Jacqueline

“Not this again!” Vince drops his head back on his sofa like I just delivered the weight of the world to his lap.

“What? It’s a perfectly valid argument.”

He rolls his head to the side and regards me, his mouth flinching above an angled jaw. The stubble is a new thing he’s trying. Not a bushy beard, mind you, but flecks of stubble that make his lips stand out. I swallow thickly and search for the thread of thought I lost when he fixed me with very blue eyes.

“I stand by my argument,” I say.

“Butler. In no civilized country in the world is it acceptable to not shave your legs.”

“Not true.” I hold up a finger. “French women don’t shave.” I frown in thought. “Or they didn’t used to, anyway.”

He eyes my legs, bare since I wore a dress tonight. It’s a perfectly harmless summer frock, but when his eyes coast along my body, I feel…weird. Self-conscious, I tug at the hemline cresting my knees.

“What are we watching?” he asks abruptly, pushing himself off the sofa like he has a bottle rocket in his ass. We’ve gone from opening beers to talking about work to discussing leg shaving, and now he’s back to our old MO.

“I’m tired of watching movies,” I whine, sinking deeper into his overstuffed love seat.

He pauses at the cabinet next to his TV where he keeps his profuse DVD collection. “Okay.” He crosses his arms. “What do you want to do?”

I shrug, feeling warm. I glance at my half glass of beer, not understanding why the sudden onslaught of rampant hormones. Could be because of what happened this morning.

As I was leaving my apartment, head down, digging through my purse to see if I’d thrown my phone in there, I heard a deep voice say, “Excuse me.”

I looked up to find him. The Runner. J.T., or whatever. He was breathing heavily and wearing a pair of black shorts, his chest bare and glistening with sweat. Then he smiled. I stood staring like an idiot, as stupefied as if I’d stumbled upon a unicorn.

He nodded and took a wide arc around me, and I stood rooted in place, gawping in his wake. And now, my pride bruised and my ego shattered, I’m apparently transferring my attraction onto Vince.

“Guess what happened to me today,” I blurt, almost desperately. The burn of my cheeks warns my brain not to go on with my tale of humiliation, but there’s no choice. Either I vanquish this demon or it lives in me, festering, while I develop misdirected hots for my best friend. Before Vince answers, I say, “I ran into the runner guy at my apartment complex. Not literally. But he stopped in front of me and smiled and excused himself.”

Vince’s face scrunches. He sits on the couch again, resting his elbows on his knees. “You didn’t lead with the story about the guy you have a crazy-stalker crush on speaking to you?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t say anything back, so it didn’t seem relevant.”

Vince nods, but his look of confusion remains.

“Like, nothing,” I reiterate. “He spoke and I stood there like a mute.”

“Smooth.” Vince reclaims his beer and takes a drink.

I sag further, hoping his loveseat will swallow me and deliver me to another world entirely, where I’m confident and attractive and not hunched over my purse digging for my phone when the man of my dreams jogs by.

“Wait. He was at your apartment complex?”

“He lives there. Didn’t you wonder how I knew his name was J.T.?” I ask with my “duh” face. “I spotted it on his apartment mailbox.”

“No. I was too alarmed by the fact that his name is two letters to ask.” Vince’s tone is angry instead of playful. “But this will make things easier.”

“Easier for what?” Now I’m sweating.

“For you to talk to him. He lives around the corner. Get the date you’ve been dreaming of.” Vince, pleased with himself, leans an arm on the sofa and polishes off his beer.

“Shut up.”

“It’s your life, Butler,” he says, standing, “but you have to end this no-dating streak unless you’re planning on entering the nunnery.”

“You’re one to talk!” I shout behind him as he disappears into the kitchen. I hear the fridge door open, a bottle cap pop off and hit the tile. “You’ve been a monk since Leslie left!”

He pokes his head around the corner and hoists one dark eyebrow.

“If I have to do it, you have to do it,” I whine.

We share a mild standoff that ends with Vince swaggering into his living room. Finally he gives me a nod.

