“This is your house too, Sadie. You can have whoever you want over.” He grabs his own cup of coffee and stands. “I’ll get out of your way.”
I turn to tell him he’s not in our way, and even welcome to join, but he’s already disappeared down the basement stairs.
“Is it possible for the eyeballs to physically bleed? Because there must be torrents of blood streaming down my face right now.” I throw down the red pen that’s been gripped in my hand for the past three hours and collapse into a heap, my head resting on top of the dining room table.
“Bitch, please, this is nothing.” Gemma continues to move through papers like some kind of high-speed teacher animatronic.
“How do you do this every weekend?” Sitting up, I bury the heels of my palms in my aching eyes.
“The pay is fantastic.” Gemma’s voice drips with sarcasm as she hands me a new stack of quizzes to grade.
“Where can I vote to give teachers all the raises? Like every raise. You guys should be paid like goddamn CEOs.”
“Preaching to the super-broke choir, my friend.” She shoots me an evil smile. “Aren’t you glad you now live within walking distance and can help me whenever I need it?” She finishes up the essay she’s grading, marks a score at the top of the paper, and moves on to the next. You’d think our piles would be smaller after all this time, but I swear, they must be self-multiplying, because the stacks just keep providing us with new torturous papers to grade.
“Damn. Are you guys still working?” Jack emerges from his basement cave for the first time since I let Gemma in. “Should I make some more coffee?”
“Yes,” we both say at the same time.
My stomach rumbles so loudly both Gemma and Jack stop what they’re doing and look at me. “I may have forgotten to eat today.” I dig my phone out from under a teetering stack of grammar quizzes. “What shall we order?”
Jack fiddles with the espresso machine, pushing a bunch of buttons until dark liquid gold starts to pour out. “Why don’t you let me go pick something up for you guys?”
Gemma pauses her intense scribbling to shoot me a look out of the corner of her eye.
“Thanks, Jack, but you don’t have to do that. I can get delivery.” I open up Postmates and see what’s around.
He dumps the brewed espresso in a tall glass with ice, adding vanilla flavoring and milk before setting it in front of me. “I don’t mind. I actually need an excuse to get out of the house for a minute. Gemma, can I make you some coffee?”
“A plain iced latte would be great, thank you.” Gemma bestows a sugar-sweet smile upon Jack, while at the same time kicking me so hard under the table I’m going to have a bruise tomorrow.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I mutter under my breath.
She gives me a look. A we-are-so-going-to-be-talking-about-this-the-moment-he-walks-out-the-door look.
Jack brings over Gemma’s coffee. “You guys good with sushi?”
We both nod.
“Great. Sadie, you wanna just text me what you guys like, and I’ll run out and pick something up?” He shoves his hands in his pockets and it creates this low-key adorable-awkward effect.
“Sounds good.”
“See you in a few.” He gives us one of his signature half waves before grabbing his keys and heading out the front door.
Gemma stares at me for a solid minute, essays and quizzes totally forgotten. “He is in love with you.”
I roll my eyes and take a long sip of my homemade iced vanilla latte. “Don’t be ridiculous. The man isn’t used to living with a woman or having friends or leaving the house, so his behaviors come across as baffling, but really, he just doesn’t know any better.”
“Sadie. The man just made us lattes and is now going out to pick up dinner. And he just, like, offered to go do it. We didn’t even have to ask.” She nudges me with her elbow. “At the very least, he wants to bang you.”
“Not any more than any other person who likes women and has excellent taste.” I pull a new stack of papers over to my side of the table, so desperate to end this conversation I’ll happily go back to scoring seventh graders’ grammar. Because there’s no way Jack Thomas feels anything even close to love for me. Most of the time I’m not sure he even likes me. The man runs out of the room after a mere five minutes of conversation. It’s as if he can only manage the bare minimum of politeness before needing to be free of me. He probably goes to bed every night wondering why the fuck he ever let me move in.
Gemma sips from her coffee, a knowing smirk plastered all over her face. “I like him.”
“Jack’s a great roommate.”
“He’s adorable.”
