Page 4 of Finding Jack
“He didn’t laugh once during our Marx Brothers marathon last week.”
“He didn’t?”
“No.”
I hadn’t noticed, but that was surprising. Everyone laughed during the Marx Brothers. “He’s just not an old movie fan.” I wasn’t exactly sure if that was true. We didn’t watch a lot of movies together. “But I don’t want to talk about Paul anymore. I explained the picture and he’s fine. But I’m really worried that you suddenly know how to do Photoshop. There’s no way this ends well for me. Or anyone who knows you.”
She waved away my concern. “Relax. I didn’t do it. I know a guy.”
I set my fork down to study her closely. “Ranée. People who ‘know guys’ usually have mob connections or crack dealers.”
“Shut up. Not like that. I mean one of my brother’s friends is kind of internet famous for his Photoshopping skills. People send in Photoshop requests. Usually, he’ll give you some hilarious version of what you ask for. Look.” She tapped her phone a few times and pulled up Twitter then handed it to me.
The account belonged to someone calling himself @crankymtnman. She’d picked a tweet from someone who sent him a picture of a woman our age looking down with her hands over her mouth in happy surprise. The tweet read, “Hey, @crankymtnman, I told my mom my boyfriend of 2 weeks proposed to freak her out, but he didn’t. Can you make it look like he did? Any man will do.” His reply was a photoshopped picture of a Gringotts goblin down on one knee proposing while she looked delighted.
I handed it back to her. “That’s pretty funny.”
She nodded. “Sean really likes him. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s a funny guy. You should check out his feed some time. He nails it. If you’re lucky, he’ll actually do what you ask, but usually he messes with the people who request his skills.”
“So Cranky Mountain Man decided to mess with you, huh?”
“No, his real name is Jack, and he did exactly what I asked him to.”
“Photoshop me with some corny romance cover guy?”
“Corny or hot?”
“Hot until the fake hair makes him corny.”
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“Stop being mysterious. Why is that interesting?”
She tapped her phone again and turned it to show me a picture of Sean with the guy from the picture I’d deleted. “Because I asked him to Photoshop you with a long-haired hot dude to give you a vision of what was possible. That hot guy is Jack himself, and the hair is one hundred percent real. I’ve never seen him use himself in a photo hack before. I’ll tell him you thought he was hot, but I think I’ll skip the corny part.”
And she was out of the chair and down the hall, thumbs flying, before I could even dive for her phone.
Chapter3
I checked first thing in the morning to make sure Ranée hadn’t gotten into my Facebook again. None of the notifications raised red flags. I looked at Ranée’s page to make sure she wasn’t up to any shenanigans there, and when that was all clear, I texted Paul.
Are we still on for dinner tonight?
He texted right back that he would pick me up at 7. He didn’t play games where he waited a certain amount of time to call or return a message. It was one of the things I liked about him.
I half-wished I could reschedule our date for the next night. I always started Fridays with a tingle of anticipation for the weekend, but usually by quitting time I was dragging myself home and longing to be absorbed into the Clan of the Bedding to rule there as its queen. In pajamas. And thick socks.
But Paul wanted to take me out to celebrate my promotion too, and after Ranée’s prank I owed him more than getting shuffled into a different calendar box so I could nap. Okay, fine. Not nap: so I could binge watch the new season ofThe Crown.
I couldn’t blow off Paul for that, not when he was taking me out to Pacifica, the best seafood restaurant in the Bay Area. I didn’t think I was a fancy food person until my mom and stepdad took me there for my graduation from Berkeley, and I discovered that I could love foods that sounded imaginary--like truffles and sablefish--as much as I loved Panda Express. I’m a complicated woman.
Work flew by, but I still came home as tired as expected, except Paul was due in an hour and I had no time to be tired. I splashed cold water on my face, posted a short status about going to Pacifica to celebrate with him, and went to get ready, pulling my new shoes out of their box. Time to let these girls out to play. I added a picture of them to my post. They deserved a little recognition. Heck, they deserved their own Instagram account.
He rang the buzzer of our apartment exactly at 7, and I was glad that Ranée was already out for the evening. His punctuality had gotten on her nerves ever since she’d come home one night to find him waiting on our doorstep, staring at his watch. Apparently, he’d gotten there five minutes earlier but was waiting for the exact minute he’d told me to expect him before he knocked. Ranée thought that was stupid, but then again, Ranée hadn’t liked him from the start, so she used anything and everything he did as ammunition. That’s when she started calling him Proper Paul like it was a bad thing. But that was another thing I liked about Paul. I was a project manager because I had exceptional organizational skills, but Paul was next level. It was nice not to have to worry about the details when he was around.
I opened the door and smiled at him. “Hey, you.”
He stepped in and hugged me. He leaned down for a kiss, but I turned my head, and he dropped it on my cheek. “Don’t want to smudge my lipstick. You can do that later.” His easy affection was another one of the things I liked about him. It was also the biggest reason I could ignore Ranée’s complaints that he was too uptight. He was so comfortable with open displays of affection—little touches, long hugs, kisses regardless of who was watching. Uptight men didn’t do that. Uptight men—like my dad—were stingy with their hugs and affection.
