Chapter 25
I mull over Margie’s little monologue for the rest of the day. It takes up so much real estate in my mind that I autopilot my way home after work. I’m so preoccupied that I almost forget about Lucas coming by to pick up his script. His text reminds me.
I’m outside your building.
I chew my lip and text back.
Rounding the corner now.
I’m casually texting with a TV star like we’re pen pals after I indirectly broke his jaw with my shenanigans. Life is absurd.
I don’t see him until he emerges from the back of a car parked in front of my building.
He’s still handsome, but his face shows signs of losing the battle with The Hole, even with his sunglasses on.
And he looks like he’s lost weight. Probably on account of his jaw being wired shut.
He pulls off the shades with the hand that isn’t bandaged to his mid-forearm.
“Hi,” I say awkwardly.
“Hi,” he replies.
“Alrighty… Let’s go check for your script.” I turn to lead the way into my building and up to my apartment.
“I’m sorry,” he says to my back, “about my behavior on the phone. That wasn’t nice of me. This wasn’t your fault.”
I turn. “I feel responsible. I chose that scene. I didn’t tell you about the hole in the wall.
I didn’t know my neighbor would jump through it, but when he heard what he did…
Funny thing, he actually thought you and I were on a date and— Anyway, I’m sorry, too.
I don’t blame you for verbally flipping me the bird. ”
“Forget about it. My agent had the police report buried. I don’t want any of this getting to the press. You can make it up to me by never speaking of it again. Okay?”
I give him a small smile, and he bares his metal-filled mouth slightly. Beggars can hardly be choosers. I’ll take what acts of grace I can get.
“You look good with braces,” I babble. He shakes his head, but his expression lives somewhere between chagrined and amused.
When we reach my apartment, I warn him about the state of things inside. Please don’t let Jack be home. I can’t handle an awkward confrontation after last night, or an awkward confrontation between him and Lucas. I especially can’t handle both.
Jack is, of course, home.
He’s cleaned up both his place and mine, finally wielding that vacuum he was pining after while his sister slept.
There is no wall left between our apartments.
My heart is in my throat as he exits his bedroom and sees Lucas standing behind me.
I couldn’t read his expression before he noticed Lucas, but now it’s completely shuttered.
“Uh. Hi, Jack,” I say. His gaze is penetrating and aloof. He approaches us, and I clear my throat. “You remember Lucas…”
Jack surprises me, holding out his hand to Lucas. “I’m sorry about what happened. I misunderstood the situation and thought you were—”
I feel Lucas stiffen next to me as Jack approaches. He raises his strapped-up right wrist to show Jack why he won’t shake hands. But then he does something surprising and alarming: he throws his heavy arm over my shoulder and pulls me to his side.
“It’s all right. Apology accepted. You were trying to protect this one.” He gives me an admiring glance as I fix an owl-eyed stare on him. “Just don’t mention it to the media and we’re good.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze. There’s a lusty, banked heat in his eyes.
I’m being used to recoup Lucas’s lost machismo or something.
I don’t like it. But I remain silent because the guy has to drink his meals for another month because of me, and because I think I see something coiled and ready to strike behind Jack’s blank expression.
Jealousy? Or maybe it’s residual dislike.
When you form an opinion of someone that includes “forcibly makes women fellate him,” there’s not much room for growth.
Jack makes himself scarce shortly thereafter.
We find Lucas’s script in the pile of magazines and mail on my kitchen counter, probably all swept up when Jack cleaned my apartment. Lucas rolls it up, clutching it in his fist and shifting awkwardly.
“About before… I should explain,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Look, that guy may have cost me this part.” He holds up the script. “Filming for my show is on ice right now—and he looked like he wanted to launch himself at me all over again when he spotted me with you. You’re not going to give me grief over a little revenge, are you?”
“He didn’t hurt you, Lucas.” I sigh. I want to have sympathy for the man, but right now it feels like I have nothing left to give.
Like my tank is running on fumes. “You fought The Hole, and The Hole won.” I pause.
“But your little stunt was for no good reason anyhow, because he wasn’t even jealous. ”
Lucas snorts. “Sweetheart, you don’t know what you’re working with if you believe that.” He glances down at his watch. “Well, maybe I’ll see you on set sometime. If the show doesn’t get cancelled.” He throws on his sunglasses and gives me one last tight metal smile before heading out.
After Lucas leaves, I hug the idea of me and Jack like a teddy bear, breathing it in and squeezing it to me with all my might.
