Page 74 of A Heart Worth Finding
“Good luck,” was all Berkley said before Jessica hung up.
A moment later, she was on the phone with Jack.
“Hey, sunshine,” he said happily. “I’m just leaving practice.”
“Perfect,” she said. “Will you come over?”
Jack must’ve heard something in her tone, because he said, “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” she promised, though it wasn’t, not really. “We just…we need to talk.”
“Okay…” he said slowly. “I’ll be right over.”
“See you soon.”
In the five minutes it took for Jack to ride his little moped from Munn to her house, Jessica had worked herself into quite a state of anxiety. When she opened the door to let him in, and he wrapped his arms around her, she could barely hug him back.
Once they were safely ensconced in her room, Jack burst.
“Jess, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“You know I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” she said.
“Yes?” Jack replied. “You told me so ages ago in Mexico.”
“Originally, I wanted to teach English, or history, or something mundane like that, here in the States at a normal high school. But…did you know I can speak Spanish and Russian?”
Jack’s eyebrows rose toward his forehead. “Spanish, yes. But Russian? Damn, sunshine, that’s impressive.”
“Thanks,” she said, offering him a weak smile. “When I started college, and got into tutoring and student teaching, I had a professor tell me she thought I’d be great at doing something a little less cookie cutter with my career.”
“Which is?”
“Teaching English as a second language.”
“Like…to immigrants?” Jack asked.
Jessica wasn’t surprised his mind had gone there. Hers had, too…at first.
“Initially that was the plan,” she told him.
“But not anymore.”
“No.”
Jessica hung her head, peeking up at him through her eyelashes, not surprised when realization dawned on his face.
“You’re going overseas somewhere, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know yet,” she told him honestly. “But I did apply for several jobs today.”
“Where?” His tone was flat, clinical, and Jessica’s heart ached.
“Southern Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Spain…and Russia. Moscow and Saint Petersburg, to be exact.”
“Fuck,” Jack said, sitting down hard at the end of her bed, the pillows at the head jumping with the force of it.
She sat down next to him and reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together, the knot in her chest easing a bit when he let her. “I don’t know what this means for us.”
