Vince

Seeing Jackie give a presentation is like watching a bird take flight or a fish return to the water. She’s at home up there. She shines. I do well enough to get by, but not Jackie. No, she aces the training she’s issuing to our coworkers.

The only way I’m comfortable instructing my peers is to make joke after joke and promise a happy hour afterward. Jackie takes the alternate route: She wows them because she’s damn great at it.

First she hits them with knowledge—thorough research of her topic. Next the sucker punch of a clip from a movie instead of a boring PowerPoint presentation. The clip? From Glengarry Glen Ross. Jack Lemmon’s character is right. You can’t succeed in sales if you’re only given shit leads.

Last, Jackie gives everyone homework in the form of a contest. The reward? Cold, hard cash.

When she asks if there are any questions, she’s beaming. Of course there are no fucking questions. She outlined every possible question and answered it in a rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun rhythm while our coworkers scribbled fiercely into their notebooks—which she handed out at the beginning, I might add.

Genius.

“To reward you for your patience and attentiveness,” Jackie says with a smile as I hit the lights, “I’ve ordered Papa Joe’s deep dish pizza, and it should be in the conference room”—she checks the clock on the wall behind me—“right about now. Enjoy your lunch, everyone.”

Of the dozen people who file out, several are excitedly chattering about how they’re going to win the contest.

“Kayla, can you and Joan and Robin stick around and eat in here with Vince and me? There are a few details we need to solidify with you.” She leans over the table and stage whispers, “I’ll order us Thai instead.”

“Absolutely,” they chime in agreement.

“Drinks on me,” I announce. It’s the least I can do. Jackie let me kick back and relax on this one. We do that—trade presentations and take turns based on our strengths.

“I’ll have a gin and tonic.” Robin is a fiftysomething manager in sales. Her voice is that of a former smoker, and her hugs are those of a grandma. There is nothing like sinking into that floral blouse and getting a good squeeze from her.

“Oh! Mimosa for me,” Joan says. She’s rail thin, unlike Robin, her features angular but pretty in her own unique way. Kayla joins in next.

“I’ll have a gin and tonic and a mimosa. It is Monday, after all.”

I fold my arms over my chest and blink at the women before me. I’m waiting for their real orders, which they figure out without a word from me.

“Fine.” Kayla, predictably, is the first to cave. “Coke.”

“Diet,” Robin and Joan say at the same time.

“Butler?” I ask Jackie.

“I’m going to drink water, thanks.”

“Come on. I’m treating. How about a coffee?”

Jackie’s eyes brighten. “Like a caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream?”

“I change my order!” Kayla shoots her arm into the air like we’re in a classroom.

I sigh but give in, sliding into a chair at the table and opening my phone to peck everyone’s Starbucks orders into my app. “Don’t get too excited,” I say as I add a medium Pike Place for myself. “I’m sending a temp to gopher. Order me a shrimp pad thai, will you?” I ask Jackie.

“You got it.” She beams at me and I wonder if anyone else notices the rosy color in cheeks, or the extra second we hold each other’s gazes. I hope not.

I email the order to the temp, Sandy, then swing by my desk and check my messages. There are several from people who think they’re having an emergency, but it’s nothing that can’t wait until after our Thai/Starbucks lunch meeting.

I swing back by the conference room as the fastest Thai food in the universe is delivered to the table.

“How long was I gone?” I ask after the deliveryman zooms by me to return to his time machine. “What year is this?”

Jackie flashes me a smile as she opens one of the bags and starts unloading our meals.

“Mr. Carson?” I turn to find Sandy holding a tray of Starbucks cups plus one extra in her hand. “Here are your coffees.”

“Thanks.” I take the tray, then lean in and say, “Seriously. Did you and the Thai guy use the same machine to zap you back?”

She frowns, not understanding, so I tell her to never mind. By the time I close the conference room door, a conversation has started without me.

“He’s gorgeous. Tall. Golden-blond hair.” Kayla is speaking and Robin and Joan are hanging on her every word. “He has a deliciously wide chest and round, sculpted shoulders.” She touches her own shoulders and rolls her eyes in apparent ecstasy. “When he runs by tomorrow, you have to check him out.”

I grimace.

“Hey,” I interrupt. Kayla’s mouth forms a small O. “You’re married.” That’s not what I wanted to say, but I can’t exactly gripe about J.T., can I? “Besides.” I pull my shoulders back. “I too have round, sculpted shoulders.” I set the drinks in front of them. “And I come bearing gifts.”

