Chapter 13
WILSON IS WAITING FOR me in his office the next day.
Well, not really.
Wilson is in his office working when I barge through the door and toss my backpack onto the floor. He looks up from the stack of papers he was thumbing through. “Good morning?” He says it like a question.
“Morning, business partner.” I make myself comfy in the chair across from him.
“We’re not business partners,” Wilson says, returning his eyes to the papers. He is back with his usual composure—perfect hair, clean, buttoned-up shirt layered with that hideous green vest, probably ate a fiber-rich breakfast and took a shower before he arrived. Yawn.
I try again. “Acquaintances?”
“No.”
“Batman and Robin?”
“No.”
“You can be Batman,” I offer.
He flips the paper over. “Still no. And what are you doing here? Your shift doesn’t begin for another twenty minutes.”
I clutch my chest. “You memorized my schedule? That’s so sweet.”
Finally, his eyes lift up from the paper and meet mine. “I make the schedule.”
“And you always schedule us together. That must mean something,” I say. At this point, I’m just having fun annoying him.
“Yeah,” Wilson says. “It means I’m here open-to-close every single day and don’t have a choice.”
I sigh. “You’re such a vibe killer. What are you reading?” I ask after a second of silence passes.
“Résumés,” Wilson says. He runs his finger along the edge of the stack of papers. There’s a lot of them. Like, that pile is an inch high. I’m shocked so many people want to work here.
“For what position?” I ask.
Wilson presses two fingers to his forehead and briefly closes his eyes. “I’m hiring more cleaners for the night shift, if you must know.”
“That’s not a terrible idea.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“And you answering those questions proves we’re business partners,” I add. “I mean, that is the kind of information you pass along to a partner—just saying.”
Wilson plants his elbows on the desk, resting his chin in his hands. “You know what? You’re insufferable, but at least you’re consistently insufferable.”
I smile wide. “It’s all about the consistency, baby. Feel free to pass over some of those résumés. I can help you choose who to hire. I’m good at separating the losers from the cool people. Like, for example, you’re most definitely a—”
Wilson’s face takes on a startled expression, as if I just suggested burning Monte’s to the ground and running away to Mexico with the insurance money. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he says. “And that sounds like a terrible idea.”
“All great ideas start out as bad ideas,” I say, ripping off a quote I read somewhere in Suzy’s bedroom. “So by that logic, we’re getting somewhere.”
A drawer to the desk creaks open and Wilson carefully places the papers inside. Perhaps he thought if he left them out a second longer, I’d infect them with my gaze.
He looks at me, his brown eyes tired but alert. “Why did you come in here?”
“So we can start planning how to win Kenzie back,” I say. Honestly, the faster we bang this out, the better. I’m trying to shed the froggy costume as soon as humanly possible.
A little wrinkle forms between Wilson’s eyebrows. “We’re not discussing this at work.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone may hear us,” he hisses.
“Right. We don’t want to scare off all the eligible women who are waiting to win your heart.” I turn around to face the doorway, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Go home, ladies! He’s off the market!”
“I have a question for you,” Wilson asks, leaning across the desk.
“Fire away, boss.”
“Do you store all this sarcasm in your body? Or is there some, like, external life source that you export it from?” he asks very seriously. There is the tiniest of smiles tugging up the corners of his lips—a smile he’s actively trying to squash back down. And for the strangest of reasons, seeing it is the biggest relief.
“Great question, William. Uhm, for privacy reasons, I’m unable to disclose that information to you.”
“Privacy reasons,” he repeats. The smile is back, tugging away. It’s very concerning.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I say, kicking my feet up on the desk and putting them back down point-five seconds later after the glare Wilson gives me, like two bright-red lasers shooting from his eyeballs.
He slowly removes his arms from the desk. “Jackie, how many pairs of feet touched this desk while I was gone?” he asks. His eyes run over the wooden surface as if he has some superhuman vision that allows him to see traces of DNA and microscopic dirt.
“Can I just say, I love how you’ve been calling me by my real name.”
“Jackie, how many pairs of—”
“I don’t know! Like two?”
He begins to stutter like a robot malfunctioning. “T-T- two ?”
I know for sure Anita’s feet touched it, but I’m not about to throw her under the bus. I grimace. “Maybe one?”
“Maybe?”
For the next few minutes I watch Wilson take every item off his desk and proceed to run a Lysol wipe across it. After two more wipes have been tossed into the garbage bin and the poor wood has met his cleanliness standard, he meticulously places all the items in the exact same spot as before. Then he sits back down in his chair, breathes, and sips from his coffee cup. “Better,” he says. “Remind me to put a lock on the door.”
