Page 65 of Finding Jack
“But—”
“But that’s my job. Half of which you’ve been doing for a few days. Let me. I enjoy the feeling of earning my paycheck.”
Hailey was six years younger than me, but I felt like I’d just been schooled by someone twice my age and experience. I hesitated, then nodded. “Have I been micromanaging?”
“Um.”
I waved her off. “Enough said. Go get the orders. I’ll stay out of the way.”
I returned to my office and looked at my list of tasks, trying to figure out which ones I was micromanaging. I had eight things on my list. Technically, I could cross off five and leave them for other people. And maybe now was a good time to read a few articles on effective leadership to remind myself not to be a giant pain in my team’s collective backside.
I picked up my phone to pull up some bookmarked articles and froze.
I had a text from Jack.
I should set the phone down and do some deep breathing, manage my expectations before I opened it up.
I should.
But I fumbled it to the floor in my effort to swipe the message open as fast as possible.
In your message you said you weren’t sure why you pushed so hard, but you thought it was because…and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say?
I set the phone down again. Whatever I had expected, it wasn’t that. Maybe, “We’re cool. Wanna FaceTime later?” Possibly, “Please don’t contact me again.” But not this.
I picked up the phone and opened our DMs to replay my message, trying to hear it from his perspective.
My face filled the screen. Even through my makeup I could see the slight circles under my eyes from the restless night I’d had the night before. Video Me started with a wobbly smile then cleared her throat. I fast forwarded to the part he asked about. “You didn’t owe me any explanation,” Video Me said. “And I shouldn’t have pushed you for one. I definitely shouldn’t have treated it all like a big joke. I’m not even sure why I pushed so hard. I think it’s because—”
Video Me broke off, stared down at her hands, and her shoulder rose and fell as if she were brushing something off. Then she picked up again. “Anyway, I’m sorry for digging into your past and bringing it up.”
I closed the message. It had been a two second pause, but even I could hear what he must have heard in it: a silence that spoke louder than words.
Why did he need me to fill it? What did he want? A true confession…of what? Feelings? But how was that supposed to play out? I dropped my head into my palms and tried to imagine it. Not how I wanted it to go, but how it would actually go.
ME: Well, Dr. Jack, it turns out that I feel something for you at an emotional level that I don’t remember feeling before, and maybe there are names for this feeling, but I don’t want to use any of those names because they all make me feel panicky. Do you have a prescription to fix this?
JACK: Sure. Let’s meet and see where this thing between us goes and figure out if we’ve got what it takes to grow a relationship. Because I think you’re right. We’ve got something.
ME: Is that crazy? We haven’t even met for real.
JACK: Why would that be crazy? We’ve spent hours talking and making each other laugh.
ME: We haven’t talked about our real things. About our hard things.
JACK: But we understand each other’s personalities. As well as I’ve understood anyone’s. Am I imagining that?
ME: No, but…
JACK: We already know we can talk for hours. That’s a big cornerstone of a relationship, right? So we’ve got something. Let’s build on it.
ME: Sounds good. The San Francisco housing market is rough, but I’ll keep an eye out for a good situation. Even if we were within a couple of hours of each other, we could make that work, right?
JACK: Oh. I was thinking maybe you’d just move up here and make way less money at a job you may or may not find in our much smaller Portland tech market.
ME: I’m not doing that. There aren’t tech jobs everywhere, but San Francisco needs doctors. Come on down!
JACK: I refuse to talk about being a doctor and my reasons are excellent, but I’m not going to tell you what they are.
