I wasn’t, but I tapped it anyway.
A new mini game appeared. Little emoji faces scrolled across the screen—happy, tired, embarrassed, bored. I was supposed to tap the one that best matched my current “brain state.” I picked the frowny face. Then I was prompted to choose the one I wanted to achieve.
Emojis suck, I never know what they’re supposed to mean. All I wanted was alpha waves, and that used to be as easy as picking the wordRelaxedfrom a list. Now I was supposed to navigate these dumb smileys.
I stared at the one with the half-lidded eyes and the tiny smile. Was that supposed to be calm? Sleepy? Stoned?
There was another one with stars for eyes, but that seemed like overkill. I didn’t want to become ecstatic. I just wanted tonotbe all keyed up.
I sighed and tapped the one with the little puff of air by its mouth and hoped it was sighing in relief, not exasperation.
Blip clapped his articulated hands together. The background changed to some glittery nebula and the music started its fake-calming loop. A rocket blasted off and hovered there among the stars. I held my breath for a moment and it juddered forward.
While I drifted into the bedroom, the app chirped and buzzed in my ears, distracting me. No cold spot. No flicker of motion. No pressure behind my eyes. Nothing.
I let the rocket crash into an asteroid and just stood there for a minute, staring at the closet door.
The app blared a sad trumpet and flashed: “Ouch! Let’s try again, Space Explorer!”
I locked the phone.
Mood Blaster wasn’t going to help me. Maybe nothing would.
I trotted out every last tool in my toolkit, from white light visualization to a downward dog, and still came out with a bunch of nothing. Intellectually, I thought the apartment might be haunted. But my sixth sense was not in agreement. Especially when the recurring sensation of “someone’s looking at me” turned out to be the nosy stray at the back window. It saw me watching and bolted, just like before. At least one of us knew when to cut our losses.
It was late by the time I headed home. I was tired, I was frustrated, and I was working on that particular headache that comes from staring at a blank wall. Jacob was already home when I got there, and I found myself dreading the part where I’d have to tell him exactly how poorly I’d performed.
Jacob might treat our place like a breeding ground for lost socks, but he doesn’t skip workouts, he doesn’t let the gas tank dip below a quarter, and he definitely doesn’t come home empty-handed after a day in the field.
Maybe he wouldn’t mean to make me feel like I’d dropped the ball—but somehow, he always managed to phrase things in a way that sounded constructive while still leaving me twitchy.“How about…?”“But what if you tried…” “Have you considered…”Yeah. I’d considered. All of it.
But when I walked into the cannery expecting to field some well-meaning suggestions, something was different.
I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Just a subtle shift. A sort of… spaciousness. Like the place had taken a deep breath and was holding it, waiting for me to notice. The clutter was gone. No socks, no scrap paper, no junk mail. The recycling bin, usually bursting at the seams, had been emptied. And the dining room table—which normally served as a dumping ground for bills, half-sorted case folders, and the occasional crusty coffee mug—was completely cleared.
Set, even.
Two plates. Silverware. Actual cloth napkins. And the smell of homemade marinara.
Jacob had cleaned the whole house…and now he was cooking me dinner.
Not because it was a special occasion. But to make me happy.
I found him in the steamy kitchen looking especially tasty in T-shirt and sweatpants with a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Good, you’re home. The water just came to a boil.”
I stared at him for a moment, forgetting to answer.
He turned and looked at me shyly (for him.) “What?”
I slipped my arms around his waist, pressed into his side, and nudged my forehead against his temple, thinking that I could already feel myself unwinding—and this was all so much better than trying to pick the right emoji so as not to crash my rocket ship. “Nothing. Just feels good to be home.”
I’d only meant to catch and release…but then paused to check the hard plane of his abs, simply to remind myself how nice they felt.
Jacob chuffed out a laugh. “You must be starving.”
“Guess so.” I slid a hand down his waistband.
I hadn’t intended to start groping. But, hey, I’m only human. His glutes are firm and round and perfect, in a way you might miss beneath the structure of a suit. But when there’s nothing hiding his ass but a stretch of jersey knit, it’s hard to notice anything else. As I fondled he went still, considered, and then casually reached over to turn down the burner so the water couldn’t all boil off.
