I look down at the text. No, no, no. To my utter horror, I accidentally hit send when I was startled by Rochelle. What’s worse, he’s already responded.
I can’t tell if you’re calling me a jackoff or if you’re making a demand of me. Punctuation matters.
I drop my phone. And then I drop my head in my hands. My face flames.
And then…I laugh. I laugh until the Donna promotion angst is a distant second to the exhilaration of sparring with Jack.
I sit back in my chair and pick up my phone, rereading my text and his response. The same mischief-maker that led me to dip a french fry in his shake has me typing out:Meet me for lunch and I’ll tell you which way I meant it.
I delete that immediately and write out the much more respectable:
I think we both know which I meant.
His response is gratifyingly instantaneous, as if he was waiting for my message.
Yeah, the latter. Got it. What’s up?
I grin and debate for a second before harnessing my chi and texting:
I’m starving, and everyone I like is busy.
The dots representing his impending response linger for far too long, and my anxiety spikes. I try on ways of backing out of that invite before he can decline, ways of backing away from how I just put myself out there.
Pick the place.
At his response, all the breath in my lungs whooshes out at once. I type out the name of a lunch spot not far from my office and, pretending not to have stalked him and googled his office, ask if it’s too far.
That works. Meet in twenty.
I log out of my computer and grab my purse, racing to the bathroom to touch up my makeup. “You would fix your face before meeting anyone,” I announce as I apply fresh lipstick and a touch of cream blush. My hair is a rat’s nest from the weather. I comb my fingers through it, wincing when I tug out a strand.
Relax. You live next door to him. This is not a big deal.
I want to run to the restaurant and post up, like a mobster scoping out a joint before a sit-down with a rival family. Instead, I force myself to go back to my desk and hammer out a few more emails. The walk to the restaurant feels like an eternity because I slow my walk to a leisurely tourist speed. I even pop into a boutique and try to look at shoes. I’m five minutes late.
He’s not here. The restaurant isn’t big, and I can tell immediately he isn’t in it. I look at my phone, but there are no missed texts or calls. My ego—I refuse to call it anything else—plummets to somewhere in the vicinity of my ankles. Was he kidding about meeting me? Is this another prank?
“Someone ordered a jackoff?” a voice murmurs behind me, and I whirl around. Jack is smirking down at me, and the sheer roguish charm of him, of the humor in those gray eyes, makes me want to leap on him, smooth my hand over his stubbled cheek, and run my tongue over his lower lip. Instead, I take in a steadying breath and give him a roll of the eyes. Turning my back on him, I lead us to an open table.
The place is über-modern, the walls covered in outsize paintings of lunch items. A giant grilled cheese here, an enormous tuna melt there. A waiter hands us menus as we take our seats, and I smile when Jack orders a salad. No comfort food for the health nut today.
“I’ll have a grilled chicken sandwich, please. No mayo? And a seltzer water.” I hand the waiter back the menu.
“No mayo,” the waiter repeats, his expression blank. He brushes his pale hair from his eyes and gapes at me.
“Yeah… Just the chicken and everything that comes with it, only no mayo?”
He nods slowly, and I’m not encouraged to see he’s written none of our order down. He gestures to a guy nearby to fill our glasses with water.
“So,” Jack says, a dangerous spark in his eyes. He’s in black suit pants and a pale-lavender shirt sans tie, his dark hair styled into a respectable-looking ’do. “Didn’t expect to get a text from you, like…ever.”
“Unpredictability. Keeps the enemy on his toes.” I waggle my eyebrows.
“Very Sun Tzu of you. ‘The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.’”
“Something like that, nerd.”
“Nerd, I can take. But enemy? Still?”