“Okay, Butler. You ask out Jaundice, and I’ll ask someone out too. Deal?”

Vince

What the fuck are you doing?

Like I know? I panicked.

She mentioned I’m a monk, and I’d rather not let her know how untrue that statement is.

Plus, it’s not like I’ve spent the past three days hatching a plot like an evil dictator with a Persian cat in my lap. I doodled my idea, thought about it, and then…life happened. I got busy.

I drink half my beer in a few deep swallows before going back into my living room, where Jackie has become one with my loveseat. Seriously, she resembles one of the gray cushions, except her gray dress has little yellow flowers on it.

Looking at her there, I wonder if I should correct her assumption that I’ve been monklike since Leslie left. Since she looks like a deflated balloon, I decide against it.

“Listen,” I say, in boss mode. “It’s not a big deal when you think about it. You’ve seen this guy, what, once in person? A hundred times through a tinted office window? What do you have to lose? If you say ‘Hey, let’s grab dinner,’ and he says ‘Sorry, I’ve got a girlfriend,’ your life will return to normal. You can pine out the window, never talking to him, whether he’s single or not.”

Jackie sits up, tugging her dress again—why the obsession with hiding her kneecaps tonight is a mystery—and nods. Her back goes straight. Chin up. A look of fierce, sheer willpower alters her expression until she closely resembles a man-eater.

“You’re right,” she says, picking up her beer. “What do I have to lose?”

Even though I’m the one internally deflating now, I give her a nod of encouragement. “Atta girl.”

“Except for five pounds.”

“Butler,” I growl in exasperation. She’s tirelessly trying to lose the five pounds I couldn’t point out if you held a gun to my head.

“He’s an Adonis.”

“He runs,” I mutter, peeved.

“He’s godlike.”

And I’m going to puke.

“Go running with me,” she says, her eyes lighting with interest.

I feel my lips compress, because she shouldn’t have to change what she does or how she looks for anyone.

“I should probably get a tan.” She runs a palm up her bare arm.

No, she shouldn’t. Jackie has beautiful skin. Soft skin. On the nights we have movie marathons, we inevitably end up on the same couch—the one I’m sitting on—migrating ever closer because the middle cushion is worn. By the fourth hour or so, we’re usually shoulder to shoulder, shoes off, hands in the same popcorn bowl.

I think of her with this J.T. guy in a similar situation, nothing stopping him from leaning over and sampling her lips, and jealousy tears through me.

“Yes. Running. Tanning. Be your best you.” I frown. She can’t pretend to be someone she’s not forever, so if she snags this guy with fake her and then drops the pretense, he’ll bail.

I’m being unfair, rooting against her like this, but I can’t help it. I have a dog in the fight—a cherished outcome. I want Jackie on my couch. I want her shoes on my floor. Her beer bottle on my coffee table. I want to be the guy who leans over and kisses her….

But timing is everything. She can’t see past Hard Body yet, so my job for the time being is to push her toward him at the same time I’m working my wiles on her. It’ll be a juggle, but I can do it.

“Okay.” She rubs her hands together like she does before our strategy meetings at work. “What about you? Who are you going to ask out?”

I temporarily forgot this part of the equation. “Uhh…”

“Your first foray into the dating world needs to be a girl who is nice. Who will listen.”

Wrong. Wrong, wrong. The first foray needs to be a shallow, slightly drunk girl whose name you can’t remember in the morning. Except I remember names. One of them was Meghan. With an h, she’d told me. She was cute. Not forever material, but a nice reminder that I still had skills in the bedroom.

“I don’t know, Butler. Sounds like a recipe for a rebound to me.” I drink from my beer bottle.

“Hmm.” Her brow crinkles as she thinks this over.

“Who was the first guy you dated after your divorce?” Jackie joined the club a few years before I did. She was fresh off her ex-husband when she started as a junior designer at the firm. We were friendly then, but not friends. I was infatuated with Leslie and my job in equal measures, though later my ex argued that the split was more seventy-thirty, with her bringing up the rear.

