Chapter 27

There’s no delicate way to put this: you should kiss Ranée.

I pushed “send” on the text to Paul, and waited, curious to see what would happen.

It took a few minutes that I spent entertaining myself by imagining Paul’s reaction to the text. Confusion? Relief? Curiosity? Embarrassment? That really cute mortification like high school kids get when word of their crush leaks out?

Is it possible that when my phone went off I was wearing an expression of impish glee?

YES. Yes, it was.

But honestly, how could I not be grinning like a fool? Ranée deserved a good guy, and Paul and I may have brought out the most boring parts of each other, but it sounded like he and Ranée were a potential fit. I wanted them to find out if it was a great fit.

I slid my messages open, but it wasn’t a text from Paul. It was from Jack. Can we talk? Maybe Facetime or something?

What? Why now? I’d been putting him out of my thoughts for days. I had a cabinet of plasticware chaos behind me to prove it. But it’s not like I was going to say no to that.

Sure, I typed. I didn’t even hesitate to press send.

When? His response was just as fast.

Ranée walked past me, zipping up her hoodie. “I’m off to the barn.”

“I want every detail when you get back.”

She gave me a strange look. “There’s not going to be anything to tell. There’s never anything to tell.” And she shut the front door behind her.

Now is good, I texted Jack. And I refuse to put on makeup for this.

Fair. This is a come-as-you-are kind of call.

Thirty seconds later the FaceTime ring sounded. I barely had time to feel anything but confusion. “Hi,” I said. Then I burst out laughing at the sight of Jack’s T-shirt. It was white with a kid’s marker drawing of a stick figure with longish hair. It said, “Dr. Jack” in kid scrawl, the J backwards, and Jack’s stick figure wore a pink cape. “Nice shirt.”

He glanced down at it and gave me a tight smile. “I did promise a come-as-you-are call. This is one of my favorite shirts.”

My own laughter fizzled away. Was it a good sign that he’d worn something in front of me referencing his doctor life? Or a bad sign that every part of him from his tired eyes to his forced smile spoke of stress? His hair was down again, but it looked like it hadn’t seen a comb for a day or two.

“It looks comfortable,” I said. But that felt awkward to leave hanging there, so I dove in. “Why did you want to talk?”

“Because not talking seems stupid?”

“Is that a question?”

He sighed. “No. Or if it is, I know the answer. It’s pretty stupid that we haven’t talked for a few days.”

That wasn’t on me, so I raised my eyebrows at him.

“We’re not in a relationship, are we?” he asked.

That was a question I hadn’t expected. “I don’t know. No? No, we’re not in a relationship.”

“Because a relationship is where you date each other. But only each other, right? And don’t see other people. And you make that decision because you’ve spent time together and you both agree you don’t want to date anyone else. So you don’t. And you hang out with each other and do couple stuff, like go to each other’s boring work parties, or take bike rides, or fight over the remote.”

“I don’t fight over the remote. I don’t care about the remote. That’s why Ranée and I get along so well. She would marry the remote if she could.” I threw out the joke because I didn’t know how to process everything else he was saying. It sounded like he was working out something aloud, so I’d sit here and let him, to see where he went.

“See? I would know that if we were in a relationship. But we can’t be. Because you’re in San Francisco.”

A faintly acid ripple burned through my stomach. I was having the exact conversation I’d played out in my mind a week ago and filed under, “Conversations Never to Have.”

“You’re on an Oregon mountain. Maybe that’s the problem.”

“It is. It’s just as much of a problem. But I don’t plan to change that any time soon. Do you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so, either. So why keep talking? All it does is make me want to come down off the mountain. Or talk you out of the city. I want to be sitting right across from you when you make me laugh. I want to make you laugh, and hear it myself. It kills me to hear it filtered through a screen. I want to…”

He trailed off. He wanted to…? Whatever he wasn’t saying, I wanted it too.

He shoved his hands through his hair. I was learning this was a sign of his frustration. “It gets worse every time we talk, not better, so it made sense not to talk anymore. There is literally no point, is there?”

It was a hopeless question, but I felt a smile tickling the corners of my lips anyway, because…

He wanted to sit across from me and watch me laugh.

“There’s no point,” I agreed. “Not if the goal is for us to be in a relationship.”

