of overconfidence than any of them had been.
Because, sure, he was ornery and scruffy and odd.
He had that loser reputation around town, dragging him down and most likely giving him a bunch of insecurities.
But at the same time, he had to know on at least some level that he was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly man.
He had the ability to look in a mirror. He must have seen his own jaw like a sledgehammer, and those eyes like a storm on a blazing hot summer day, and that deliriously thick stubble that almost made a mustache over his mean upper lip.
That heavy brow, that busted-looking nose.
That hair, dirty blond and thick as butter, but darker on his arms, on his chest, his face.
Like a Viking, somehow.
So why would he hesitate?
He simply had no reason to. He was very attractive, no matter what anybody in town thought or said—and she was starting to feel like a lot of what they had said was pretty unfair.
She remembered Marley Maples, the owner, runner, and writer for The Gazette , drawling about his inability to brush his hair. Even though he had definitely gotten better at it as time had gone by. In fact, he’d gotten a lot better at a lot of things, now she was thinking about it.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him drunk, or vowing revenge on the clothes store for not having his size in pants, or doing something even odder, like eating an onion as if it were an apple.
Even though most of the town still acted as if he were exactly the same as he had been during that first town hall meeting he’d shown up at.
She still remembered it now.
It was right after she’d bought the bookstore—six years ago, maybe seven.
And she’d gone along because old man Hannigan was fussing about the queer romance novels she’d put in the window.
And there Jack had been, suddenly in sharp focus after years of seeing him on the periphery of everything, younger than he was now but still old looking somehow, inexplicably wearing two belts, lingering around the edges of the room as if he wasn’t sure if he should sit down.
Then when he finally did, he’d somehow snapped the back of the chair.
The whole room had seemed to tut all at once. They still tutted over him. Like they couldn’t see anything but their own first impressions. Which she supposed, in some ways, she was guilty of, too. She had carried on thinking he was a very angry man, no matter what he did.
But she had known that objectively he was handsome.
And now that she could no longer maintain a fear of him, she knew it was becoming more than just an understanding of that fact. The anger that had made him a complete no-go was peeling back, like the ocean after an earthquake.
And what it left behind was a tsunami of him being attractive to her, specifically.
In fact, he did it right there and then.
He strolled out onto his rickety porch as she sat behind the wheel of her car, clearly oblivious to her early arrival for the what to wear advice he’d asked her for.
Belt not yet fastened around his waist, jeans hanging low on his hips, just a tattered Henley up top.
Arms thick as country hams, swelling underneath the clingy material, body like a barrel.
Then all of it just hit her hard, right in the guts.
And that was before he ducked his head to light his cigarette.
Those big hands cupped tenderly around a match she couldn’t see, followed by a plume of smoke.
Then he kept it clamped between his teeth so he could do up that belt.
She watched him thread the leather and snap the buckle with her mouth half hanging open.
So of course he chose that moment to look up.
He caught her gaze through the windshield, and oh god, the look of startled bafflement that broke all over his face when he did.
It made her cheeks blaze. A million explanations for sitting there, staring, ran through her head, and none of them sounded good.
They sounded like excuses for being a pervert, secretly peeping at him as he did up his pants.
She got out of the car before any of them could take root. Then she crossed the dirt-patch driveway to his front porch, as casually as she could manage. Like that was what she’d just been about to do, and none of this was weird at all. She had barely noticed him. He didn’t seem that sexy to her.
Not even when she got there, and three things happened:
She got an eyeful of his chest hair over the top of that unbuttoned V-neck. He stepped back so as not to loom over her too much. And he whipped that cigarette behind him. Like he didn’t want her to see him still indulging in that nasty habit. Like what she thought of him actually mattered.
Even though what she thought of him in that moment was unspeakable.
She had to shake herself just to stop silly things from coming out of her mouth.
Forget that other girl, it’s me you’re supposed to be with , she thought, and switched it out at the last second for something reassuring.
“You don’t have to do that. I don’t mind if you smoke,” she said. But he just looked sheepish.
“Yeah, wait until you find out what I’m smoking.”
“Oh my stars, Mr. Jackson. Not drugs .”
“All right, all right, I know you’re being a little smart-ass.”
“I am, but only because I want you to know I am not scandalized.”
“Well, good. You shouldn’t be. It’s just a little something to take the edge off.”
The edge off what , she thought. Then it clicked. “So you’re nervous,” she said, and though he looked bitter about being busted, he gruffed out a concession.
“Of course I am. A woman is about to go through my things.”
“Well, I don’t have to. You could just do a little fashion show for me.”
“Okay, but that would be way worse. You get that it’s way worse, right.”
“I do. But I kind of hoped it would make you feel better about me going inside now to rifle through your underwear,” she said, as she strolled through his open front door. Slowly, so he could stop her if he really wanted to.
Though he didn’t.
He didn’t even follow her in.
She heard him calling after her while she passed through his now even neater and prettier-looking living room.
“Right, right, right, but you’re not really going to do that, though.
Like, you don’t need to actually touch my briefs.
You’re just messing with me, I can tell,” he said, half laughing over this obvious fact.
Then after a second he seemed to realize she might not be, and got a little more frantic.
“Kid. Kid, just wait a second, are you messing with me? If you’re not, don’t you dare go in the third drawer down by my bed. ”
He burst in on the last word.
Though of course she hadn’t even made it down the hall.
She stood outside his bedroom door, hands in the pockets of the only averagely cute cardigan she’d chosen, to make sure he knew she wasn’t trying to look gorgeous for their practice dating.
“I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want.
No matter how tempted I am,” she said, with just a tiny bit of tease in her voice.
And he looked relieved in response. But also just a little bit rueful.
“The tempted part is because of the drawer thing, right,” he said, one hand on the back of his neck, rubbing there. His face was half scrunched up, as if bracing for the answer, or the questions.
But she had none for him.
“I have no idea what drawer thing you could possibly be referring to.”
“The one I just accidentally mentio—oh. Ohhhhh.” His frown dropped and he wagged a finger at her. “Oh, you’re doing the pretending thing. You’re pretending you don’t know so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable. Like they do in movies, and some of those books you gave me.”
“I mean, it happens in reality, too.”
“Right, sure it does. Of course. I believe you.”
“You have to believe me. People spare each other’s feelings all the time,” she said, and laughed on the end.
She laughed, until she saw that he wasn’t laughing with her.
He was just looking at her, puzzled in a way that made his meaning slowly dawn on her.
“Oh my god . You’re saying nobody has ever tried to spare your feelings. ”
And then he shrugged.
He shrugged .