“Kind of dumb you don’t have one to begin with,” I say, sniffing the clean, lemony scent. My thought is this—if chemicals shouldn’t be inhaled, why do they smell so good?
“What were we talking about?” Wilson asks, looking drastically more at ease.
“Winning Kenzie back,” I say.
He slouches over in his chair, pain hidden in the curve of his shoulders. “Right,” he says, an immeasurable amount of longing in that one syllable. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk about this at work.”
“Then where should we talk about it?” I ask, digging into my backpack and taking out a Twix bar.
Wilson eyes the candy. “After work?” It sounds like he is forcing the words out.
“Can’t,” I say. “I have to be home for dinner. My sister’s fiancé is coming over. It’s a whole thing.” Julie has now sent twenty-two texts in our group chat, detailing the food we’re ordering tonight, the movie we will be watching afterward, that the cake in the fridge is not to be touched, and that everyone must be on their best behavior.
Keep in mind, no one has responded to any of those twenty-plus texts. She is holding a one-way conversation.
Wilson presses his lips into a thin line, as if he is physically trying to stop himself from speaking. “I usually grab lunch around noon,” he forces out, wincing. “You can come.”
“What if,” I say, “you ask nicely.”
He huffs out of his nose like a fire-breathing dragon. “Starve, then,” he says.
“Win Kenzie back on your own then,” I counter.
I can see the internal debate in Wilson’s head, two miniature versions of him battling between sucking up to me and simply self-combusting.
“Jackie,” he finally says, brown eyes on mine, “will you please come to lunch with me?”
I smile sweetly. “Well, if you insist.”
After talking himself down from lunging at me from across the desk, he says, “I’ll meet you outside at noon.” Then he checks his watch, noting the time. “Your shift began three minutes ago.”
“But we’re having so much fun. What if I don’t—”
“Hop to it.”
Wilson sweeps me out of his office with a very rude look. For reasons unknown to me, I start counting the hours until my lunch break.
Wilson drives us to an undisclosed location in a shiny white Lexus. The car is immaculate—no garbage, dust, dirt. Not even a single blade of grass. It looks like it was just driven home from the dealership. It even has that indescribable new car smell to it.
Halfway through the ride, Wilson catches me looking around. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing. Your car is very clean,” I say. Not even an empty water bottle in the cupholder.
“Sorry,” he says quickly, almost like a reflex.
I half expect him to drive with his seat at a ninety-degree angle, two hands planted firmly on the wheel at ten and two, and to go exactly the speed limit. It seems like the obvious choice, given he’s so uptight you can bounce a quarter off him. But as we drive through the side roads, it turns out I was completely wrong. He drives like a normal teenager, one hand on the wheel, the other on the armrest, that kind of relaxed ease that comes with doing the same thing hundreds of times. But he’s Wilson, so of course he stops for three seconds at every stop sign and slows down for yellow lights instead of gunning it like Jillian does.
We drive in complete silence, the music from the radio interrupting my thoughts now and then. I glance out the window, curious as to where Wilson goes for lunch. I try to piece the roads together like a puzzle—if he makes a right, we could be going to the sushi place; a left and we’re heading in the direction of Dad’s favorite barbecue spot.
After ten minutes, he pulls into a parking lot I know all too well. Because Angelo’s is here, a diner my family has been visiting since I was a kid. Back when my mom still worked full-time and my dad was a stay-at-home dad, he took me and my sisters here every single day because he’s a terrible, awful cook who had us living off of spaghetti with cut-up hot dogs. Three years ago, they changed management, and the food kind of went downhill, so we stopped going.
“Have you been here before?” Wilson asks, cutting the engine.
“Been here? I practically lived here when I was a kid.” I’m already halfway out the door, my stomach grumbling just thinking about greasy fries and inhumane amounts of ketchup.
For once, Wilson has to use his long legs to catch up with my short ones. I all but run through the parking lot, sidestepping a moving car and jumping onto the sidewalk. The diner looks the same as always—shabby roof, red-and-white-striped awnings, a neon sign in the window that says OPEN, and white-painted writing on the front window that reads FRESH QUALITY FOOD. HUGE PORTIONS. REASONABLE PRICES. It feels like a relic that’s been frozen in time. If Jill wants to write an article about a Ridgewood landmark, she should start here.
We head inside and ask for a table for two. A smiling older woman with a gap between her two front teeth leads us to the corner booth. The leather seats are torn, and TVs are hung around the walls, all showing the same news channel. Apparently we’re getting rain tonight.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Just as I left it.
