“Yeah… Force of habit, maybe.”
“Who fixes things for you?” I say it in a funny way, but a strange look comes over Jack’s face.
We reach our building, and he pulls his keys out, letting us in. When we’ve reached our landing, I find my stomach knotting up, unsure where we go from here.
“I need sleep. But… You’re going to be okay alone? I mean, joking aside, this was all kind of intense,” Jack says.
Okay alone? I’ve always been okay alone.
His concern warms me. It makes me want to rest my head on his shoulder, dip my tongue in the shell of his ear, bite his lobe. The whole tableau, with the swashbuckling move through The Hole, and the non-fight… It was all a little tooPirate Dukeon crack for me.
And yet. I onlyjuststarted therapy. Wendy may have had a point about hard times not being a deal-breaker, but that doesn’t mean I’ve magically healed and stopped being a roadblock to healthy relationships.
I shake my head at the thought, then nod vigorously when I realize his frown has grown. He mistook my headshake. “I’m fine, Jack. Thanks.”
We unlock our respective doors. I look up at him, pausing before heading in.
“Night,” he says. I give him a small smile.
And then I take in the mess of my living room. My sanctuary is a fucking disaster. I kick at a broken coffee-table leg as I lumber through the destruction. There is a giant red splotch on my rug—Lucas’s wine spill—which I didn’t register earlier. My sofa is covered in plaster.
I sigh and glimpse Jack through The Hole as he disappears into his bedroom. My inner romance-novel aficionado tells me to stuff my worry over my perfect little apartment and my emotional damage for a bit; there are more pressing items to unpack at the moment. I rush to my bedroom in a daze, replaying things in my mind as I get undressed.
My last thought as I drift off is that Prince Charming on a white horse has nothing on Jack Craig charging through a hole in the wall.
21
The world feels different the next morning.
For starters, my living room is immaculate except for the wine stains on my sofa slipcover and the rug. Even my broken coffee table has been cleared out. How did I not hear a vacuum going in here? Maybe I’ve built up an immunity to Jack’s noise.
There’s a note stuck to my fridge with a magnet, too. The magnet is of a white piña colada–like cocktail with a wedge of pineapple on the rim. Below are the words “Penis Colossus—Cancun.”
I’ll have the couch and rug cleaned. Pick out a coffee table so I can replace it.
-J.
P.S. Iced coffee in your fridge. And why don’t you own any magnets?
I take the note off my fridge and press it to my chest. It feels like… Honestly, it feels like lying in bed this morning, preparing to come out to face my destroyed living room: warm and cozy, but simultaneously aware that there’s been a seismic and somewhat destructive shift. One you know you can stay under the covers to avoid dealing with for just a few more minutes.
I pull open my fridge to grab the iced coffee Jack bought me, and my thoughts about poor Lucas have me cringing to myself. I send him another text and then get ready for work, slowly, scrolling through my phone as I brush my teeth. Dozens of emails from the overseas folks working on the global project. And—yikes—five missed calls from Margie and three from my mother. Mom’s were from about an hour ago, but Margie’s spanned the entire night.
I tuck Jack’s note in my shoulder bag for some unknown reason and pull out my phone to dial Margie. The sight of Mrs. Russo taping something to Jack’s door brings me up short. I approach her, spying the handwritten invitation to her prayer circle.
“Oh hello, Penny.”
Bursting with goodwill for Jack, I commit to clearing the name of the wrongly accused. “Hey, Mrs. Russo… I’ve been meaning to tell you, it turns out I was wrong about Jack and the whole killing chickens thing. He was just—” I think fast, searching for something believable. “Singing. In the shower. He’s aterriblesinger. Sorry for getting it so wrong.”
More assurances follow before Mrs. Russo is confident she doesn’t need to save Jack’s soul. And then I’m off to work, calling Margie as I walk to the office. She picks up before I even register a ring on my end.
“What. The. Fuck. Happened?” Her tone is no more excitable than her usual monotone, except that it’s a bit more clipped.
“God, Margie. Mess. Jack heard me reading from the script and—”
“Why are you talking about Jack? What does he have to do with Lucas ending up in the ER?”
“He’s the reason Lucas is in the ER.”
