20
Jack is sitting on my sofa, his hands steepled between his knees in front of him. He’s wearing jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, stained from his wall-demo efforts. I sit beside him as the police and everyone else clear out.
We’re quiet for a long while.
“Wow,” I say. I clamp my mouth shut, fighting the urge to babble nervously. God only knows what I’d say after everything that happened tonight.
Jack makes a choked sound in the back of his throat that sounds like agreement.
I can’t do silence anymore. If he’s not going to say something, I have to. “I’m going to have to bake Gence some cookies. He’s really angry,” I say, latching onto the one thing I can maybe fix right now.
“He’s diabetic. Type two.” Jack doesn’t look up at me as he says it.
I absorb that and swallow a horrified gasp.
Of course Gence is diabetic. He probably thinks I’ve been trying to kill him this whole time.
I cover my face with my hands. The image of Jack in that sheet, my spooky savior, flashes through my mind, and that laugh bubbles up again, this time spilling out past my fingers.
“What?”
I drop my hands and look up. “You’re literally the worst white knight ever.”
“I wasn’t trying to be your fucking white knight, Penny,” Jack snaps, and there’s real bitterness to his voice. “I was trying to save the guy. From you.”
The bubble of laughter inside me deflates, and it’s punctuated by a painful lurch in my chest. “What?”
He shakes his head, casting his eyes heavenward. “Okay, I guess I’ll spell it out for you. I heard you and that guy in your apartment, and I decided to warn him against making the mistake of getting mixed up with you.”
Something’s off. I don’t know Jack that well, but all of our hallway sparring has made me surprisingly adept at figuring out when there’s another layer to his words—something he’s trying to bury beneath the facade.
He’s trying to project frustration, anger, contempt.
But underneath that? I hear shame, pain…
maybe jealousy? I don’t know. His eyes lack the spark that lights them up every time we fight; instead, they’re darting and shifty, trying their hardest not to look at me.
I don’t think Jack was trying to sabotage a date.
His words when he was fumbling with the sheet come back to me.
He genuinely thought I was in trouble, and he was genuinely trying to save me.
My heart squeezes. I want to climb onto his lap and pull his stupid lips down to meet mine.
I want to push him down, straddle him, and—
He notices me staring at him and snaps, “Stop looking at me.”
Okay, so he’s still a dick.
As I contemplate what to do with all of this, my stomach breaks the silence by rumbling something fierce. Of course, now that the apartment is finally the quietest it’s been in months.
“Hungry?” Jack asks, snarky as shit.
I want to respond with something tart (“No, my stomach’s learning a new language”), but since Lucas joined me and Avery while I was still nibbling, I never ate a proper dinner. My fridge is empty, and I’m fucking famished. After everything that happened tonight, what more does a girl have to lose?
“Actually, yeah. I could eat,” I say.
Jack is quiet for a moment, but then he says, almost sheepish, almost a question, “There’s a diner down the block.”
I squint one eye at him. I’m well aware of the places to eat in my neighborhood. Does he think this is news to me? Or is he thinking of coming with? I stand cautiously, and he stands, too. That answers that.
As we make our way down the creaking wood stairs, I find myself staring at his back, at the ridges and bulges of his shoulders, at his solid form.
An uncomfortable warmth spreads through me at the thought he was trying—so clumsily—to defend me.
I was warning him off be damned. A voice in the back of my mind reminds me that he’d have to be a total villain to hear what he heard and not try to stop it. I shush it.
Let me have this. Just for a bit.
The diner is swathed in silver and shades of red and reeks, in the best, most delicious way possible, of grease.
We grab a booth, and a waitress approaches to hand us menus.
I notice her eyes taking us in—me still in my work dress with wild hair in tangles down my back, and Jack in his construction clothes, patches of white dust all over.
To her credit, or maybe because she’s seen plenty of weird crap on her late-night shifts, not even an eyelash flutter betrays her thoughts.
“Pancakes,” Jack says, without cracking the menu open. “And a vanilla shake. No whipped cream.” I raise a brow, and he shrugs. “Comfort food.”
“Pastrami Reuben. Dressing on the side. With french fries,” I say to the waitress, raising my voice to be heard over the outburst of raucous laughter from some college kids at a nearby table. I hand her both menus. “Comfort food,” I agree.
“For an O-lineman.” Jack’s knee bounces under the table, the subtle vibration of the table and his shifting giving it away. He has a pensive look to him, too.
“What is it?”