I open the large laminated menu, smiling when it feels sticky beneath my fingers. It’s so nostalgic. So nice to know that sometimes, there are things that don’t change.
“I didn’t think this would be your kind of scene,” I say to Wilson, my eyes scanning the menu, the one thing that has changed.
When I glance up, Wilson hasn’t opened the menu. He sits with his hands folded on the table, watching me. “Why is that?”
“It’s...” I begin, struggling for the right word. “Old and kind of shabby. I thought you’d eat somewhere where the menu isn’t sticky.”
One side of his mouth kicks up. “Notice how I’m not touching it,” he says.
I hate that I did notice. “Good point.”
A young girl about my age approaches our table, smiling brightly. Her blond hair is tugged into two cute pigtails, and she has the clearest sky-blue eyes. Her name tag says Tammy. “Hi guys. Oh! Hi, Wilson, welcome back. Can I start you with some water? Any soda? Juice?”
Wilson orders a water. I grab an iced tea. Tammy smiles and disappears behind the bar jutting out from the far wall.
“I take it you come here often,” I say. After all, Tammy knew his name.
“It’s a family spot,” he says curtly. Then, as if deciding that sharing some detail about his life won’t make him immediately nauseous, he adds, “My uncle came here a lot. It was our go-to spot after we closed up at Monte’s.”
With the mention of Monte Jr., a weight blankets the conversation. There’s so much I want to ask, but I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to know.
“How is he?” is what I settle on.
Wilson’s eyes meet the table. “He’s doing okay. The doctors caught the tumor pretty early on.”
Oh . I don’t know what to say. “Can you tell him I say hi? That I’m thinking of him?”
Wilson looks at me. There’s something in his gaze—something like gratitude. “I’ll tell him,” he says gently.
“And can you tell him our new boss sucks? And that he should come back to work whenever he’s able to?”
Wilson snorts. “Not happening.”
Worth a shot.
Tammy comes back with our drinks. I notice she sets a straw down with mine, but not Wilson’s. “You two ready to order?” she asks, flipping open her notepad and clicking her pen.
I barely read the menu, but I’m craving my usual. “I’ll do the BLT, please. Can I get it with a fried egg added? And then fries on the side. Extra crispy.”
Tammy begins to write down the order, then stops. She just stares at me, her eyebrows furrowed. Confused, I glance at Wilson, who is looking at me with the same expression.
“Yeah,” Tammy says, blinking. “Of course. Uh— the usual for you, Wilson?”
“Yes,” he says, sounding slightly dazed. “Thanks.”
Tammy smiles, then walks over to the register. I watch her punch our order in. Every couple of seconds she glances back at me.
“Is it suddenly a crime to add an egg to a BLT?” I ask.
“No,” Wilson says, drawing out the vowel.
I cross my feet beneath the table and lean back against the booth. “Then what’s with the matching reactions?”
“You ordered my usual,” he says casually, but his eyes are offset with this intensity that makes me shift.
So, Wilson and I happen to have the same taste when presented with a menu overflowing with artery-clogging food. Big whoop. A BLT is, like, an American staple. I doubt he’s the only person who orders that.
I doubt it’s a big deal.
In fact, I doubt it means anything.
“Your go-to order is a BLT with a fried egg?” I can’t help but ask.
He sips from his glass. A bead of water drips down his chin. “With extra crispy fries on the side.”
“And let me guess, you’re going to smother them in ketchup like me?” I ask.
Wilson’s face puckers like he’s sucked on a lemon. “God, no. That’s disgusting.”
I breathe an audible sigh of relief. “Then we’re not that similar after all,” I say, deciding to conveniently ignore everything else. That we both visit this restaurant. We both prefer Cool Ranch Doritos and have the same sandwich order. But aside from those three extremely irrelevant things, we could not be more different. We are night and day. Salt and pepper. Oil and water. Any other analogy that dispels this unknown feeling snaking in right now.
“You drown your fries in ketchup?” Wilson asks.
I nod proudly.
“Let me guess—do you also like pickles?”
“Love pickles,” I say. I am the proud friend who willingly eats everyone else’s pickles at dinner. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Your taste buds are cursed,” Wilson says.
I stab my straw on the table until the paper rips and the plastic pokes through. “Clearly not, since we order the same meal,” I counter.
Wilson watches as I place the plastic straw in my iced tea and take a sip. The collision of sugar and a crisp, cold beverage does things to my body.
“I see you also have no regard for the environment,” he points out, frowning at my straw. The straw Tammy didn’t give to him.
Dammit. I can’t be feeling that Wilson is, somehow, a better—rather, more environmentally conscious—human than I am.
