Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Haleigh’s boots hit the floor of the foyer with a thunk .
“Don’t forget these again.” Jack rescued her keys from the doorknob as he followed her into the house.
“Again?” She made a face. “It happened once.”
“Three times. In about two weeks.”
Haleigh puffed her cheeks out in a sigh. “It’s not my fault Stanton’s apartment and my car have electronic locks and number pads. I never have to think about archaic things like keys outside of this house.”
Jack snorted, lifting the pizza in his hand up over her head and stepping through the French doors to the living room.
Haleigh scurried behind him. Her stomach had been growling since she dove into his car across from the Rose Tavern half an hour ago. This was the last time she agreed to a meetup at meal time that did not at least involve a snack.
She smiled as she looked around her. Jack had bought his place over a year ago, and Haleigh had been here more times than she could count, but that never diminished her appreciation of it. The floors were sleek dark wood, matched by ornate moldings in the same shade overhead. The furniture was classic in style and upholstered in deep tones of forest green and cranberry and mustard. She called the aesthetic “old money” because it reminded her of how rich people’s homes always looked in movies and TV. Like the house from Knives Out. Only in miniature.
It was a far cry from Jack’s affinity for clean lines and minimalism, and his deep love affair with the color khaki. When she’d asked him about it as they pored over his inspiration boards during renovations, he’d said, “I worked hard to buy this. I deserve some luxury.”
Haleigh couldn’t argue with that.
It had taken months, but with the help of his dad and his brothers (all of them contractors), Jack had created something magnificent.
And every bit of it was his.
That was what Haleigh wanted someday. Not necessarily a house, but something she’d earned. Built herself. Even if she achieved it in a less conventional way than Jack had.
She bypassed the couch, aiming for the kitchen, and returned a minute later with two plates, three napkins, a knife and fork, and their aluminum water bottles tucked under her arm. Jack kept one here just for her, since he knew that, when it came to Haleigh, a hydration vessel was basically her extra limb.
Above her, something thumped against the ceiling, and her eyes tipped north. “How’s the parade?”
Jack rented out the second-floor apartment to cover most of the mortgage, and the family that had moved in had two small children and one large dog. Not exactly the equation for quiet neighbors.
“Only one marching band today,” he quipped from his spot on the couch. He shifted on the cushions to make room for her before throwing open the pizza box. Half bacon for him, half cheese for her. The Jack-and-Haleigh special.
She handed him his plate and utensils, along with two napkins.
“I hardly hear them anymore,” he insisted. His eyebrows, the same light brown as his Timothée-Chalamet-esque curls and the light shadow of stubble that dusted his pale cheeks, dipped together as he cut his first slice into four smaller pieces.
For as long as she’d known him, Jack had always eaten in even numbers. In junior high, their friends used to make fun of him for dividing his sandwich that way, so Haleigh had started doing the same thing, just to shut them up. She still did sometimes, completely out of habit, and it always made her grin. Jack was truly a part of her in every possible way.
She snorted.
He pursed his lips. “I’m getting used to the noise.”
Haleigh cocked her head.
“Sort of,” he muttered.
She arched an eyebrow.
Jack sighed loudly. “Okay. I hate it. I’m counting down the days until their lease is over.”
Smiling, she took her first bite of cheesy goodness.
Summoned by the delicious smell, Twinkie, Jack’s enormous rottweiler, bounded out of the bedroom at the far end of the hall and landed on the couch between them. Haleigh scooted away to make room for the furry cannonball, and also to protect her food from Twinkie’s inevitable onslaught.
Once Haleigh had demolished her slices, she set the plate aside and grabbed one of the two video game controllers from the coffee table. Holding it up, she wagged her eyebrows at Jack— the universal sign for I’m going to kick your ass at go-karts.
A second later, the music for their favorite racing game sung out from the speakers.
“Turn it up,” she commanded. “Make the loud family’s floors rumble. An eye for an eye and all that.”
“That kind of schoolyard logic doesn’t really work if you want new tenants.”
“I was thinking more of the biblical logic,” she grumbled.
“I’ve got it handled.”
“Well, if you need me to call in a noise complaint, you know where to find me.” Haleigh was only half kidding.