“Do you think your actor broke his jaw?” Jack asks.
“Oh, are you afraid you went too far trying to ruin my date? You sure saved him from me. Only took breaking his face to do it.”
His jaw tightens, and I sigh.
“He isn’t my actor, and it wasn’t a date.
Poor guy was just picking up a script. And I don’t know if he broke his…
God, I hope not.” Culpability stings its way through me.
I pluck a sugar packet from the container on the table and toy with it.
The babble wins a hard-fought battle. “If he did, I can always just break your girlfriend Yelena’s arm or something. Then we’d be even.”
Jack’s knee goes still. His expression is almost entirely blank, except for a slight shake of his head. And then, “I’m not with Yelena.”
“She was at your place. Late.”
“Finishing the appraisal. I had to beg her to come and do it outside of work hours because I had a financing thing to contend with.”
It’s as if a boulder guarding the entrance to my heart has been shoved aside, allowing radiant heat to seep in.
I have to stop myself from beaming with joy.
Instead, I force a casual tone. “You shouldn’t feel bad.
Just like me scaring Yelena through The Hole was partially on you, this…
This was on me. I didn’t know you’d be there.
Or, if you were, that you’d still be up.
” But I’d hoped because I’m immature and wanted you to be jealous.
“And even then, I didn’t think about the stuff we were saying, really, or what it might sound like to someone overhearing. ”
“You didn’t think I’d still be up? When you told your mom—” Jack stops talking abruptly and wipes a hand over his mouth. “I was demoing the wall and…lost track of time. And you can’t absolve me of blame. That fight—”
“First of all, the only fights I saw were between you and a sheet, and between Lucas and The Hole.”
“Hilarious,” he says flatly.
“And second of all…I’m not trying to absolve you of guilt.
I’m just owning up to my part. I chose the scene we read.
At random, but still. I…” I grimace and trail off.
I look down at my phone on my lap, noting that Margie has called.
I make a mental note to call her back and type out a quick text to Lucas, who will probably regret putting his number in my phone back at La’s:
I hope you’re okay. Let me know what they say at the hospital. It’s Penny, by the way.
When I raise my eyes, Jack is watching me intently. I sigh. “So, yeah. Not all on you. Although this wouldn’t have happened if you’d kept your promise not to listen through the wall anymore.”
He grunts.
I bite back a smile. “I’m not just talking about you listening when Lucas was there. You heard me talking to my mom?”
“I wasn’t trying to. I told you I’d make an effort not to listen. Kind of hard, though, when you’re constantly blasting your phone on speaker and you’ve got the vocal subtlety of a bullhorn. Why did you tell her you’ve been with the actor for months if you’re not dating?”
“I didn’t. I never said Lucas’s name. I made up a relationship so she’d stop trying to set me up. It was just a coincidence that Lucas came back with me to pick up his script.”
Our food arrives, and I throw myself at my sandwich with orgasmic enthusiasm, eating my feelings with abandon. Jack pauses in the process of cutting up his pancakes and stares. My mouth is full, so I give him a defensive look. He suppresses a smile.
I chew, slowly, and narrow my eyes at him.
“Even though it wasn’t technically a fight, I still feel bad,” he finally says, around a bite of pancake.
“Brawling, even with a sheet”—he stops my taunting in its tracks—“is not something I’m used to.
I think the last time I hit anyone at all was in a college bar fight I didn’t start.
That’s the Moth thing I mentioned. The scar on my chin.
” He chews and looks contemplative. “Anyway, I don’t like the feeling. ”
“I would’ve thought you brawled constantly with that mouth of yours.” I take another bite of Reuben.
“I’m big enough it doesn’t encourage a ton of that.” He dips his pancake into a little pool of syrup. “And I’ve always been more of a champion-the-underdog sort anyway. Bullies tend to back down pretty quickly.” He smirks. “Except you.”
I snort and swallow my food, wiping a strand of hair out of my face. “I’ve bullied you? Because of you, I’ve had to redo at least twenty loads of laundry.”
“You put a gigantic purple dildo in the dryer with my whites. Do you know how awkward that conversation was with Gence? His wife was scandalized. Thing kept slamming up against the glass like a fucking sledgehammer.”
I snort-laugh. That trip to Velvet Whisper set me back ten bucks, and I never knew if that investment paid off.
“Laugh it up.”
“Whatever. At least I didn’t steal your underwear, pervert.”