“Run by with your shirt off, honey, and we’ll talk.” Robin peeks over her glasses at me. I narrow my eyes at her, but I can’t hate her. Those damn hugs.

“Close your ears, Vince,” Kayla instructs. Without waiting, she looks at Jackie and says, “Spill it. How good is the sex with him?”

Jackie nearly drops my pad thai and I scoop up the container before I have to eat my lunch off the floor. Her widening eyes hit mine and I raise my eyebrows, trying to communicate with my mind that Kayla is referring to the running douchebag, not me.

“What does that smooth, bare chest feel like?” Joan asks.

See? Not talking about me. I have a manly, hairy chest.

“I’m going to eat at my desk,” I announce, not that anyone is paying me any attention.

“Is he a good kisser?” Robin asks.

“Or eat my desk,” I mumble.

“Uh…” Jackie is fumbling but I’m not bailing her out. I snatch my Pike Place and salute the ladies with the cup. “Butler, fill me in on what I miss. I mean, about the project, not about whatever you’re doing with…whoever you’re doing it with.”

“J.T.,” Kayla answers.

“Oh! Right! J.T.” Jackie, late to the party, has finally figured it out. God love her. “Um.”

“Wait until I’m gone!” I call, but there’s a secret smile on my face as I slip out the conference room door and close it with a snick. Jackie is talking about sex, and even though the ladies from work are assuming it’s with someone else, Jackie is thinking of me as she describes it.

I hum as I stroll to my desk, coffee and Thai food and confidence intact.

“You’re right. This place is girly.” Jackie is standing beside me at the doorway of Chic Winehouse.

“It’s not that bad. It was girly the night Bethany and I came because you would have been outnumbered.”

“No,” I say as we follow a hostess to a table in the center of a packed house. “Today in the conference room I was outnumbered.”

The table is tiny and the chairs are spindly. Glad I don’t have a weight problem. I lower myself into the chair gingerly, half expecting it to collapse like a pile of matchsticks.

“Welcome to Chic Winehouse,” greets a neatly attired waitress. She delivers a plate with two miniature pink cakes the same shade as her shirt. “Here are your petits fours. They’re on the house tonight as an amuse-bouche.”

“They’re what? For the what?” I need an interpreter for at least two of the words she just used.

“Thank you,” Jackie says. “I’ve been here a million times, but he might need a minute.”

“No problem.” Our waitress, her long legs snipping like scissors, clips to another table with an air of efficiency.

“Oh, I love these,” Jackie says about the cakes. “They have a raspberry puree nestled in a créme—Vince!”

She’s barking at me because…well, I don’t know why.

“What?” I ask around a mouthful.

“You’re supposed to savor it.” She takes a bite I’d only be capable of if my mouth were wired shut.

“Uh-huh. No, thanks.” I lift my menu. Half of it is in French. I put it down and cross my arms over it, leaning over the postage stamp–sized table. “Tell me how the questioning went in the conference room after I left. Did you spill about the great sex you’ve been having lately?”

“You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?” She nibbles a corner from her tiny cake.

“You could eat it in one bite, you know.”

“I’m savoring.”

“You’re turning me on.”

Her cheeks color a darker shade of pink than the frosting, and now I want to take her home and make out long and slow.

“But we’re on a date,” I remind both of us—me and my burgeoning manhood—“so I’m going to be a gentleman.”

“I appreciate that. We can’t just”—she waves her hand—“you know…every time we feel like it.”

“Oh, that we could.” I pretend to read the menu. “I think the Brookdale Group would fire us for getting it on in the copy room.”

“Or one of us.” She points at herself.

“You’re an asset, Butler. They wouldn’t keep me over you.” It’s not a throwaway compliment. She’s wildly more qualified for VP than I am. I’m a displaced entrepreneur trying to make it work in a corporation and doing a fair to middling job.

“Yes, but you have a penis.” Her mouth freezes open when the arrival of the waitress coincides with the moment the word “penis” exits Jackie’s lips. And now that I have that word swirling around in my mind…What were we talking about?

We order a red blend and food—I’m assured what I’m getting is the “most popular item on the menu,” though I think that might be what the restaurant tells all the guys, given it’s coincidentally the most expensive item on the menu. I don’t mind. I like treating Jackie.