“In my defense,” I begin between slurps, “I’m a big plastic hater. Like, gigantic. But , I have this thing where I don’t like my mouth touching cups that other people’s mouths have also touched. So yes, I occasionally use a plastic straw. But I also shut the water off when I brush my teeth and walk instead of drive, so I’d like to think that makes up for it.” I conveniently leave out that the reason I opt for walking over driving is because I’m too poor to afford a car.
“You do realize you eat off a fork that’s been in about a thousand people’s mouths,” he cruelly points out.
If it’s possible to get the ick over cutlery, I now have it. Wilson must see the grotesque look on my face, because he laughs.
“I really could have gone my whole life without knowing that,” I say, fighting off a wave of nausea. Suddenly my appetite decreases about ten percent. “Actually, I’m surprised that’s something you don’t worry about, Mr. Clean.”
Wilson leans against the booth seat. He rolls his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. “I do worry about it,” he says. “Hence why I order finger foods.”
“Don’t say hence like some middle-aged man,” I say for literally no reason other than to be annoying.
He dismisses me with an eye roll. “We came here to talk about Kenzie. Not my vocabulary.”
I lean across the table, resting my chin on my palm. A sticky substance touches my elbow. “But now that we’re on the topic, I have some suggestions. For one, you always—”
Tammy interrupts with two gigantic plates of food. And by gigantic, I mean they’re at least three times the size of a regular plate. “Two BLTs with a fried egg, with extra crispy fries on the side,” she says, placing a plate in front of each of us. “Enjoy, you two.” With a wink that doesn’t sit right with me, she walks off.
The next few minutes are spent inhaling. I realize I haven’t eaten anything today, aside from a shabby blueberry muffin for breakfast, so I eat with the gusto of a starving man.
“I could write love poems about this brioche,” I say through a mouthful of food.
Wilson, like the dignified human he is, swallows before speaking. “Please don’t,” he says, reaching for a fry.
When I have eaten half the sandwich and a fair share of fries, I wash it down with some iced tea and lean back, rubbing my tummy, which now looks about four months pregnant. “Death row last meal,” I say. “Go.”
To my surprise, Wilson doesn’t even hesitate. “Filet mignon, mashed pota—”
“You did not just say filet mignon.”
Wilson pauses mid-chew. “I did just say filet mignon. And I was about to say mashed potatoes with butter before you interrupted.”
“Would you also like the guards at this hypothetical jail to serve you caviar? Perhaps an aged bottle of pinot grigio?”
He actually thinks about it. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
“New question—how much did you weigh at birth? After the nurses removed the silver spoon.”
I giggle at the joke. Wilson looks like a grumpy little man. “Hilarious. Let me guess your death row meal—chicken nuggets and fries?”
“Yes. Obviously, like any normal person,” I say.
“What about vegetarians? Vegans?”
I wave him off. “I’m a simple gal, William. I need some chicken nuggets, a fat plate of fries, and like, a solid half bottle of ketchup. Maybe a crisp iced tea.”
“Dessert?” he asks, going in for another fry.
“Ouf, that’s a hard one.” Julie is such a great baker that I’ve spent my entire eighteen years doped up on sugar, butter, and semisweet chocolate chips. “Chocolate fudge brownie. No— Wait, chocolate dip doughnut. Or maybe a chocolate lava cake. You know what? All of the above.”
“I’m sensing a common theme of chocolate,” he points out.
A wave of dread washes over me. “Wilson Monroe, please don’t tell me you’re a vanilla guy. Please .”
He sighs. “I’m a vanilla guy.”
“Judas!”
Wilson actually bursts out laughing. I’m wondering if maybe getting him out of Monte’s is the key to unlocking his personality. I feel like I’m looking through a window and the curtains are finally open.
“Chocolate is too sweet,” he says like a crazy person.
“That explains so much. Like, so much. The vanilla, the khakis, the gelled-back hair. It all makes sense now.”
Wilson tilts his head, amused. “You can’t possibly think that makes any sense.”
“It does! Like, okay. You probably track how much protein you eat during the day, text with caps on and proper grammar, and wear slippers in your house. Am I right?”
Something like embarrassment takes over his demeanor. “It pains me to admit that yes, you are.”
I sigh happily, leaning against the cushion. “I can read you like an open book, Willy.”
“Don’t call me that,” he says.
“Now, here’s the real question,” I say. It’s probably time we direct this conversation back to what’s important. “Can you read Kenzie like an open book?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you see the breakup coming?”
At that, he goes silent. “I had been... working a lot,” he says after a moment. “Maybe I wasn’t around as often as I should have been.”
