“How very categorical and yet incorrect of you,” he states.
“You’d rather we pretend it isn’t so?” she challenges.
“I wonder how you’d like it if I made broad statements about women?” he counters.
“What broad statements would those be, Jack?” she queries coyly.
“That’s a trap, Jack,” I warn. “Stop now while you’re still alive and kicking.” I glance at Jess and solidly turn the conversation ontoher. “Have you gone through your messages? I’m sure you must have hundreds.”
“Not yet, but,” she says, lifting her glass, “another one of these, and I should be ready.”
Jack, however, is never ready. When Jess and I prepare to huddle up to read her messages, he turns on ESPN without the volume and sips his wine. I guess girls’ night isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’re not one of the girls, but looks can be deceiving. While some might think him uninterested, I know better. Jack is here for me, not Jess and her work project. If I trip into what he sees as bad advice trouble from Jess, he’s here to catch me. That’s called friendship, and as it should be, it’s familiar, warm, and comfortable, like a favorite sweater that never grows old but does become cozier.
As for Jess, she’s wholly focused on her mission to clear as many messages as she can and find the golden gooses, as she calls them. “You sound like my mother,” I tease her.
“Jeez,” she murmurs. “That’s uncalled for, Mia.”
I laugh and eye her remaining messages, unable to stop myself from mentally plucking through them for familiar names. Names like “Adam.” But Adam is not in Jess’s messages at all. The insecure, self-destructive person that I am cannot help but decide that means Adam believes Jess wouldn’t give him the time of day. The man has a cartoon head as a photo.
For the next half hour, Jess reads and deletes, answering no one. We’re almost to the end of her list when a message window pops open on her screen from, of all people, Kevin.Hi Jess, it reads.
Jess glances at me. “He won’t respond to you, but he’s going around you to me?”
“Who?” Jack asks, moving to sit across from us, on the coffee table.
My lips are tight. My shoulders, too. “Kevin,” I murmur, watching the box as I wait for whatever else he’s typing. Words appear, and my vision hyperfocuses:I contacted Mia again, and I told her she looksbeautiful, but I have to be frank. She is who she is because you make her that person. It’s not Mia I want to get close to again. It’s you, Jess.
Jess shuts her MacBook with a solid thud. “Okay, enough of this. The idea was to de-stress you tonight. Screw dating sites. They’re my work project. That’s all.”
A fist forms in my belly. “Open your Mac, Jess.”
“What just happened?” Jack demands, his voice calm but punched with insistence.
“Kevin just hit on Jess,” I reply, reaching for Jess’s computer.
Jack curses under his breath, when Jack generally does not curse. He is, after all, unlike Akia, a stereotypical, quiet librarian, the geeky type. I like that about him. I also like that he’s upset now, upset for me, that he understands how intensely I’m losing my mind in my head right now.
She holds on to it. “He is out of your life for a reason.”
“She’s right, Mia,” Jack chimes in. “Let it go.”
“Let me just be clear with both of you. I’m not going tolet this gountil I read whatever else he has to say to you, Jess.”
Jess casts Jack a desperate, pleading look, and he sighs, scrubbing his jaw. “You’re not going to win,” he states. “We both know it.”
Jess draws a breath and presses her lips together, slowly easing her grip on her MacBook to open the lid. Once she’s signed back into the dating app, Jack slides into the seat beside her. On another occasion, the three of us here like this would feel like an accomplishment. Now it just feels like my funeral. Kevin’s message reappears on her screen, but there’s nothing more added.
“How do you want me to reply?” Jess asks.
I chew on my bottom lip. What do I want her to say? I just, literally just, reminded myself how much I don’t regret breaking up with Kevin. This only serves to validate that point. I suck in air through my nose,reach across her, and shut her MacBook. “Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything, but thank you for humoring me and offering.”
“I wasn’t humoring you, sweet pea,” she says softly, a nickname she’s randomly called me for a decade. It all began with my love for Popeye cartoons and my wish that something as simple as spinach could make one feel strong. “You’re my sister from another mother,” she adds. “I can’t believe he put this between us.”
“Let’s watch a movie,” Jack suggests. “I’ll even agree to a chick flick.” He glances over Jess to me. “But please don’t say J.Lo’sMarry Me. Icannot.”
I liked that movie,I think, but a chick flick is the last thing I want to watch right now. “What’s on the top ten on Netflix?”
I reach for the remote with every intention of dictating what comes next, at least on the TV.
