Page 62 of Finding Jack
Wait for Jack to cool off and contact me
The problem was that I’d apologized last night. I hadn’t even tried to make excuses. I’d said a simple, heartfelt, “I’m sorry.” Sometimes, continuing to apologize when the other person didn’t want to hear it was a way for the apologizer to make herself feel better while it did nothing for the other person. Maybe it might even make it worse.
As for making it up to Jack…how? I couldn’t turn back time and not do the internet search. Maybe this was time for a grand gesture, but what? And why? That was kind of at the heart of everything here. Why it mattered. Who I was doing it for. Because right now, a grand gesture still felt more about me than him. About taking control over a situation that was making me feel bad instead of sitting with it and letting it play out.
And that told me exactly why it mattered.
It was the epiphany I’d already had last night. It mattered because I cared. So. Much.
Which was why option three wouldn’t work. I could accept that I had broken this. I could accept that I couldn’t fix it. But I couldn’t accept that I needed to move on.
How had this even happened to me? How did this man who I’d never met become the standard I measured my other dates against? How had we so quickly gotten to a point that a day without talking or texting made my insides feel the way I had when Ranée switched our coffeemaker to decaf without telling me? The day carried an extra weight without Jack to put some snap into it.
It was more than that. But I didn’t want to wrap words around it. This was enough to process already. But no moving on.
The next option—waiting for Jack to cool down and contact me—was far more passive than I liked. Because what if he never reached out? What if I’d shut him down completely by pushing so hard for him to talk to me about his past?
I’d been so disrespectful. So very, very disrespectful.
I dropped my phone and considered crawling beneath the covers again as the full weight of my wrongdoing pressed me down flat, and I sank further into the mattress under the heaviness in my chest.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to play through the whole chain of events that had led us to this point. Ranée pulling Jack in on a joke, me telling him off, his genuine apology, the easy chemistry we found right away through our senses of humor, my increasing interest in him shining a light into the gaps I hadn’t seen yawning between Paul and me. Me breaking up with Paul. Jack and I laughing. And talking more. And going on dates.
I hadn’t understood it. That was the problem. Hadn’t been able to see the way it would all play out. We had become a puzzle I couldn’t solve, so I had gone looking for pieces. I thought if I understood him better, I could understand what we were. And then I would know how to feel about it.
So stupid. Because no one got to decide how to feel. The feelings showed up. Like warts. Or rainbows, if you were happy about them. Which I wasn’t. So, warts.
Maybe not warts. These were feelings that appeared like freckles when I forgot industrial strength sunblock—and I never, ever forgot. I’d forgotten to apply my industrial strength feelings blocker. And now I had them, all pressing me deeper into the bed.
The heaviest was guilt. I had done so wrong by Jack. And shame. Because I’d done it out of a need to make myself feel better about something I didn’t understand.
Except now I did. And sitting on top of everything else was the fear that I’d figured it all out too late.
Ranée popped her head in an hour later. I opened my eyes but kept them trained on the ceiling.
“Didn’t see you last night. How did your date go?”
“I burned everything down with the match you handed me.”
“Um, what?” She came in and climbed up to sit cross-legged on the foot of my bed.
I struggled upright and sighed. “I made this whole dumb plan to get Jack to tell me all about his past. It backfired. Now he’s mad I went looking, and I don’t think he’s going to talk to me again.”
She winced.
“And I’m kidding about you handing me the match. This is all on me. I just feel like spreading the misery around a little.”
“No, you’re right. I know Jack hates talking about the doctor thing. I was trying to walk this fine line of wanting you to know that your man-bun-wearing internet comedian had more layers than he was letting on, but…” Now it was her turn to sigh. “I guess that wasn’t my call to make.”
I plucked at the blanket. I should get up and do a bunch of work, get a jump on the week before it started tomorrow. I could keep myself busy enough that I didn’t have to think about all of this. But I didn’t make a move. I plucked up a new piece of lint instead.
“What’s the plan?” Ranée asked.
I shook my head. “No plan.”
“Of course there’s a plan. You’re the queen of planning.”
“Not this time. I’ve run the scenarios and there’s nothing that doesn’t make it worse.”
