Chapter 26
The office is quieter than usual. More than one person decided to squeeze in an end-of-summer vacation this week. Meanwhile, I had to come in early for this global call, since not everyone could meet at our regular time. I’ve resorted to creative coping mechanisms.
“If I can interject here…” the Professor says.
I take my highlighter and press it firmly to the square reading “If I can interject” on my handmade Global Call Bingo card. I’m one square away from victory. And from having my soul crushed. All before nine thirty in the morning.
“Before we get this to our localization teams, we really need to talk about the cover for this asset…” he continues.
I peer down. Wants to revisit something already decided on ages ago.
Bingo.
“Anthony,” I interrupt gently, “we already worked through that while you were on vacation, and branding has already reviewed. We really can’t delay things because—”
“I insist that we should. The imagery is not evocative enough. The woman is looking down instead of up. She’s holding a pencil. Does it not convey—”
I need my raise. He is not doing this to me. Not with the finish line fast approaching.
“No, I’m sorry, but I really insist that we move on.
We circulated this for comment three weeks ago.
The regions have weighed in. You were on vacation, but we received approval from Carla, who you had filling in for you.
We’re on a tight deadline, and nice-to-haves like revisiting settled to-do list items after one person returns from vacation are unfortunately not something we can accommodate.
Now, moving to the next agenda item, unless there’s any objection? ”
I don’t give anyone time to object, because I’m positive Anthony would. I railroad my way to the next topic, feeling like I could karate chop my desk in half from the adrenaline rush.
Rochelle comes by my desk, eyes super round with disbelief, after the call ends. “You. Were. Amazing. I was multitasking, but I caught that verbal ass-beating. Good for you!”
I sit back in my chair and feel like I’m showing every tooth in my mouth. “Thank you! Now get me that raise. Ha.”
Rochelle’s expression flickers, probably from shock at my direct demand—even if it is softened by a laugh. “Yep, we’re on our way to trying for it!”
What started as a shit day actually ends up being pretty productive and great.
I shut down Anthony’s nonsense, got as close to demanding a raise as my people-pleasing heart could without combusting, and secured budget approvals to run our first global campaign through the framework we’ve been developing.
And my idea to build the framework in tandem with a real test campaign means that we’ll be ready to roll on a launch way sooner than management was expecting.
I’m feeling myself as I open my front door.
Jack is already home when I get there, arranging two-by-fours along the dividing line between our two apartments. The wall is gone, and the area has been demoed, sanded, and cleaned to the point where The Hole feels like a memory—albeit one that still has my muscles aching.
He glances up at me, then sits back on his haunches, surveying me.
I look my fill right back. He looks rakish.
Handsome, in a rumpled, five-o’clock-shadow kind of way.
He is totally a dark-haired young Harrison Ford right now.
This version of Jack bears an uncanny similarity to the way I first imagined the Pirate Duke, a connection I choose not to examine too closely.
“What’s different?” he says. “You look…excited?”
I have to purse my lips to keep the force of my “fuck yeah!” feelings in check, but they cannot be contained.
With Jack, they don’t have to be. He knows I’m extra.
Plus, it’s not every day I put Anthony in his place.
I’m not doing the usual second-guessing thing, where I agonize after trying to assert myself.
I’m forcing myself to ignore the peacemaking harpy in my brain.
“What’s different is that I demanded the damn chicken sandwich, no mayo. Figuratively.”
His expression is a tangle of confusion and amusement as he stands and towels the dust off his hands. “Amazing. What exactly is a figurative chicken sandwich?”
“I stood up for myself! At work!” I explain about Anthony. Jack laughs at my homemade bingo card and frowns as I recount Anthony’s interruptions.
“Oh, you’ll appreciate this one: ‘Penny, we know you have the best of intentions. It’s just that your intentions are not a match for your knowledge in this arena.’”
“Dick,” Jack murmurs as he approaches.
I stare up at him and nod. “And he says it in a soft voice. He’s like a nasty T. rex dressed up as a friendly brontosaurus. But I finally shut. Him. Down. BOOM!” I laugh out loud, and seized with a sudden urge, I throw my arms around Jack’s neck and give him a joyful hug.
