“Riiiight.”
“Attempt to make me jealous? Let me know you’re in demand?” he says, weirdly upbeat.
I blow a raspberry.
“Scoff all you like. We both know you lied when you said you didn’t like me.” He smiles, and his sidelong glance makes me blush. But there’s an earnestness to the cockiness. A speck of vulnerability?
“I—” I clear my throat, debating, gathering my courage to me like a tattered blanket. “I like you. Okay?”
“Oof. Took a lot out of you to admit that, didn’t it?” Jack’s grin is face-splitting. “Here’s a secret, you incredibly infuriating woman: I like you, too.”
My heart jolts, invisible electric paddles sending awareness rampaging through me. My pulse rockets to what has to be an unsafe level.He likes me.He’s standing close. He’s taking my hand, tangling his fingers with mine. Oh God. He’s tipping my face up to look at him.
I know, as sure as I know anything, that Jack wants to kiss me. I see the question in his eyes. I swallow hard.
“I like you,” I stammer. “A lot. And I find myself…sometimes…wanting to maybe do things with you that are of an R rating. Or NC-17. Or maybe—”
“I got it,” he says, his voice low and extra gravelly. Oh fuck is it sexy when it gets like that.
I shift from leg to leg, looking down at our entwined fingers. “But. I am bad with guys. Like,reallybad. You heard my mom. And I’m pretty sure I would fuck it up, and things would be ten times worse than they were before we…liked…each other. No, don’t argue, it’s true. But! I started therapy!”
I wrinkle my nose, aware that I announced my therapy the way someone would announce a silver bullet during a werewolf hunt. “And I know it’s not, like, a magical cure, but I’m working through some stuff. And… And when I’m done with that, if we still like each other, I’d maybe, sorta, not vomit in my mouth if you were to try and do whatever you were thinking about doing a second ago.”Have to throw a joke in there, you freak show.
Jack doesn’t laugh at my joke. He doesn’t react at all at first. But then he lifts his gray gaze and tractor-beams me in with it. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. I understand. I hope therapy goes well.” He lifts my hand, turning it palm-up, and drops a slow kiss on the sensitive skin of my wrist. And holy shit does it ring my bell. “Back to work, slacker.” He releases me, and I have to force myself to move.
The work to take down the rest of the wooden slats does go way faster with Jack using the circular saw, and our breaks are few and far between. The echo of our earlier conversation hangs over both of us like a hot fog. Jack orders us sandwiches for lunch, grinning when I inspect my chicken sandwich and find it perfectly sans mayo. I order us Indian food for dinner, refusing his money, since he refused mine. We’re just about to get back to our work when we’re derailed by the sound of a knock at his door. A feminine voice sounds on the other side.
Anna appears with a tearstained face, a red nose, and jerking shoulders from weeping-induced hiccups. She looks beautiful and tragic, a willow branch bent by a windstorm.
A brunette tendril has escaped her severe bun. She brushes it back, draws in a deep breath, and cries out, “I broke up with him,” before launching herself at her brother.
I melt back into my apartment to give them privacy, but with most of our wall gone, I can’t help catching snippets of their conversation—nonsensical outbursts of love and hurt and hate and regret from her, and murmured comforting words from him. Jack hugs Anna close, letting her cry it out. And then he wipes her tears and sits her on his barstool while he makes her tea.
He says all the right things and then chases them with ice cream. He is sweet and tender, and it causes an ache to blossom in my chest.
I am hiding in my bedroom with the door open because I amnot at all nosy. For the moment, things seem to have quieted. I text Avery:
Anna broke up with her fiancé.
Avery responds with a gif of a man who goes from sobbing into a napkin to dancing in jubilation.
I shake my head.
Avery Vaughn, I thought you were a gentleman. Give the girl a proper mourning period.
No. I am but a gentleboy. Not yet a gentleman. Teach me, Dime Store Yoda.
Avery…
Relax. I’ll be her shoulder to cry on… Do you want to be my best man?
I can tell even through the phone that Avery is ecstatic.
Who are you? Avery Vaughn would never chase someone who was taken.
