Page 39 of Finding Jack
His voice was both, I decided before considering the question. His voice was perfect summer nightsandcaramel apple dip. “First time out, I like a man with a plan.”
“Glad I have one then,” he said. “Do you prefer Rome or Mumbai?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I’d begun to figure out that it was entertaining to just go with it. “I’ll be a cliché and say that since I’ve been to neither, I pick Rome.”
“That was a trick question where both choices were right. Next question: do you have easy access to a laptop?”
“I’ll get it,” I said, climbing up to fetch it from my bed. “It’s my work laptop. I’m curious whether your plans will make me forget that.”
“I’ll try,” he answered. “Also, you’re going to hear a knock on your door in about twenty minutes. Sorry, but I got your address from Sean, so I hope that doesn’t freak you out. He had it because he and Ranée send each other cat T-shirts. Did you know that?”
“I definitely knew that.” She’d worn one to bed last night picturing a gangster cat pouring out a glass of milk on the ground. It was captioned, “For the homies.”
“Anyway, you should get a delivery soonish. You okay with that?”
“I’m okay with that.”
“You are very chill,” he said. “I can’t believe you aren’t asking me a million questions or trying to get the details out of me.”
I considered this. “True. I’m a project manager, and I like planning and knowing what’s going on, but recently I’ve figured out that maybe I need to be more focused on the journey than the destination. You know, all that fortune cookie wisdom kind of stuff.”
“Maybe I should’ve picked China,” he said.
“I have no opinion on that since I don’t know what we’re doing, but I’ll go ahead and say I’ve heard Rome is nice this time of year, so that’s still fine with me.”
“I’m going to send you a link.”
A second later it popped up in my chat box, a long string of gibberish my coders would’ve deciphered without even clicking. Not me. I had to open it. “I’ve got a picture of the Colosseum.”
“Not a picture, exactly. It’s the street view from Google Earth. I thought maybe we could walk around and talk.”
A laugh bubbled out of me as I noticed the compass and dashboard on the lower right of the screen. “I can’t believe it. You actually took me to Rome. This is a little bit genius.”
“Ah, thanks. Glad you like it. See that guy straight ahead in the red shirt? I thought maybe we’d start there and see what we can see. Too bad I didn’t book a tour guide.”
“That’s okay. I know a lot about the Colosseum. More than you’d guess,” I said, tapping some keys as I talked. “Like for instance, did you know that this is built from travertine, tuff, and brick-faced concrete?”
“I didn’t, but did you know that it was begun in 72 AD and completed only eight years later?” he said, reading the next line of the Wikipedia article I’d opened on “Colosseum.”
“I think I read that somewhere,” I said, smiling
“Should we look around some more?”
We did, exploring sections of the building inside and out. Jack took over as tour guide, and I provided color commentary for several minutes until he suggested we step outside and stroll over to a restaurant for some fresh pasta.
“Do you like gnocchi?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve had it.”
“Are you an adventurous eater?”
“I think so.”
“Then I say we take a picnic dinner over to this Pamphili Park I heard about.”
“Sure. Let me grab my gnocchi. It may look and smell like Cup ‘o Noodles but—” I broke off as a knock sounded at the door, forgetting he’d warned me but simultaneously realizing what had happened. “You didn’t.”
“I definitely did.”