Halfway through the wine, the food devoured, she’s laughing at some half-witted joke I made.

“I like this wine we ordered,” I say over her laughter. “It makes me funnier.”

My phone bings and reflexively I check it.

“Everything okay?” Jackie asks, probably because my face falls as I read the text.

“My parents,” I announce glumly, “are coming to town on Friday.”

Jackie claps and grins, not sharing my dread of their arrival. “That’s great!”

“No. Great is when they ship Christmas presents instead of delivering them in person. Great is when they call me from Europe to say they’re having the best anniversary of their lives. Great is when they’re far enough away that I know they’re okay but I don’t have to share meals with them.”

“You don’t get along with your parents?” she asks, her eyebrows bending with concern.

“It’s not that.” How do I explain? I take a drink of my wine, emptying the glass. “They’re fantastic parents. They raised me well.”

“I sense a ‘but.’ ”

“But.” I smile and she smiles back, and already talking about my family is easier than I guessed it would be. “They didn’t approve of the divorce.”

Jackie wrinkles her nose. “Well, then they should take that up with Leslie, since she was the one who wanted it.”

See that? That right there is why Jackie rocks.

“Did they not take your side?” she asks. “My parents took my side.”

Sure, because Lex is a cheating jerk. In my case Leslie backed away slowly until she vanished into the ether. The lines aren’t as black and white.

“They think I could’ve tried harder. Worked harder to keep Leslie around.” There is such a distinct pause, I’m sure I’ve overshared.

“Could you have?” Jackie asks quietly.

Her question is like a punch to the gut, but Jackie is my friend first. She isn’t trying to skewer me, though the question did feel similar to getting shivved in the diaphragm.

“Before I came to work at Brookdale, I owned a real estate company.” My neck is hot and I rub my palm over the back of it. Much as I’d like to blame the wine, it’s not the red blend’s fault. “The ripple effect from the real estate bubble bursting consumed my would-be empire.”

I meet Jackie’s eyes and see the sympathy there. I will myself to shut up, but instead tell her the ugly truth.

“I lost it all. Including my wife.”

Jacqueline

Vince’s mouth presses into a thin line and he ages ten years before my eyes. His posture shrinks, dark circles appear under his eyes, and he holds himself as taut as a bowstring.

“Anyway,” he continues as if he isn’t corroding inside, “I had a marketing degree to fall back on and a fair amount of sales experience. And here we are.”

“I had no idea.” Of all the things we’ve shared over the years, he never mentioned a company he owned. It’s a big detail to leave out.

“Bankruptcy is humiliating. Especially when your marriage falls apart as a result.”

I finger the stem of my wineglass in thought. I shouldn’t ask, but the question comes anyway. “Do you regret it?”

His forehead crinkles. “What? My business?”

“Yes. Knowing that everything would collapse in that financial climate, would you have made the decision not to start it?”

He blinks as if he’s never been asked the question before. As if he’s been so plagued by regret that he’s never once considered the positives that come from having a business and losing it.

“I would do the same thing,” he admits quietly. “How about that?”

The weight of the moment passes with one of his quick grins. He hovers the perilously low wine bottle over my half-full glass, but I shake my head. He empties the bottle into his own glass, filling it only an inch or two.

“That’s it for the wine,” he announces, but I sense his comment is more to fill the gap in conversation.

“I’ll go with you,” I blurt.

He sets the wine bottle down slowly, his eyelids narrowing.

“Dinner with your parents,” I clarify. “Take me. I’m the perfect buffer for uncomfortable conversations…assuming they have a modicum of social etiquette.” Ironically, I’m uncomfortable with this conversation, but I continue offering rather than take it back. “I’m great with parents. And if they think it’s weird that you’re bringing a date, you can blame work. Tell them our project ran late and I tagged along for fun.”

“You think hanging around with my ’rents is going to be fun?” His amused expression pairs with a low laugh that sweeps away the heaviness from before.

“Tell them whatever you want.” I wave a hand to halt my jabbering. “You’re good on your feet.”

Vince frowns down at the text and nods, eyes still on his phone. Why do I feel as if I’m teetering on a precipice?

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.” He nods again, this time at me, and I swallow nervously.

“Great.”

We finish our wine in silence and I hope I haven’t marched through a string of invisible DO NOT CROSS yellow tape. Where Vince and I are concerned, I’m not sure where our boundaries start or stop.

Like, at all.