I hear him chuckle in my ear as he hugs me back before swinging me around. “Proud of you. How’s that chicken sandwich taste?”
“Incredible.” I smile up at him, and he sets me down, our bodies sliding against each other as he slowly releases me. His gray eyes darken. The vibe in the room shifts immediately. Dongward.
I clear my throat and brush an awkward hand on his shoulder, removing dust that doesn’t exist. “Back to work!” I crow, turning on my heels with eyes as big as Carmine’s famous meatballs. “I’m gonna change. Be out in a second.”
I take way too long to change, taking the time to do important things, such as lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, and mouthing He’s so fucking hot. UGH to myself in my mirror.
When I emerge, Jack is seated on one of my kitchen stools, looking up different types of trim on his iPad. I hum as I walk around the apartment, checking out my mail and nibbling at my leftover ravioli from the night before.
“Do you mind?”
“That you’re here? Yes. But I figured I don’t have a choice,” I say around a mouthful of pasta.
“Ha. Seriously, though, humming is my biggest pet peeve.”
“Hmm. You the same guy who plays music on repeat to bother your neighbor?”
“Nope. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Humming. I could’ve driven you mental by humming the past few months?”
He nods.
“Well, you’ve revealed your kryptonite now. Foolish.” I waggle my eyebrows. “Dangerous.”
“Maybe I’m learning to trust you.”
I hum out the theme to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and wave my hands like I’m conducting an orchestra. His mouth flattens into an unappreciative line.
“We’re like Highlander,” I say with a grin. “There can only be one happy person in this apartment at a time.”
“Okay… Watching Goodfellas. Referencing Highlander. I’ve heard you throw around a few other references… You were a tomboy, weren’t you?”
“I was a girl who watched what my dad watched. And your whole gender-norms thing is gross.”
“Yeah, yeah. But your dad liked those movies so you like those movies?”
“He watched those movies, I said. Most of them he couldn’t be bothered with.
Highlander pissed him off. I adored it. Bloodsport?
I practiced Van Damme splits all over the house.
He couldn’t stand it.” At Jack’s questioning look, I reluctantly add, “He’d never rent a movie more than once.
He craved novelty. Guess it wasn’t only movies, seeing as how he left his wife for someone else. ”
“Oh.” There is softness in Jack’s eyes. Compassion. For me.
I force a smile. “You’d think he would’ve loved the ones with happy endings, but nope, thrill was gone after that first watch.”
“Stop telling Jack your problems,” Anna says from the doorway of Jack’s bedroom.
She’s been in and out of the apartment every day since her breakup.
Right now she’s in one of his shirts and a pair of shorts.
I freeze, mortified that I inadvertently shared something so personal in front of someone who is pretty much a stranger to me.
I don’t want to examine why I didn’t feel the same about sharing with Jack.
Anna heads to the kitchen and opens the fridge, where she glugs white wine into a regular water glass before slamming the refrigerator closed. “He feeds on that shit. Don’t be surprised if he tries to rescue you, too.”
Jack stands and runs a hand through his hair. “Anna, please go to bed.”
I frown at Anna, questioning. She shakes her head at me pityingly.
“That’s his thing. Haven’t picked up on that yet?
White knight!” I notice for the first time that she’s slurring a little.
“Good old Jack. Pride of the Craig family. Perfect Jack! Lawyer. And he’s always right…
He was right about Seth each and every one of the fifty fucking times he played me.
Loved being right about that, huh? But you’re wrong about Avery, Jack. You don’t know how wrong—”
“Anna—”
“Jack even saved our mom’s life once, from choking. He was sixteen! Who knows the fucking Heimlich at sixteen? Isn’t that amazing?”
“Okay, Anna.”
“Full ride to college, but he worked two jobs anyway to help pay the mortgage. He was working to pay our bills long before that, though, back when he was a teenager and Dad got sick.” She gestures with her glass, wine sloshing over the rim onto the floor.
“Family fixer! When I broke my leg and couldn’t dance anymore, you remember what Mom would tell me?
No, you don’t, because you weren’t there.
It was, ‘Be more like your brother.’ You’re not even human.
You don’t have feelings like normal people.
