Page 11 of Finding Jack
I’d been on the verge of suggesting a do over and going somewhere nice to eat, my treat, but now I didn’t want to. I didn’t have anything to make up for. Instead, I downloaded a fantasy novel my mom had been raving about and curled up with it in my room.
When Paul texted in the late afternoon to see if I wanted to go to dinner, I took a raincheck and then claimed the TV remote when Ranée left for the night. When she came home close to midnight, I was polishing off some mint chip ice cream and finishing up the last season of “Jane the Virgin.”
“Big night?” She pushed my feet off the sofa and settled in the other corner.
I waved my ice cream spoon at her and puffed my cheeks out. “The biggest, hashtag no regrets. Did you do anything fun?”
“Sushi and an escape room with some of the girls in accounting. Hey, I was wondering...”
Her tone was far too casual to fool me. “Yeah?”
“Was there more to your DMs with Jack than I saw today?”
“Huh? No.” And even though I hadn’t said or done anything wrong, and even though I had nothing to hide, a pang of guilt darted through my chest for a blessedly short second. “Why do you ask?”
“I just got the most interesting phone call. You sure you didn’t say anything that could be…misconstrued?”
Wait a minute.
Had I?
“I feel like you’re getting at something, but I don’t know what,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything I’d hidden about my DMs with Jack because there wasn’t anything to hide.
“Sean called me. He wanted to know if I was in the mood for a road trip up to see him. And maybe bringing my roommate along too.”
I dropped the spoon. “Are you suggesting that your brother wants you to come up to see him, but this is a trick to get me up to Jack’s neck of the woods?”
“You have no idea how literal that is.” It was a grumble. Ranée didn’t much care for the woods. Her idea of a good time outdoors involved a beach and frou-frou drinks. “But yes, I think that’s what Sean was getting at. He wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“That is so weird and over the line. No, I would not like to go see some random dude from the internet. I wouldn’t like to do that AT ALL.”
She sighed. “I want to convince you that you should live a little, but yeah, in this case it’s over the line. I was mainly worried that I’d missed out on some juicy DM that would inspire such love in Jack’s heart.”
“No. Ugh, this is no bueno. He seemed like a totally normal guy. I mean besides the thing where he was willing to go along with your idiotic scheme in the first place.” I climbed off the couch and tossed my empty ice cream carton in the trash. “It’s definitely time for me to go to bed. My day has officially reached it’s crazy quotient.”
Ranée’s answer was a yawn, and I wandered off to my room, happy to read myself to sleep and quit worrying about Jack.
When a call from Paul woke me up the next morning, it was a reminder that there were still sane men with healthy boundaries in the world, and one of them was mine. “Hey,” I said, blinking the sleep out of my eyes.
“Sleeping Beauty, huh? You’re missing a beautiful day.”
“Yeah? Good weather?”
“Not a wisp of fog anywhere. Let me take you out to breakfast.”
I struggled to sit up. I had a far too co-dependent relationship with my comforter. I realized I had no desire to leave it and snuggled down further instead. We needed more time together, my bed and I. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come by after I’m more awake, and I’ll make you breakfast?”
A DM chirp sounded in my ear. I stifled a sigh when I realized who it probably was. Great.
“Cooking for me, huh? Sounds great. When should I come over?”
I sniffed my shirt. No stink. That meant I didn’t need to shower, and I could make an omelet in 15 minutes flat, so I did some genius-level computations and figured out how much more quality time I could give myself and the comforter. “An hour?”
“See you then.”
Yessssss. Forty more minutes in bed, five to change and brush my hair, and then fifteen to cook. I wiggled down and pulled the covers up to my chin. This was happiness. People talked about trying to bottle it like it was a scent or a potion. Nope, it was just a down comforter. Come to think of it, I could stay in bed for fifty-five minutes if Paul and I just cooked together. That was a fun couple thing to do.
I closed my eyes. Bliss.
