9. Jasmine
9
JASMINE
M y gloves are missing.
I’m so nervous I could puke. I have to leave work in fifteen minutes, but Ana?s hasn’t stopped sending me emails all morning. I can’t remember if I packed the right bathing suit. I have two missed calls from Chloe, the matchmaker, even though I checked the prefers to be contacted by email box on the online form. The guy who was on his knees for me in my kitchen told me he “couldn’t do this” and yet I’m a fool and responded to his text about ice skating that very same night. And how did I respond? With a simple “no” instead any of the far more acceptable answers. Answers like, fuck off, go fuck yourself, I hate you, or, my personal favorite, COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW AND FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED.
I push the thoughts out of my mind and go back to looking for my gloves. My beautiful black leather driving gloves with eyelet details along the cuffs. I found them in a vintage shop in the height of summer, and after a good scrubbing with saddle soap they looked like new again. They’re impractical for anything other than scurrying from my door to the TTC but I love them anyway. And now they’re gone. Not in my purse, the overnight bag, the insulated soft-shell cooler, my pockets, my sleeves. They weren’t kicked to the side on the office floor, and they didn’t fall into a dark corner in the communal closet. They’re just gone. Somewhere between the subway and my desk, I lost them and this, more than anything else, might be the thing that absolutely destroys me.
“What are you doing?”
The voice startles me and I jump, banging my head on the underside of my desk. Mortified, I crawl out from beneath it on my hands and knees, and there, above me, Mitchell looms, his face caught between humor and concern. Shit. Now I want nothing more than to crawl right back underneath the desk.
“I’m looking for my gloves,” I say, head tilted back.
He holds his hand out to help me up, but I use the edge of my desk instead.
“I lost them.” To avoid eye contact, I take great interest in removing floor debris from my wool slacks.
“That sucks,” is all he says.
My heart clenches at the lame response. “Yeah.”
I don’t think I ever noticed before how very dull the sound of his voice is. It’s not that he sounds bored , like he’s never been entertained by anything in his life. He sounds boring . Because he is. When we were together, I made it my mission to get to know his interests, and in that time, I learned more about golf than I ever cared to know but…that was it. The man has exactly one interest and it’s one that he shares with grandparents and old white guys. I feel a yawn coming just thinking about it.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
“I have to leave in four minutes,” I say. Besides, aren’t we talking right now?
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he says quickly. Except he knows I don’t have one.
“I’m good, thanks.” I collect the bags I brought with me. I’d wanted to take the morning off to finish packing for this great deception against Nick’s family, but Ana?s insisted I was needed, then acted surprised when I showed up.
“Where are you going?” He follows me from the open-concept office floor to the coatroom without offering to help me with my bags. As a feminist, I try not to hold it against him.
Nick assumed that I was trying to make Mitchell jealous when I pitched him this plan, and I understand why he’d think that. But as potential answers flip through my head like a train station split-flap display, making my ex jealous is truly the furthest thing from my mind. I’d prefer if he never knew another thing about my life, true or not, so I don’t want to say I’m going to my boyfriend’s parents’ house in Muskoka. I don’t even want to tell him I’m going out of town. If I do, he’ll inevitably ask where and with whom.
“To the subway.” It isn’t a lie. Nick keeps his car parked at his boss’s house and it didn’t make sense for him to drive back into the city to pick me up, so I said I’d meet him there.
“When are you coming back?” Mitchell asks, his voice slightly strained, almost whiny, like Jade’s used to sound when I’d tell her she couldn’t watch TV while we ate dinner. For years, I did all I could to make our family like other families. Jade, who at that age didn’t understand why Mom and Dad were rarely around but that when they were, they’d let her do whatever she wanted so they wouldn’t have to parent her, would stomp her little foot and ask Why not? in the whiniest voice she could muster.
I hide my sigh behind the swish of my coat as I pull it on. “Not until Monday, Mitchell. What do you need?”
“We’re still friends? Right?” A genuine frown cuts between his brows as he regards me.
The answer is no, though I’m ready to end this conversation, so I say, “Yes.”
His shoulders relax. “Good,” he says, blowing out a relieved breath. “Cuz I wanted to talk to you about that guy you brought to my engagement party.”
Unease claws its way up my throat, but I swallow it back. “Oh?” I pat my pockets, looking for my gloves before I remember. They’re gone.
“Just like, how well do you know him?” he asks, shifting from one foot to the other. “You guys started dating pretty quickly.”
For a second all I can do is gape. He thinks I jumped into a relationship too quickly?
I almost let this get the better of me until I remember: I’m not actually dating Nick.
Mitchell doesn’t bother waiting for an answer. “You ever just get like…” He pulls a face, like yuck . “A bad feeling?”
The expression mirrors the one he made when we went to Canada’s Wonderland and I asked him if he wanted to share a funnel cake. With a sneer, he mansplained calories to me and reminded me that funnel cakes aren’t keto. He always said he was “on keto,” but I looked up the protocols—because that’s what I do, learn about my partner’s interests—and I was almost positive it would have been scientifically impossible for him to put his body into the metabolic state of ketosis based on the amount of beer he consumed while he golfed.
