Page 18 of Cakewalk
The waitress appeared with menus in hand, and I smiled up at her as Jade was having another one of her mini heart attacks. I was pretty sure I had given her two since we first met.
The waitress handed us our menus. “Would you be interested in one of our signature wines today?”
I looked over the wine section on the menu and ordered something red. I wasn’t a wine connoisseur by any means, but it looked like Jade really needed something for her nerves.
“Great, I’ll be right back.” The waitress took off, and I returned my attention to Jade.
“I-I mean, it doesn’t just have to be a one-time thing,” Jade said, responding to my earlier question. “Honestly, you should forget you ever saw that message! It was a joke, and I only sent it because King Kong whipped me with his tail.”
“King Kong?”
“This giant iguana I’m babysitting.” She spread her hands about five feet apart, which I figured signified the length of said iguana.
“Wouldn’t it make alotmore sense for his name to be Godzilla?”
Jade gawked at me. “Of course it wouldn’t! Godzilla doesn’t climb things. He just rampages around on the ground.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” I paused to actually think about it. “No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense at all. One’s cold-blooded, one’s hot-blooded. One’s scaly, the other’s hairy. And King Kong doesn’t even have a tail.”
“Hey, I’m just the one who babysits him, okay? Don’t be giving me lip about his name.”
I leaned forward. “So it’s King Kong’s fault you sent that message? I guess he used his opposable thumbs to type it?”
Jade crossed her arms. “Iguanas don’t have opposable thumbs. That’s apes.”
“This is just furthering my point that he should be named Godzilla. So how much longer do you think you can dodge my original question?”
“I don’t know, but I’m aiming for a time range in the neighborhood of infinity.”
The waitress arrived with a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glass before setting the bottle down. “Need more time to order?”
“Yes, please. Thank you,” I said, and we were alone again. I turned my full attention back to Jade. She squirmed and grew redder under my gaze.
Sublime. I wondered how red she’d get once I took her clothes off.
“I’m a dumbass, okay?” she said. “I didn’t know how to respond, and I wrote like twenty different replies and kept deleting them. That just happened to be the one I accidentally sent. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I haven’t dated for years. The last time I had a boyfriend was in high school, so I’m not even sure how adults go about dating! I don’t know if there’s a specific way to gauge whether something’s an old-fashioned kind of date, or if it’s going to be a casual hook up kind of thing. I don’t know what the usual milestones are for the first date, second, third. I’m completely clueless, and I really didn’t want to ask my sister for advice because once she finds out who you are, she’ll be mad that she ever helped me, and my only other girl friend hates my guts right now and probably won’t ever talk to me again.”
She finally had to pause for air, then decided to just leave it at that and gulp down half her glass of wine.
I took a moment to process everything. “Okay. Well, since we’re being so out in the open about everything, I’ll give you the advice that I think Madison would have given you if you two were still best friends.”
Jade nodded, waiting.
“I think she’d tell you, ‘Jade, you’re the prettiest girl in town, even prettier than me, and I don’t know what’s made you so nervous about dating again, but that Griffin guy seemswaycool, and he’s had a dry spell probably even longer than yours, so you both should just do it, get it over with, and see that it’s really not that big of a deal.’”
“Really?” Jade said, her voice hardly above a whisper.
I nodded. “I think it’d be good for us both. Mutually beneficial.”
“That sounds like a friends-with-benefits situation. Like, as opposed to a possible relationship.”
“Yeah? It’s not like you’d really want to be with me, anyway. The entire town hates my company, and will be hating my company for a long time before they ever realize that I’m here to help. And it seems like it’s your sister spearheading the hate campaign, so you wouldn’t want to get involved in this mess. There’s going to be some pretty nasty town hall meetings coming up, and I don’t want you to have to pick sides.”
Jade shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t really care about all of that.”
I had hoped she would, considering the real reason she shouldn’t be with me wasn’t a point I wanted to bring up. “You don’t think maybe you’re telling yourself that because it’s been so long?”
Jade sighed and looked down at her glass, running her finger along the rim. “I guess it’s possible. I never really thought of myself as the ‘hooking up’ type, but maybe that’s been my problem all along. Maybe I’ve always taken everything too seriously.” She nibbled on her lip before relenting, “Yeah, you’re right.”