“And we can’t be, right?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense.” But it was even harder to fight my smile. It felt so good to know I wasn’t the only one who’d been driving myself crazy with this.

“It’s not funny,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me.

“No.” But I realized the smile had won anyway.

“The thing is, it’s kind of sucked for a few days without your texts. Everything is boring and stupid.”

“Wow, Dr. Jack. I had no idea doctors were so articulate.”

“Stop making fun of me.” He leaned in until I got an extreme close up of his glare. “We should still talk.”

“Okay.”

He leaned back to a normal distance. “Okay?”

“Okay. But.”

“But…?”

“I’m tired of off-limits topics. It’s like trying to do the tango on eggshells except if the eggshells break, everything blows up. I’m over it.”

“I’m tired of off-limit topics too. I get it. But we still need ground rules.”

“Oh, yay. Ground rules.” A text alert came in at the top of my screen. I didn’t know who it was from, but suddenly I wanted to check that much more than I wanted to keep having this conversation.

“I think we both have to stay honest about what this is. That’s my only ground rule.”

The twitch to check the text disappeared. “That doesn’t sound too bad. Explain that some more. Like, can we bring up whatever we want? I can ask you doctor questions?”

“Yeah. I mean, maybe don’t ask me about any growths you have. But yeah, we can talk about whatever it feels normal to talk about. But since this isn’t ever going to be a relationship, I think we should quit flirting. Just talk like friends.”

“Friends.” I considered the way the word felt in my mouth. How the idea felt in my chest. “Maybe I should feel bummed about that, but this doesn’t feel like a downgrade.”

“Right?” Relief flooded his face, the tight lines around his eyes finally softening. “Friends is good.”

“Friends is good. But bad grammar.”

“But a good thing to be.”

“A good thing to be,” I agreed. “But I would prefer not to be the friend you tell your dating stories to.”

“Ditto. And tell Ranée not to send me pictures of any shoes you’re wearing on dates. Especially not if they’re high heels. And the higher they are, the less I want to see them.”

I leaned forward, like that was somehow going to magnify his face on the screen. “You have a thing for high heels?”

“I’m pretty tall. I appreciate them for purely practical reasons.” He drummed his fingers a couple of times. “Are we flirting?”

“You started it. Knock it off.”

“I will. I’m being serious. It’s weird not being able to send you something funny when it happens, or to go out of my way not to talk to you.” I opened my mouth to respond, but he held his hands up. “I know. That was my fault. But we’re good now?”

“We’re good.”

“So what should we talk about?”

How about how he wanted to sit across from me and listen to me laugh? That seemed like a pretty good start. But since I had agreed to the ground rules, I cleared my throat while I bought time to think of something else.

“Oh, I know. I finally figured out how to get revenge on Ranée for posting your Photoshopped pictures of us.”

“I gotta hear this.”

I recapped how she’d hated Paul then suddenly found herself volunteering alongside him at the barn and catching all the feels. “So in conclusion, neither of them is ever going to make a move on the other, and Paul especially is an overthinker, so I texted him and told him he should kiss her.”

“Out of the blue? Tell me what you said.”

“I said I knew there was no non-awkward way to say it, but that he should kiss her.”

“So you haven’t talked to this guy in a month—”

“Longer.”

“And that’s what you started with?” When I nodded, he burst out laughing. “Oh, man. Does she know?”

“No. She has no idea what she’s walking into.”

“Okay, but you have to tell me how this plays out. What did he say?”

“I don’t know. It just barely happened. He might have texted me while we were talking, but I haven’t looked at it yet.”

“Are you kidding me? Look at it now. Go!”

I laughed and opened my texts. “It’s from him. It says, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

“Is that possible?” Jack asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Ranée is never wrong about this stuff. If she feels a vibe, she’s right. I’m typing, ‘Too bad. Because I happen to know she’d be into it.’ There, I sent it.”

“You really don’t care?” Jack asked.

“I really don’t. I move on, and I’m done. If I wanted to still be with Paul, I’d still be with Paul.”

“But you don’t.”

There was a hint of wheedling about it, almost a question. “You’re flirting. Ground rules, dude. And no, I don’t.”

“Because?”

He was fully aware of the reason why. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying it. “Ground. Rules. Oh, I’m going to like this. It’s like pleading the fifth when I don’t want to answer anything.”

“Sorry. Did he text back?”