“Clark.”

“Clark?” I drink more beer as I digest this sad fact. “Like Clark Kent? Or Clark Griswold from National Lampoon’s Vacation?”

“Like Clark Jeffries, sales guy at a mattress factory.”

“Oh-ho!” I can’t help myself. I laugh.

“Stop! He was…nice.”

“I bet. Was he also fifty?”

“He was my age. He was…a salesman. He took me for a drink at a cosmopolitan bar.”

“Bet you loved that.” Jackie likes beer. Or wine. Rarely liquor. She says it makes her do crazy things, which sounded intriguing the first time I heard it. A girl tells a guy she gets “crazy” after cocktails, he immediately fills his spank bank with dirty, naughty images involving riding crops and masks. Not so with Jackie. Once she got drunk on peach schnapps and toilet-papered her neighbor’s horse.

“I had one cosmo,” she says now, “well outside the animal-decorating zone, and then I blubbered the rest of the evening. We were supposed to go to dinner and a movie following, but instead we stayed at the bar, kept drinking, and ate tiny little appetizers at twenty bucks a plate.”

“Let me guess.” I have this down. “He asked you to pay.”

“He didn’t!” she announces brightly. “He paid the entire bill, listened to my divorce woes, and drove me home. Then he dropped me at my front door and kissed me good night.” Her face takes on a wistful quality that I don’t like. “He never called me again, and I’m sure we were both relieved.”

The wistfulness turns to hurt, and if there is one emotion I can’t even on Jackie, it’s hurt. Seeing her hurt slices me open and makes me want to avenge her honor. Even with Clark the mattress salesman who treated her A-OK.

I stand and move to the loveseat to sit next to her. Hand on her knee, I give her a smile that she returns.

“He’s out there, Butler. He may be this running guy, or he may be someone else, but the guy who appreciates you for all you are, all I know you to be, is out there. And he’s dying to treat you right and hear your problems and love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

Her searching brown eyes make me feel like I swallowed a cinder block. I silently ask myself if I could be that guy for her, and to be honest, I’m not sure. All I know is that the last time we were slouched in my living room watching Lethal Weapon 4, there was a moment where it seemed appropriate to kiss my only female friend.

It freaked me out as much as it excited me.

“Thanks, Vince.” She pats my hand in that “ol’ buddy, ol’ pal” way and says, “I’m going to find you a nice girl to ask out. I have friends who would like you.”

I don’t want to date her friends. I know about Girl Code. One of Leslie’s friends, Tricia, told me after the divorce that she’d liked me for years, but since she’d known Leslie since the sixth grade, I was off limits. I should mention there is no way, even in the face of a zombie apocalypse, that I would ever date Tricia, but her words resonated. Girlfriends stuck together.

“No, don’t,” I tell Jackie.

“Why not? I know lots of nice girls.”

“I, uh…” Why not, indeed? “I need to do this.” I gesture to myself with a hand on my chest. “For me. You know? Because I am worthy of…um…”

God. This is such bullshit.

“Earning the woman I ask out,” I finish, proud of my ability to think on the spot. “The process is important. Trust the process.”

Jackie purses her lips in thought but then miraculously buys my bullshit. Thank God for her belief in those stupid motivational posters. “All right. You go get ’em, tiger. Jogging, then? Tomorrow?”

“Sure. A Sunday jog. Sounds great.”

“In that case, I’m going to leave you the contents of my beer and go home.”

“What? Why?”

But she’s already up and angling her long-strapped bag over her torso. “Because I have to make a plan. A chart. A spreadsheet. Download an app. Find my workout clothes.”

“I didn’t agree to jog so we could lose our Saturday-night movie fest, Butler. I agreed because you are harebrained and slightly misguided, but as your friend I support your Bugs Bunny–like schemes.”

I’m one to talk. My own scheme more resembles Wile E. Coyote’s.

“What a maroon,” she quotes Bugs, throwing a hand and opening my front door. Then she’s gone and I’m alone with my beer and the remainder of hers, wondering what I just agreed to.