Playing out the fantasy of giving in after that absurd wakeup.
Of us together. Of me becoming enough of a normal human via therapy to let it happen.
Or maybe the point of therapy is to realize that being sort of not-normal… might be okay, too? Ugh.
Right now, our apartments have merged into one mega-apartment, and I find myself wondering what it looked like back in the day, as one unit. Of what it could become. A bigger kitchen, for sure. Maybe keep the two bathrooms, but move the bedrooms to one side…
I drag my cleaning supplies over to his side of the apartment and scrub at the remnants of tuna fish behind his radiator, gagging a little as I do.
I’m done and thankfully on the floor of my living room, chiseling out little bits of plaster and wood around the edges of the wall we didn’t get with the circular saw, when the door to Jack’s apartment opens.
My heart goes back to its regularly scheduled beating when I realize it’s just Anna letting herself in, her phone to her ear.
“Hey, Penny,” she says and then pauses. “Avery says hi.”
I blanch and recover quickly, smiling a hello, reminding myself to give Avery a talking-to about rebound etiquette, regardless of whether he wants to hear it from me.
She wanders to the kitchen, pulling a soda from the fridge, and then goes into Jack’s bedroom, the phone still pressed to her ear.
I hear her throaty laugh as she closes the door.
Keys jangle again: this has to be Jack. I drop the Avery-and-Anna speculation and get back to scraping like mad.
I see Jack enter from the corner of my eye.
He tosses his keys on his counter and knocks on his bedroom door before heading in, emerging with some wall-work clothes.
After a quick change in the bathroom, he grabs his tools, and I watch with undisguised interest as he carries a stool to the very opposite end of our former wall and climbs on top.
I force my eyes off his ass as he tackles the remnants of wood and plaster dangling from the ceiling.
We work like that, in silence, for what feels like forever. It’s actually less than half an hour.
“How’s it going?” I say, the quiet finally breaking me.
“Great.”
“Seems great. You look overjoyed.” I don’t like me when I’m nervous. I wish I could trade places with Lucas right now. A wired jaw might help me out.
I scrape at a stubborn piece of lath caught in the wall.
Jack moves his stool a foot to the left.
“Have you ever done therapy? Is that the phrase? Done therapy? It sounds wrong. Therapized? Huh. Anyway. My therapy is going well. It’s like cleaning out an attic.
Gotta move the stuff closest to the entrance before you get to the things moldering in the back.
Mouse droppings and whatever. Getting there, though!
Some days it feels really heavy, but others, it’s like I’m lighter?
I’m starting to notice things I didn’t before, too.
Working on tools to shore up boundaries or whatever.
Sense of self. Blah blah blah, you’re not listening. ”
“I’m listening. Good for you.” His tone isn’t at all sarcastic. He’s sincere. Curt but sincere.
“Lucas was trying to make you jealous before. Isn’t that nuts? He was mad about the jaw thing and decided to use me as a prop. D-bag move. Don’t worry, though, I told him you weren’t jealous.”
Jack grunts. The quiet stretches. We don’t talk again until I’m sweeping dust into the dustpan and Jack is unwinding his vacuum cord.
“So, I touched your dong, huh?”
I blurt it out just as Jack is switching the vacuum on. When it starts up, I pray that maybe he didn’t hear me and curse my stupid mouth. The vacuum switches off.
He stares at me and then up at the ceiling. In a superhero flick, this would be the moment he calls forth lightning to smite me.
“‘Dong.’”
“You know, your—”
“I know what you’re talking about. I’m questioning your frat-boy choice of noun.”
Every capillary on my face and neck fills with all the blood it can hold. I feel overheated. A surreptitious glance in the wall mirror confirms that I am, in fact, a lobster.
“Well, whatever. Your winky. That’s what Mom used to call them. ‘That boy just likes you ’cause he hopes you’ll touch his winky, Penny.’” I mimic my mother and close my eyes.
Jack flicks the vacuum back on.
I disintegrate into a pool of mortification and fiddle with the garbage bags of dust, hauling them to the basement despite Jack’s insistence on multiple occasions that he run them down.
I need the escape to clear my head, even if it does come with an eau-du-basement-mildew-and-trash olfactory assault.
When I return, Jack is winding up his vacuum cord.
“Well, g’night,” I say quickly, heading to my bathroom. I am so ready to put this day to bed.
“There are worse ways to wake up, by the way,” he calls out.
I suspect he was saving that particular grenade for my retreat.