Jack hooked one of his thick, solid arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. It was the same way he’d embrace Twinkie or his mom, but still, Haleigh froze, not letting so much as a muscle twitch. She silently reminded her heart that if it dared stutter, she would tear it from her chest and find a replacement. She wasn’t above being a test subject for a pig heart, or whatever scientists were up to these days. She was pretty sure she’d seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where a girl had gone without a heart for a week.
Haleigh fit too easily into the side of Jack’s tall, broad frame. She felt too comfortable pressed against his soft middle. It was too easy to fall back into feelings she wasn’t supposed to have anymore.
He was her happy place. Her home away from home. They’d been through pretty much everything together. When her father died in a car accident over fourth-grade winter break, Jack didn’t leave Haleigh’s side from the minute the hospital called. She’d gone with Jack to every visit with his grandmother in hospice and had held his hand the entire funeral. Through breakups, pet deaths, fights with other friends or with parents, when her anxiety turned the future into something terrifying, or his depression weighed him down, they were there for each other.
But someday, he was going to meet someone and she would no longer be his person. She had to be okay with that. Their friendship rules demanded it.
She wished she could ask Jack how he’d gotten over her. Because Haleigh had been trying to move on for half a decade, and while they’d both stuck firmly to their friendship boundaries ever since, she still spent most nights falling asleep to the memory of that rainstorm under the palm tree in Hawaii, and her best friend’s low voice in her ear as he’d whispered, “I’ve loved you my whole life.”
How had he turned that off?
And why didn’t Haleigh have that button?
She sat up straighter. Game face, Berkshire. It was not time for heart eyes: it was time for crushing Jack beneath the wheels of her go-kart.
Twinkie responded to her movements by shimmying and stretching across her lap. With the dog’s gigantic rump on her thigh, she couldn’t comfortably grip the controller.
“Stop using your dog to cheat.” Haleigh leaned forward.
“Stop using my dog as an excuse for your subpar driving skills,” Jack shot back.
“We’ll see who’s subpar when we get to the finish line.”
She jabbed down the A button on her controller, making the wheels of her go-kart spin and spit smoke. Wiggling in her seat, she waited for the countdown to commence.
Haleigh had discovered pretty early in life that video games were a great distraction from her anxious thoughts. With a controller in her hand, or a keyboard beneath her fingers, she got to decide how characters looked, what they did, how they died. She was the one who determined how much their day sucked, not some random force called chance. It helped her feel a little more in control of the rest of her world, too.
Since college she’d been on anxiety meds, but that didn’t change her love of gaming. It was still nice to escape somewhere else when things got stressful. And if she had the chance to kick Jack’s ass at the same time, all the better.
She squealed as her go-kart drifted around a bend and bumped his, sending him careening into one of the NPC driv ers. The course resembled the inside of a disco ball, sparkles and rainbows and flashing lights everywhere. It was one of the more challenging ones, and Haleigh contorted her body with the movements of her vehicle, not caring how silly she looked.
Beside her, Jack sat perfectly still, his fingers on the controller the only part of him moving. His curls glistened with leftover product from a day at the office, and his T-shirt and joggers were ironed smooth. If he’d tucked them in, he’d practically be business casual.
That was Jack. Always put together. Always organized.
The exact opposite of Haleigh, who, as far as most people were concerned, was a mess.
The word tugged at her stomach. She shoved it away with a strategically aimed missile at Jack’s go-kart. As it flipped over and plummeted off the track, she let out a triumphant yell.
“Lucky shot,” he muttered.
“Lucky nothing. I’d been holding on to that missile for two laps for exactly this opportunity. And my aim was masterful. ”
He groaned, tapping his controller against his knee. Then his big brown eyes drifted to her face. “So what happened tonight? You’d been so excited about this date.”
Haleigh sighed at the TV. “It was a capital- D disaster.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“Sworn enemies have had a better time together.”
He snorted.
“Red Sox and Yankees fans even.”
“Hal—”
“If you had called any later, the sheer amount of awkward energy between us would have collapsed the universe. Created a black hole.”
Jack scratched at his temple, his mouth curled in an amused grin.
“There was nothing there. No chemistry, no spark, not even a decent conversation.” She widened her eyes at him. “Jack, I had to pull out the bird facts.”