I have to remind myself that Nick is my fake boyfriend, that he pulled away from me the other night. Like there’s something wrong with me. That I hate how he hasn’t even brought it up, not once. Not to apologize or explain. He’d rather act like it never happened. I wish I could say the same. I have to remind myself of all of this. If I don’t, I might scream at my ex-boyfriend in a coat closet about how that bad feeling he’s getting is probably his instincts telling him that Nick could get me off better than he ever did. Nick’s kisses have made me more wet than Mitchell’s best try.
“A bad feeling about Nick? No.” I gather my bags. Hopefully, the subway won’t be too busy and I’ll get a seat, though there’s a good chance I’ll hit an early lunch rush.
“I don’t want to overstep,” Mitchell says.
There’s no stopping the snort that escapes me.
Unfortunately, this does not deter him. “But I’m a pretty good judge of character and… I don’t know.” He sighs, his shoulders heaving with feigned concern. “It was like he was pretending to like me?” His brow is furrowed in genuine concern, like he can’t grasp the concept. Maybe I’m a better actor than Nick, because I’m also pretending to like Mitchell right now. “But people always like me,” he says, mostly to himself.
With a sigh, I shuffle past him. “I’m sorry, Mitchell. I really have to go now.”
He stops me, his finger hooked through the strap of one of my bags, jolting me backward and making me totter on my high-heeled booties.
“What the—” I clamp my mouth closed before I let an obscenity fly at work.
He grimaces. Mitchell has never been great at meaningful apologies. “Don’t you think that’s a little…”
I yank the bag from his grasp. “A little what?”
“Fake.” The word lands like a slap.
Fake. Nick is fake. My Nick.
I giggle. How absurd. How absolutely comical that my ex-boyfriend, who is more obtuse than a triangle, thinks my fake boyfriend is fake . But when he dated me, he never noticed how fucking fake I was. Fake rich, to impress our co-workers, his family and friends. Fake breasts. Fake interests, fake needs, fake perfection. Fake fucking orgasms.
My giggles stop abruptly, and I swallow to keep the sting of tears at bay. I have spent so long faking it in the hopes that if I try hard enough, I’ll be worthy. I’ll be safe. I’ll be enough.
“Nick Scott is the realest man I’ve ever met,” I say with only the slightest tremor in my voice, before I walk away.
Whatever empowerment I gained from that deflates as I step outside and am hit with a blast of frigid air. I still have to walk to the subway with all these bags. I’m halfway down the block when a man shouts behind me.
“Hey, wait up.”
I hunch my shoulders and move faster. Rule number one of walking in Toronto: never acknowledge street harassers.
“Jasmine, wait,” the man says, closer, huffing and out of breath.
I turn, my bags swinging, and suck in a sharp breath. “Nick?”
His cheeks are pink from the cold or maybe exertion. The snap buttons of his jacket—hip length, fleece-lined, plaid flannel, because of course he only wears plaid flannel—are open and his chest and stomach heave against the white T-shirt underneath.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my stomach twisting. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at your boss’s house. Am I late?” I can’t possibly be late. I set three reminders.
He reaches for me and on instinct I take a step back.
He smirks. “You want to carry all those?”
Oh. I pass him a bag. “Thanks,” I say quietly.
“You’re not late.” He takes another off my shoulder, then nods in the direction I was heading. As we walk to the station side by side, he says, “I assumed you were going to overpack and figured you’d need help carrying your bags.” His tone is teasing and his eyes dance. Before I have time to scoff—even though he is clearly correct—he adds, “Plus, I felt bad for not picking you up.”
An altercation between two cab drivers catches his attention as we wait at the intersection, so he doesn’t notice how I can’t look away from him. Even when I psychically beg him to look at me, he doesn’t turn his chin. It’s probably for the best. In this moment, I think he might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and that thought is probably written all over my face. His throat bobs as he swallows, the move so sexy I try to shove my bare hands into my pockets, bag straps and all, to ensure I will not act on the urge to trace the skin there, close my eyes as the stubble he can never seem to keep off his face roughens the pads of my fingers.
He pulls his gloves off and hands them to me. He must assume my hands are cold. The stairs to the subway station are across the street, but I let him assume and take the gloves, body-warm, leather-soft.
“Thanks.”
“What?” he asks as we descend the stairs, the screech of the train already audible.
“Huh?” Wow. Eloquent.
“You’re staring.”
Shit . I panic. “Don’t you think the subway smells like mothballs?”
Nick shoots me a funny look over his shoulder as he scans his pass and the gate swings open. I do the same, carefully sliding the card back into its easily accessible place in my bag. Hopefully, he’ll forget I said that.
“Generally, it smells like piss and garbage,” he says as we descend another set of stairs, baggage banging against our legs.
We pick up the pace halfway down when we see the train is already in the station, the doors open.
“Yeah. It does.”
He makes it to the door first and stands in it, holding it for me.
“Thank you,” I say, then frown. How many times have I expressed gratitude in the last five minutes? “That’s what I thought as a kid. That it smelled like mothball,” I explain. “The trains especially. I really liked the smell.”
I flush when I’m finished. I’m not sure I’ve ever told a man I was attracted to that before. Why would I? It’s silly and ridiculous and inconsequential. I take a seat on one of the red upholstered benches and Nick stands in front of me, his arm stretched overhead as he holds the railing above us. The hem of his T-shirt lifts, revealing a sliver of skin and dark hair on his stomach. For the rest of the ride, I forget to be nervous, forget to be mad at Mitchell. I even forget about my gloves. We sway and rock with the rhythm of the subway, and I pretend that we could be as real as Nick is.