Nine #2
Jude glanced in his rearview. “Do we really need to talk about this?”
“Seems to me like she’d be fine with getting back together.”
Jude let out a groan. “I know,” he murmured, so softly I almost didn’t hear. “She—she wanted to get married.”
I burst out laughing. “And you didn’t? Damn, don’t hate the player, hate the game!” Jude wasn’t finding any of this as funny as I was. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.”
Jude frowned as he glared through his windshield, eyes glued to the road.
“But, seriously, tell me why you didn’t want to marry a gorgeous heiress to a fortune who adores you and calls you Pooh Bear?
” On paper, Kenzie had it all. Always did.
Gorgeous, rich, magnetic. She was untouchable.
“Wait. Don’t tell me. She had some weird kink where she wanted to call you ‘Daddy’!
” I mimicked her singsongy voice, even as I imagined Kenzie in a transparent white negligee with feathered trim holding a teddy bear and crying out, “Daddy’s home! ”
Jude burst out laughing. “Ew! No!” Jude managed to become serious again.
“But for the record, I will not talk about anything personal like that. My mama raised me up right.” Jude sounded like an uptight gentleman from the Regency era.
It was kind of annoying, but also kind of admirable at the same time.
“Fine.” I sighed. I glared at Jude’s profile. If I stared at him long enough, maybe I could wiggle into his mysterious genius mind and figure him out. “Give me a non-bedroom reason why you didn’t want to marry Kenzie.”
Jude sent me another sidelong glance, pulling his attention from the road. “You really want to know?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
“You’re not just looking for another thing to tease me about?” We glided by another Gilded Age robber baron lake house, set back on a rolling green estate.
“I mean, yes, of course I’m looking for another thing to tease you about.” Teasing Jude was one of my favorite pastimes, next to punching the mayor.
Jude laughed a little, despite himself. “Fine. Well, I love Kenzie, but I was never in love with her.”
“What does that mean?” I knew I possessed the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old.
I wasn’t even 100 percent sure I’d ever really been in love, probably because I avoided real relationships as much as I avoided mushrooms. I wanted easy and uncomplicated, like Spider-Man Mateo, men who were supposed to stay out of my hair and not ask me for anything.
Jude sent me a quick glance. “Loving someone is passive. It’s like loving a piece of art, or a car, or a book.
You love it, but it’s not part of you.” He focused his attention back on the road.
“Being in love with a person means that love is in you. They’re your best friend.
It’s a bond that’s active, that’s a living, breathing kind of love.
It means that no matter how dangerous the world is, they’re always your safe spot, your place to be 100 percent authentically yourself, flaws and all.
Being in love means you’ve found someone who fits you perfectly, that your odd pieces fit their odd pieces, and that somehow, your oddball quirks and foibles together make a better person than the one you were alone.
It doesn’t mean you found someone that completes you.
It means you found someone who just accepts you completely. ”
“Did you find that in a meme?”
“Very funny. Can’t a man just have some thoughts on love?”
I’d never in my life thought Jude would have a thesis about love.
This was the kind of deep thinking about emotions that I would’ve sworn Dr. Cheese never did since I thought he preferred formulas to human connection.
Yet, he’d thought about it quite a lot. A lot more than I had.
Emotions were icky, like cooties, and I tried to avoid them at all costs.
“So, how did you know Kenzie couldn’t be this one? This living, breathing thing you’re talking about?”
“No comment,” Jude said.
“What? Hang on. You can’t say ‘no comment’! What the hell was that?” I gave Jude a shove with my elbow.
“Hey. Ow. That hurts!” He rubbed his arm gingerly.
“Is it a sex thing? Are you going to have to defend Kenzie’s honor if I ask any more questions?”
“No,” Jude said, quickly, as we came to a blinking stop sign. Even though no one was around, he came to a full stop, and I swear he counted a full three seconds. “She just wasn’t the one.”
“And you know that because…” My brain whirled. The answer came suddenly, out of the blue, like a lightning bolt. “You know because there’s someone else. Someone you are in love with.”
Jude went dead silent. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned pale. He refused to look at me.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” I squealed, delighted.
Jude said nothing. I wasn’t used to Jude being anything but annoyingly overconfident. This quiet, chagrined Jude was new and exciting.
“Oh my God! I am!” I clapped my hands in delight.
This was better than Pooh Bear. Dr. Cheese had a crush.
Bigger than a crush. He was in capital-L Love.
“Tell me! Tell me, who?” My mind raced to try to figure out who in town it could be.