No time for a girlfriend when you’re a fucking cyborg, racing around saving the day to keep yourself from feeling anything except satisfied at how completely perfect you are. ”
An angry look crosses Jack’s face for a nanosecond.
He ushers Anna back into his room, trying to claim her wine cup.
I wipe up the spilled wine and try not to listen to their raised voices.
Opening his under-sink cabinet to toss the soiled paper towels, I view the fire extinguisher with new eyes.
The giant poison control card on the fridge, too.
He isn’t a hyper-guarded, overprepared weirdo—he just had to grow up faster than he should’ve, had to take care of the people around him.
He still does—still is. Jack emerges a few minutes later. He looks harried.
I feel a pang of sympathy for him. Difficult family members are kind of my thing.
“What was that about Avery?”
“She’s just… She’s wasted right now. Argued with her ex. Ignore her.”
“Is she okay?” I ask.
He nods and rubs at the back of his neck. He looks exhausted. “She’s not doing well with the breakup. And when she’s like this, she’s a little like a leaf in a rainstorm, sticking to whatever solid object crosses her path. Until the go-round.”
He picks up a piece of wood, and I wonder if Anna’s nasty remarks stung. There are worse things than being called a hero, but he looks as upset as I’ve ever seen him. And tired. He’s been on the sofa since the other night when I molested him.
I move to him and still his hand. The touch is like a zap, loading the air around us with crackling energy Nikola Tesla would’ve been impressed by.
I don’t know if I imagine his thumb rubbing my palm, but my breath seizes just the same.
I force myself to speak. “Maybe we avoid kicking up more dust tonight. How about I order Chinese and we watch Bloodsport?”
His skin and mine are touching. I can barely think of anything else. I wonder if he’s thinking of that, too—thinking about the fact that he had his Jake Gyllenhaal in my hand as a result of a different dusty night.
He gives me a wry and resigned smirk before agreeing to my offer.
Not long after, we’re sitting side by side in my living room, polishing off the remains of some damn good General Tso’s and watching the cultiest of cult classics.
“The fact you can quote this movie by heart…” Jack says, shaking his head and tucking back into his bowl.
“What? I’m a cinephile. I’d say that’s one of my better qualities.”
“You’ve got better qualities?”
I hold up my chopsticks. “I have a weapon.”
“Tough talk. What are you going to do? Wait until I fall asleep and handle my… What was that again?” He deploys the dimples. Oh, he has to know what he’s doing. Those are military-grade, surface-to-lady-bits missiles.
I nearly choke.
I fold my napkin demurely on my lap. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jack laughs.
We settle into a cozy kind of silence while we watch the movie, interrupted only by the occasional verbal jab, and later by Anna’s departure.
About halfway through, when he’s returning from a snack break, I murmur, “You know, you’re a lot like Frank here.
” I gesture toward the frozen Van Damme on the screen.
“Protector. At least from what I know of your work and what Anna said.”
Jack’s smile fades, and he flops down onto the sofa. I instantly regret saying anything, and I’m about to press play on the remote when he says, “That make you my Ray Jackson?” The levity in his voice sounds forced as he compares me to the main character’s friend.
“More like your Chong Li,” I say, referencing the primary antagonist. “This apartment is our Kumite.”
Jack’s lip quirks as he surveys me. Then his gaze drops to the bowl of chips in his hands, and he sets it down on my end table. “Maybe life is a Kumite. And when you’ve had to be strong for a really long time—to fight for the people around you—it’s hard to stop.”
He clears his throat. “Give that to me.” He playfully grabs at the remote and presses play before shifting so that he’s lying down. His head rests on a pillow pressed against my thigh, and I fight an animal urge to push his hair off his forehead.
He’s revealed something profound. I can feel it, but I don’t know the right way to react. So I say nothing. We watch the movie, the companionable silence tinged with a little something extra, an edge of disquiet radiating off him. At least for a little while.
When I realize that he’s fallen asleep, I only just resist combing my fingers through his thick locks. Even an innocent touch without consent feels like a huge no-no—especially after the debacle in my bedroom. So I content myself with just watching him.
When he’s asleep, he really doesn’t look much like a gremlin after all.