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She reached over and slapped his arm. “Stop that. You’re being weird.”
“No, I’m serious.” He followed Jess as she tossed her paper plate in the garbage and went back to her painting behind the counter. “Jessica, when’s the last time you actually laughed like that?”
A long ass time, she thought to herself. She racked her brain trying to recall her last truly joyous moment, but nothing came to mind. It was always work and stress and paying bills and occasional sex with Charlie when she had the energy for it. Nothing had felt amusing to her for a while.
Her silence was telling enough, so she let it linger as she lifted the paint roller and dragged it up and down the primed wall.
“Come on, I’m serious,” he said, reaching around her to grab the other paint roller. “You told me what you thought you wanted for your life isn’t exactly what you want anymore, right?”
She bristled at his abruptness as he recited her words from weeks ago, but decided not to lash out at him quite yet. He did have a point. So she nodded.
“Okay, then what do you want now?” he asked.
She rolled a few strokes of pale beige on the primed white walls. “I’m not sure. Everything feels so…new and strange right now.”
He nodded, reaching to fill in the white spots near the ceiling that were too high for Jess to reach. “That makes perfect sense, you lived that way for so long.”
“Right. So how in the world can I know what I want when it hasn’t even been a week?”
Kevin froze mid-stroke, his abrupt pause causing Jess to slow herself.
“I have an idea,” he said, dropping the roller back into the tray and charging for his desk. Jess watched as he ripped a piece of blank paper out of a legal pad and grabbed a pen, heading back toward her. He leaned against the counter over that piece of paper and wrote the number one at the top.
“You’re right. Trying to figure out what you want for your new life probably feels like a lot.”
“No shit,” Jess grumbled.
“Manners, Jessica. That mouth of yours won’t get you anywhere.”
She rolled her eyes and flipped him off.
He laughed in response. “Let’s focus on the now. What are the things you want to do right now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like…” He tapped the pen in his hand as he thought through his response. “You’ve spent your whole life working to make money and live in this reality that you thought you wanted. But in that time, there were probably things you never got to do. So…what do you want to do?”
“As in…activities?”
He grinned. “Exactly! Think of it as a bucket list of all the things you want to do that you haven’t had the chance to since graduating high school.”
“A bucket list,” Jess repeated.
“We could even kick it up a notch,” he added, tapping the pen incessantly. “Let’s pick ten things we should do by the end of this summer.”
“We?” she balked.
“Oh yes, this is a we activity. Consider it team bonding. An extended clause on the offer.”
“Or what? You’ll fire me?”
“Yes,” he deadpanned. “I’m the boss. You must do as I say.”
“I feel like you probably shouldn’t be using that excuse all the time…”
“Or what? You’ll call HR?” he teased. “Because I am HR.”
She groaned. “You really are insufferable.”