It came in right as he asked. “It says, ‘I don’t want to be that guy.’” I rolled my eyes and read aloud as I typed back. “You’re not that guy. This is me telling you: neither one of us will think you are.”

“I’m trying to imagine how I’d feel about this if I were him,” Jack said.

“Depends on whether you want to kiss Ranée.”

“I do not.”

“Then I guess we’ll see what—ooh, he texted back. ‘This is inappropriate for us to discuss.’ Well, hot dang!”

“That doesn’t sound good. Why do you sound happy? I thought you wanted him to kiss her.”

“I’m not as invested in this as you’re making me sound, but yeah, my gut says those two are going to be a weirdly good match, so I’m happy because I know Paul well enough to know that means he’s going to kiss Ranée. He’s got an old-school gentleman’s code, so no kissing and telling.”

Jack tucked his hair behind his ears and propped himself on his desk with crossed arms. “So let me get this straight: your revenge on Ranée is convincing your ex to kiss her, which is something they both want to happen?”

“Yeah.”

He grinned. “You’re not very good at revenge.”

“Trust me, there’s going to be a moment when she realizes that I said something to Paul. She will be furious and mortified, and even though I’ll never see that moment, it is completely satisfying just knowing she had it.”

“I don’t really understand women.”

“I’ll be your guide.”

He scrunched his face. “That wouldn’t bother you?”

“That would totally bother me. Never mind. Figure them out yourself.”

“I’m glad it would bother you.”

“GROUND RULES.”

“Oh, yeah. So what else do we talk about now that we’re done setting up your ex with your best friend? You’re weird.”

“You’re weird, hermit. Let’s talk about that. Tell me why you’re a hermit.”

“Because Oregon is nice.”

I felt like one of the pigeons who thought it was out for a nice flight until it suddenly slammed into my office window. He was being flip. He was always flippant. I knew this about him, but I wanted to know the real answer.

He sighed. “Sorry. Okay, why I’m a hermit. It’s a tale of woe, ridiculously tragic and melodramatic.”

“Should I pop some corn? Grab a hanky?”

“Yes, and definitely. Or maybe I’ll just give you the antiseptic version.”

“Was that a doctor joke?”

“Of course.” His hair had fallen from behind one of his ears, and he brushed it from his face in irritation, then reached for something off-camera as he started his story. “So I was a pediatric oncologist.”

“Was? I thought you were still a doctor.”

“I am. General practice right now.” He’d grabbed an elastic and was pulling his hair back as he talked. I swallowed hard as he settled it into a sloppy bun. It looked so much better back than down. I was a dead woman if he ever cut it. He paused, staring out at me from the screen, a tiny twitch playing at the corner of his mouth. Did he realize the effect he’d had on me?

He picked up his story. “So I was a pediatric oncologist. In Portland. It was a hard job, but I thought I was good at it. Then I got it wrong one too many times, and I left the children’s hospital. A friend of Sean’s runs this rural clinic, but his wife got an assignment with her microchip firm in Germany, and when Sean told me about it, I said I’d take over for him while they were gone.”

“How long are they going to be gone?”

“It was supposed to be an eighteen-month assignment, but they like it there, and I like it here, so it’s worked out so far for me to stay longer.”

There was more that he hadn’t said. I could feel all the spaces in between his words. He’d handed me the bare bones, but I wanted the connective tissue. Still, it was far more than he’d offered before, so I accepted it. “How long has it been?”

“Two years.”

I wanted to ask what had driven him out of the hospital and whether he was happy being a general practitioner after being a specialist. But I kept the questions to myself. Maybe it would come out over time. Maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t have to decide right this second how I felt about that either way.

“How’s work for you?” he asked.

It was such an ordinary request, and yet it felt new in our dynamic. This small talk stuff had been off-limits before, and as I told him about the shape of my day, it felt like I’d been let out of a box to stretch, finally, and breathe fresh air.

That was it. That was the whole conversation. Basically, “I missed talking to you. Let’s at least be friends even though it won’t go further than that. How was your day? This is how mine went.”

So simple. But it felt so good.

A text alert went off on my phone. “Hang on,” I said. “I might have a status update on the plot for revenge.” I checked it and winced.

“Was it him?”

“No. It’s Ranée.”

“What did she say?”

“It says, ‘I’m coming home. And I’m going to kill you.’”