There weren’t exactly a plethora of options.
“The cute barista at Good to the Last Drop? The hostess at the golf resort?”
Jude sighed and rolled his eyes to the Volvo’s visor. I wasn’t even close.
“Are you on Spark? Let me see your app! I’ll figure this out.”
“No.” Jude patted away my hands. “You are not looking at my phone.”
I crossed my arms across my chest, temporarily defeated. “Wait. Does Oscar know?” If he did, I could get it out of him. Sure, I might have to twist his thumb back to wrest him into compliance, but…
Jude stayed resolutely silent, not saying one way or another.
“I thought you two shared everything in your bromance,” I said. “Like deep dark secrets and cheat codes to Fortune Fated and all those dumb games you play.”
Come to think of it, their online gaming time might just be what has kept them together all these years, headphones on, mowing down alien invaders with glowing flamethrowers while they battled to upgrade their armor into shiny new outfits.
They might be polar opposites in life, but they agreed on the importance of taking out the bosses and upgrading their laser shooter thingies. They both nerded out whenever a new Fortune Fated upgrade dropped, when Oscar turned into the nerd Jude is every day of the week.
“So Oscar doesn’t know.” I tapped my finger on my chin, thinking. “Are you sneaking around? Is this a covert operation?” I slapped a hand across my mouth. “Oh my Lord. Is she married?”
“No!” Jude shouted. “I wouldn’t date a married woman.”
I snapped my fingers in disappointment. “I thought I had the beginnings of a hot scandal.”
“Can we talk about anything else? I want to know more about the budding romance with Spider-Man.” Jude arched a superior eyebrow. “Is he moving into your Airstream? Are you going to have little spider mutant babies?”
“Ew. No. Never,” I scoffed. “That’s not our vibe. Spider-Man was… is… casual. He was supposed to stay in Chicago.”
“And that peacock detective in his designer clothes, which, by the way, how does he afford on a civil servant’s salary?”
“Russo?”
“No, I mean the other guy who keeps checking out his own reflection in every window he passes. Yeah. Him.” Jude shook his head. “You know, he’s into you.”
I felt my face flame. “Really? Why do you say that?” Please, tell me more.
“You mean aside from the fact that he stares at your ass all the time?”
That kind of made me feel delighted. “Are you going to give him the don’t-break-my-sister’s-heart speech? You know that’s Oscar’s job.”
“We both know that man will never do it.”
Jude and I shared a snicker at Oscar’s expense. Oscar plugged his ears when either Olivia or I talked about dating. He worked so hard to believe we weren’t anatomically correct that he’d cover his own eyes anytime he accidentally opened a cabinet and found a tampon box on the other side.
I studied Jude’s profile. “You really don’t like Russo, do you?”
“No, I do not.”
“Aside from his clothing choices—why?”
“For one, his alarming amount of hair product,” Jude said in a derisive tone. “And I’ve just got a feeling. Call it a hunch.”
“I didn’t think you believed in hunches,” I said. “I thought you believed in the scientific method.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he said. “Besides, where is the excessively manscaped detective himself?”
“Investigating,” I said.
“Without you?” Jude said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah. He kicked me to the kids’ table and is off doing grown-up stuff.” If I sounded bitter about it, that’s because I was.
Jude just chuckled. “You’ve always belonged at the adults’ table,” he said. “If he didn’t want you around, that’s because he’s just worried you’ll make him look foolish. He puts on a show to be intimidating, but that’s just because he’s insecure.”
“Says the man who sounds like he’s intimidated.”
“Me? Please.” Jude made a gagging sound. “Russo is just one of those guys who likes to make himself look stronger by making other people feel weaker. It comes from a place of fear.”
“Did you learn that from the poster in the high school counselor’s office?”
“Hey!” Jude cried.
“Sorry. Low blow even for me.” I felt a tingle of guilt.
“Yeah. Geez! And it wasn’t a poster, it was a pamphlet. Get it right,” Jude joked. That’s the thing about Jude. It’s hard to really offend him. Thank goodness. Because I usually end up offending everyone.
I giggle. “Fair enough.”
My phone pinged. My heart ticked up. I didn’t want another Ready or not… I grabbed it, hoping for a message from Russo. Instead, it was another message from Jared’s lawyer. I groaned.
“Bad news?” Jude glanced over at me.
“I’m going to be sued,” I said. Then I told Jude all about Jared Gatta, and how he had legal representation and it was only a matter of time before I’d be named in a lawsuit.
“You don’t know that,” Jude said. “Maybe he just wants to talk to you.”