“Oh geez. Not the spiked penguin tongue.”
“ And the turkey eggs.” Haleigh eased out from under Twinkie so she could slouch deeper into the couch. Ornate moldings circled the ceiling fan, and she let her eyes trace over the designs. “It felt like we had a real connection when we were messaging. But I guess it’s harder to notice the lulls of silence online. I mean, she couldn’t make eye contact with me.” She cringed at the memory. The way Haleigh had worried it was her—her outfit, her behavior, how she looked. On top of all that, she was a fat woman. There were some people out there so offended by her very existence that they could be downright cruel about it. She’d never forget the time she’d met up with a guy and when she approached him at the bar he’d taken one look at her, said “No,” and walked away. She’d ended up hanging out for the rest of the night with a far more attractive woman (karma at its best), but the rejection had stung. To this day, Haleigh still braced for a similar reaction every time she met someone new.
Dating did nothing good for a person’s self-esteem.
Never mind if they had a general anxiety disorder.
“I wish I could… I don’t know, take a sabbatical or something. Not forever, obviously. Just for like… a few months.” She turned her head so she could meet Jack’s eyes. “Is that a thing?”
“Anything can be a thing if you make it one.” He rested a hand beside her knee, his index and middle fingers tapping out a rhythm as familiar to Haleigh as the rest of him. The movement seemed to soothe him, reset his equilibrium.
“I wish it was that easy. You know my mom and Pépère. I’m only twenty-five, and they’re already convinced I’m on the fast track to spinsterhood. Imagine if I told them I wanted to give spinsterhood a whirl on purpose. Forget another heart attack, that would kill my grandfather.” She knocked her head lightly against the pillow. “And Joey ? She would love to watch me fail at this too.”
To Haleigh’s family, being in a relationship meant stability. Adulthood. Showing that you could commit to things. Sometimes she wondered if the relationship being a good one mattered to them at all.
“Joey does not enjoy seeing you fail.”
Haleigh shook her head. For all the ways that Jack understood her, he had tunnel vision when it came to her older sister. His relationship with his own brothers was too healthy for him to accept that not all siblings were best friends or had good intentions. “She certainly loves parading around her perfect romance in my face.”
Jack gave her one of those looks that said she was being dramatic. “Bringing your fiancée to Thanksgiving and Christmas is not parading around your relationship.”
Haleigh conceded with a disgruntled growl, resulting in a hearty laugh from Jack. It was one of her favorite sounds: a warm, deep baritone. Almost jolly, if jolly could summon her blood to all the most inappropriate places.
“I wish I could make them understand how bad it is. None of them have ever had to use dating apps or go on these meetups that never work out and always make you feel like you’re the problem.”
She didn’t want to feel that way. She didn’t want to constantly be wondering what was wrong with her, why she couldn’t find a deep connection with anyone but Jack. If dating was making her question if she was even someone worth dating, that seemed like a good sign to stop.
Jack’s eyes lit up. “Like a hidden camera? Or some kind of reality TV show where you bring your family on your dates.”
Haleigh laughed. “Can you imagine Pépère on a date?” She cleared her throat. “‘Young man, where exactly do you think you’re putting your hands?’” she said, attempting to mimic her grandfather’s scratchy voice.
Jack got slightly closer to an accurate impression. “‘Have I shown you my gun collection?’”
Haleigh straightened her posture. “‘I read enough detective novels to know how to hide a body so it won’t be found.’”
Jack laughed. “Honestly? Maybe you should bring your grandfather on your dates. Roger would be a perfect bullshit detector. He’d cut your bad nights in half, at least.”
Haleigh cringed. “I think I’d rather brave the bad dates than experience Pépère as a chaperone.”
“Fair.” Jack settled back into the cushions. “How awesome would it be, though, to let someone else figure this shit out for us.”
That would be the dream. Haleigh would love nothing more than to let someone else steer the ship for a while. When she was a kid and desperate to grow up, no one had warned her that everything was a responsibility. Every choice she made was a domino, initiating a new series of causes and effects. It was all exhausting and scary and impossible.
Forget a sabbatical from dating. Haleigh wanted a vacation from being an adult.