Page 13 of Finding Jack
He dug right in, making appreciative noises as he ate, then he smiled back, a touch of hesitation in the curve of his lips. “It’s really good.”
“Thanks.” My mom had taught me to make them when I was twelve. I couldn’t cook a lot of things, but omelets I could do.
“No, seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better omelet. Like this is French chef good.”
“All right, that’s enough. You’re already forgiven. You don’t have to go that far.”
A look I couldn’t quite read crossed his face, and it surprised me. We’d been dating five months. I thought I knew all his expressions except maybe extreme pain.
“Emily...” He set his fork down. “I meant it, it’s an excellent omelet. But I get why it sounded forced. Do you feel like we’ve been off-kilter for a while?”
This was another thing I liked about him. He wasn’t afraid to face things head on. It was all part of his extreme efficiency. He’d rather solve something than wait for it to solve itself, and it was something I needed to be better about. I could do it at work, but when it came to relationships I tended to wait for problems to magically go away by ignoring them.
“Off-kilter.” I tried the phrase out to see if it was the right one to describe the way things had been lately. “Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.”
“I know I’m working a ton right now, and it makes it hard to give everything in my life the attention it deserves. I worked up a spreadsheet to help me strike a better work-life balance.”
In the distance, approximately the distance of Ranée’s room at the end of the hall, I thought I heard a snort when Paul said “spreadsheet,” but he didn’t seem to notice as he went on. “I’ve realized in some ways it’s easier for me to carve out longer blocks of time less frequently than it is to try to string together shorter blocks of time more often. Interesting, huh?”
“Um…” I realized I was failing to see his point. “That’s…wow.”
“I’m not communicating clearly. Hang on.” He pulled out his iPhone, tapped a few things, and handed it to me. It was a chart with color-coded blocks labeled with things like “work” or “gym” or “Emily.” I showed up in one large pink block on the Saturday column.
“I don’t really want to be pink.” It was a joking complaint so I could buy time to process the weird, gut-level reaction that was happening. It wasn’t warm fuzzies or happy tingles. More like…indigestion. Except my omelet was too good for it to be indigestion. This was not annoyance. Or uneasiness. But it was definitely somewhere between the two.
“The color is beside the point.” His tone was a tad impatient, which happened sometimes when he wanted to talk shop and I wanted to goof off. But my goofing off was good for him, which he recognized when he pulled his head out of his…spreadsheets.
He took the phone back. “What color do you want to be?”
“Azure, and make it honey-scented.”
He blinked at me.
I sighed and took the phone from his hands, turning it face down on the table. “I don’t want to be a checklist item. I don’t want to be something you fit in around everything else.”
“But that’s the whole point. I’m happy doing anything with you, but I want us to be able to spend real time together, not the time we can grab at the end of the day or in between other things.” His blue eyes shone with sincerity, and I grinned and leaned forward to steal a quick kiss.
“All right. I understand what you’re saying. This weirdness between us has got to go. What is it even about? I want to be done with it.”
He reached over to play with my hair, one of my favorite of his habits. “I’m not sure. I think it’s because we were both getting so busy at work and then all of a sudden you’re showing up in pictures with another guy. I felt…threatened.”
I pulled away. “That had nothing to do with me, and I’m not going to apologize for it again.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I’ll rephrase. I got insecure, but I think it’s because I’ve felt disconnected from you. So I have an idea. Let’s go to Napa next weekend and reset. I’ll work like a maniac to clear all my work so I can leave it behind, and we’ll forget the rest of the world for a while.”
Napa was a magic word right on par with bibbity-bobbity-boo. But this time, it didn’t cast a spell over me.
And that…that was a problem. A big one.
“Paul,” I said, gently pulling his hand away from my hair so the section he’d been winding slipped through his fingers. “A trip to Napa sounds so good, but work is crazy for me right now too. It isn’t a good time for me to leave for a whole weekend. Even if I could make the time—which I can’t—I don’t think my mind would be on Napa. Or you.”
His face fell, and he rearranged it to hide his disappointment, but the visible effort made me smile. “Stop. You look like I just told you that you can never have a puppy.”
“I feel about that disappointed,” he said, sighing.
“Don’t. It’s helping me see your point about trying to carve out big chunks of time instead of lots of little ones. Don’t worry about it.” I slid my hand around his neck, tickling the hair perfectly trimmed along his nape. He loved when I did that, and it won a reluctant smile from him. “We’ll be fine. I just have to find the groove with this promotion, and we’ll be back to usual.”
A tiny shadow flitted through his eyes, but finally his smile widened. “Fine. A long weekend is out of the plan, but can you give me Saturday?”