If we’re going to kick off this plan to win her back, I need to learn more about Kenzie. About what she likes and dislikes, how she spends her time. I have to figure her out, right down to the bones. That way, we can start building this back up again.
“Tell me about her,” I say, grabbing my iced tea and sipping as Wilson goes on.
“She’s a business major like me,” he begins. “She wants to move to New York City one day. She gets her nails painted every three weeks and doesn’t drink caffeine, only decaf tea. She’s allergic to hazelnuts, and her longest run was seventeen miles. She somehow doesn’t like the taste of water and always puts flavor packets in it. She’s a Leo and she constantly reminds me of that, even though I don’t really know what it means. She’s...”
He continues, but I’m too stunned to speak. I guess I sort of assumed that Wilson was a shitty boyfriend if he got dumped so easily. Or at least checked out. But maybe he wasn’t.
No, he definitely wasn’t. You don’t remember all those things about a person you never loved.
Now I can see the heartbreak take over his face like a cloud blocking out the sun. It’s more than nostalgia. It’s longing, pain.
“Jackie?” he says, calling me back to life.
“Hi, yes—was not expecting you to hit me in my feels. Geez. Uhm, okay. What kind of things would Kenzie do for you?”
I see him begin to close himself off. “Why?”
“Because people usually love others in their own love language. So the way Kenzie showed you love is probably how she wants you to show her love, too.” I mentally thank Julie for teaching me this last summer when she cried over a basket of chocolate-dipped fruit that Massimo had sent to the house.
Oh—I need to save this for the blog! Mental note: love languages.
I wince when I remember the hundreds of messages that have been piling up, messages that I’ve sort of been avoiding. Wilson has been serving as a disturbingly real reminder that the words I post actually have an impact on someone’s life. That somewhere out there, there’s a person on the receiving end of my advice who is mere inches from potentially having their heart broken. Witnessing Wilson sulk around for days seems to have put a very inconvenient soft spot on my heart.
Although there are people waiting for me on iDiary who need my help, there’s also a person sitting across from me who needs it, too. And yet Wilson seems more pressing.
Tammy arrives at our table to quickly fill up our water. Wilson waits for her to leave before he says, “Uhm, she was always giving me things? Like cookies she baked, or a notebook she saw and thought I’d like. Or if I mentioned I needed a new T-shirt, she’d pick one up without me asking her to.”
I nod, the plan clicking into place. “Gift giving. That’s my sister’s love language, too. Okay, perfect. So we need to plan some extravagant gift for her—”
“No,” Wilson says, cutting me off. “Nothing extravagant. She doesn’t like that. She’s sentimental. All she ever wanted for her birthday was a card, and she’d always remind me to write a long message in it. She even had this box in her closet where she’d save all our things. Like, the coffee sleeve from a café, stuff like that.”
Wilson talking about Kenzie is entirely different from Wilson not talking about Kenzie. One is smiling, happy, with this faraway look in his eyes. The other is sad, slouched, like a flower taken away from sunlight for too long.
“Okay, so we stick to the same plan of buying her a gift, but nothing too fancy. Instead, something that shows her how you remember all her little details. What about a gift basket? You can make it yourself, fill it with all her favorite things, then deliver it to her house.”
“That sounds great, actually,” Wilson says.
“Then why do you look disgusted?”
His nose is all scrunched up.
He crosses him arms defiantly. “I’m not used to you having good ideas.”
“Okay, rude. I suggested two months ago that we get a vending machine for the break room that dispenses candy for free. That was a great idea.”
“Jackie, that’s terrible. At this rate, you’ll lose all your teeth by thirty.”
I shrug. “Then start giving us full-timers benefits so we can actually afford to go to the dentist.”
“It’s not in our budget,” he says like a true boss.
“How convenient.”
Tammy appears again, smiling wide. “Can I grab some to-go boxes?”
“Sure,” I say as Wilson says, “No thank you.”
In less than ten seconds, she’s back with a Styrofoam box. We both groan.
“Don’t give me that face. I have no choice,” I say to Wilson as I shove the rest of my food into this nonbiodegradable hell. We both pay for our bills—is it weird that I expected Wilson to pay for mine?—and leave. We stand outside Wilson’s car, sweating our asses off in the heat.
“So, a gift basket,” he says. “You think it’ll work?”
I hug the box of food to my chest. “It’s a starting point.”
Wilson nods. He grabs his sunglasses out of his pocket and puts them on. “Let’s get back to work. Your lunch break ended eight minutes ago. Don’t worry—I’ll deduct it from your pay.”
And just like that, we’re back.