Keys jangle again: this has to be Jack. I drop the Avery-and-Anna speculation and get back to scraping like mad. I see Jack enter from the corner of my eye. He tosses his keys on his counter and knocks on his bedroom door before heading in, emerging with some wall-work clothes. After a quick change in the bathroom, he grabs his tools, and I watch with undisguised interest as he carries a stool to the very opposite end of our former wall and climbs on top. I force my eyes off his ass as he tackles the remnants of wood and plaster dangling from the ceiling.
We work like that, in silence, for what feels like forever. It’s actually less than half an hour.
“How’s it going?” I say, the quiet finally breaking me.
“Great.”
“Seems great. You look overjoyed.” I don’t like me when I’m nervous. I wish I could trade places with Lucas right now. A wired jaw might help me out.
I scrape at a stubborn piece of lath caught in the wall.
Jack moves his stool a foot to the left.
“Have you ever done therapy? Is that the phrase? Done therapy? It sounds wrong. Therapized? Huh. Anyway. My therapy is going well. It’s like cleaning out an attic. Gotta move the stuff closest to the entrance before you get to the things moldering in the back. Mouse droppings and whatever. Getting there, though! Some days it feels really heavy, but others, it’s like I’m lighter? I’m starting to notice things I didn’t before, too. Working on tools to shore up boundaries or whatever. Sense of self. Blah blah blah, you’re not listening.”
“I’m listening. Good for you.” His tone isn’t at all sarcastic. He’s sincere. Curt but sincere.
“Lucas was trying to make you jealous before. Isn’t that nuts? He was mad about the jaw thing and decided to use me as a prop. D-bag move. Don’t worry, though, I told him you weren’t jealous.”
Jack grunts. The quiet stretches. We don’t talk again until I’m sweeping dust into the dustpan and Jack is unwinding his vacuum cord.
“So, I touched your dong, huh?”
I blurt it out just as Jack is switching the vacuum on. When it starts up, I pray that maybe he didn’t hear me and curse my stupid mouth. The vacuum switches off.
He stares at me and then up at the ceiling. In a superhero flick, this would be the moment he calls forth lightning to smite me.
“‘Dong.’”
“You know, your—”
“I know what you’re talking about. I’m questioning your frat-boy choice of noun.”
Every capillary on my face and neck fills with all the blood it can hold. I feel overheated. A surreptitious glance in the wall mirror confirms that I am, in fact, a lobster.
“Well, whatever. Your winky. That’s what Mom used to call them. ‘That boy just likes you ’cause he hopes you’ll touch his winky, Penny.’” I mimic my mother and close my eyes.
Jack flicks the vacuum back on.
I disintegrate into a pool of mortification and fiddle with the garbage bags of dust, hauling them to the basement despite Jack’s insistence on multiple occasions that he run them down. I need the escape to clear my head, even if it does come with an eau-du-basement-mildew-and-trash olfactory assault.
When I return, Jack is winding up his vacuum cord.
“Well, g’night,” I say quickly, heading to my bathroom. I amsoready to put this day to bed.
“There are worse ways to wake up, by the way,” he calls out.
I suspect he was saving that particular grenade for my retreat.
26
The office is quieter than usual. More than one person decided to squeeze in an end-of-summer vacation this week. Meanwhile, I had to come in early for this global call, since not everyone could meet at our regular time. I’ve resorted to creative coping mechanisms.
“If I can interject here…” the Professor says.
I take my highlighter and press it firmly to the square reading “If I can interject” on my handmade Global Call Bingo card.I’m one square away from victory. And from having my soul crushed. All before nine thirty in the morning.
“Before we get this to our localization teams, we really need to talk about the cover for this asset…” he continues.