Jack draws on his shake straw and stops. “That wasn’t me.”
“Right. Then who?”
“I have absolutely no clue, but I haven’t stolen any underwear.”
I absorb that, unsure of whether or not to believe him.
He sets down his shake, and the devil in Ms. Huff decides to dip one of my fries in it and scarf it down. The sweet-and-salty combo of French fry and milkshake is one of my childhood faves. At his look, I blush.
“Sorry. I should’ve asked before—”
He snatches a fry from my plate. “Didn’t know we were sharing is all.” He gamely dunks the fry in the shake, but his face shows he isn’t a fan.
I smile, about to tuck into my sandwich again when he lifts his milkshake and tips it in my direction, the straw not far from my mouth.
The mood shifts, slowing until the drunken disorderliness around us becomes white noise.
I open my mouth, lean forward, and wrap my lips around his straw.
I watch him as I take a pull, sucking hard, feeling the milkshake cool and coat my tongue.
There is a strange intimacy to this shared straw that sets my heart skittering around my chest for purchase.
I sit back, running my tongue over my lips, watching him watching me.
I clear my throat. “Thank you,” I say, simply. His attention is fixed on me, his eyes unreadable, and I feel something shift inside me, creaky from disuse.
We grab the check and then walk back, the quiet and the dark reminding me a bit of our time on the hangar deck at the Vaughn party. But this silence is a lot more companionable.
“So, was this the worst date you’ve ever been on?” he asks suddenly.
“Didn’t realize we were on a date.” Jack doesn’t look at me, but I see his smile in the dim light. It fills me with a warm glow. “No. This wasn’t the worst.”
Jack gives a little laugh. “What was the worst?”
I blush, even in the dark. “It’s bad… Okay, so this was after college.
Don’t judge me. I was wearing a booze bra…
where you can smuggle booze into places, and it makes your boobs look bigger?
I was broke! I didn’t want to assume he’d pay for me.
And…I don’t know why, but I decided to get the biggest honking cup size they made.
I was a little less secure in those days.
To this day, I still don’t know how, but I sprang a leak in one of the cups.
I was wearing white. The guy pretended not to notice, bless him, but between the cup differential and the— Stop laughing! Fine. What’s yours, then?”
“Worst date…besides this one?”
“Hmm.”
“Okay…worst date… None, actually. I’m pretty amazing.”
I push at him, but he doesn’t budge. He does chuckle, though.
“Fine. I went to dinner with this girl, and halfway through her entrée I mentioned something about it being tax day, and she freaked out because she hadn’t filed her taxes or an extension, insisted she had to go… I ended up going back to her place and doing them for her in QuickBooks.” He shrugs.
“Oof. You’re a fixer, huh?”
“Yeah… Force of habit, maybe.”
“Who fixes things for you?” I say it in a funny way, but a strange look comes over Jack’s face.
We reach our building, and he pulls his keys out, letting us in. When we’ve reached our landing, I find my stomach knotting up, unsure where we go from here.
“I need sleep. But… You’re going to be okay alone? I mean, joking aside, this was all kind of intense,” Jack says.
Okay alone? I’ve always been okay alone.
His concern warms me. It makes me want to rest my head on his shoulder, dip my tongue in the shell of his ear, bite his lobe. The whole tableau, with the swashbuckling move through The Hole, and the non-fight… It was all a little too Pirate Duke on crack for me.
And yet. I only just started therapy. Wendy may have had a point about hard times not being a deal-breaker, but that doesn’t mean I’ve magically healed and stopped being a roadblock to healthy relationships.
I shake my head at the thought, then nod vigorously when I realize his frown has grown. He mistook my headshake. “I’m fine, Jack. Thanks.”
We unlock our respective doors. I look up at him, pausing before heading in.
“Night,” he says. I give him a small smile.
And then I take in the mess of my living room. My sanctuary is a fucking disaster. I kick at a broken coffee-table leg as I lumber through the destruction. There is a giant red splotch on my rug—Lucas’s wine spill—which I didn’t register earlier. My sofa is covered in plaster.
I sigh and glimpse Jack through The Hole as he disappears into his bedroom.
My inner romance-novel aficionado tells me to stuff my worry over my perfect little apartment and my emotional damage for a bit; there are more pressing items to unpack at the moment.
I rush to my bedroom in a daze, replaying things in my mind as I get undressed.
My last thought as I drift off is that Prince Charming on a white horse has nothing on Jack Craig charging through a hole in the wall.