Chapter 18

There he was.

His head and shoulders appeared on camera. I half expected him to be in flannel due to my man bun prejudices, but he was wearing a dark gray thermal.

Here is the thing about men wearing thermals: they are so hot. I do not mean temperature.

How was that even fair? Guys can pull out their comfiest shirt and put it on, and immediately it gives them amazing shoulders and sex appeal. Meanwhile, one internet search on “what to wear on camera” later, and I’m sporting an adequate teal shirt and a FEMA situation in my closet.

His hair was pulled back, but a tendril had escaped and hung by his eye. I wanted to reach through the screen and brush it back. I had underestimated how hard it would be to keep a straight face. Not even a straight face, just not one of those pop-eyed, slack-jawed cartoon faces.

He waved. It was so much cuter than saying hi.

I waved back. Then I realized it was awkward when I did it because now no one had spoken, so I said, “Hi.”

“How’s San Francisco?” he asked.

“Foggy. It’s a good night to be inside playing a board game. How’s the hermit house?”

“Small and Oregony.”

“What does Oregony mean? Is everything made of hemp? Do all the throw pillows get their tassels dreadlocked?”

“No, I think that’s a San Francisco thing. I need to specify that this place is rural Oregony which means it looks like an LL Bean catalog in here, except if it was decorated by two old guys sloshed on Budweiser who dragged in all the furniture their wives wouldn’t let them keep and then shoved it wherever it fit.”

“I’m going to need to see this.”

He reversed the camera, and I cursed myself for making the demand because there couldn’t be anything more interesting in his house than his face. “This is something else,” he said, panning around the room. Faux wood paneling covered the walls, which seemed like an odd choice for a cabin in the actual woods. I spotted an old TV, a tweedy brown sofa, and a kitchenette with avocado green counters. The only modern touch was a large, sleek computer monitor on a card table in the corner that I glimpsed before he flipped the camera again.

“In my defense, I’ve made none of these choices.”

“You’re forgiven. How long have you lived there?”

“Couple years, I guess.”

The answer startled me. I’d expect to see his own style in there somewhere after so long. Not that I knew what his style was, but he’d already said it wasn’t this.

“What about you?” he asked. “How long have you been in San Francisco?”

“I’ve been in the Bay Area for about ten years. I came up for college, and I’ve been around ever since.”

“Up? San Francisco is not up. Oregon is up.”

“Up from the suburbs of LA. Everything is relative.”

“Should we have a deep discussion about that? Relativism?”

“I mean, sure. Is this because we’ve veered into boring cocktail party talk?” It bothered me a little that he wanted to shift the conversation so quickly, but I couldn’t figure out why. It had definitely been small talk. People always say “small talk” like it was a bad thing, but at the same time, those things added together gave a true picture of a person, not walks through London and Rome.

“It is,” he said. “But it’s a me thing, not a you thing. I’d love to know all of this stuff about you, but it’s not fair to ask you to share all that stuff when I’m not willing to.”

For a minute, I wanted to blurt, “Let’s play Scrabble!” because here we were, three minutes into this conversation and already I had the perfect opening to bring up the most premature and awkward define-the-relationship talk EVER. And I didn’t want to do it. I’d rather just goof off, but Ranée’s words were sticking with me. Stupid Ranée.

“Why is that uncomfortable for you?” I asked instead of taking the easy road. I waited for some internal glow of satisfaction at having done the “grown-up” thing. It didn’t come, unless it felt like my stomach clenching while I waited for his answer. This whole situation was suddenly a thousand percent less fun than the clever DMs and texts we’d been exchanging.

“Shady past? Problems with emotional intimacy? Desperate need to project an air of mystery to hide how boring I am? Which one of those answers is good enough to get me off the hook and keep this conversation going?” He gave me a tight smile, the kind that said he knew none of the answers were good enough.

I rested my chin in my palm and studied him. After a few seconds, he imitated me, only he crossed his eyes, and I laughed.

“This is a weird situation,” I said, deciding to stick with the grown-up thing. “We’re not dating, but—”

“Wait, isn’t that exactly what we’re doing right now? We’re on a date, and unless I’m way off, we’re about to have a talk about definitions.” His expression and tone were mellow, maybe slightly amused.

“It sounds dumb when you say it like that,” I said.

“What? No.” Now he looked as if I’d told him we needed to speak only in Swahili. “It’s good. Why not talk about it? If we lived in the same town and went on these dates in person, we probably wouldn’t need to discuss any of this stuff for a while. But we’re not, and so it makes sense that we have this conversation in a different order too.”

“I guess I just want to be sure we’re…” I stopped.

“We’re what?” He leaned toward the camera slightly, as if it would put us closer.

“This is fun. The texts and DMs and now this.” I pointed back and forth between us to indicate the video call. “And it could be this forever and ever and I’d be happy with it.”

“Forever and ever?” He held up his hands in a “settle down” gesture. “I don’t know you well enough for forever and ever.”

It made me laugh again. “I mean that I’m fine with us just having a virtual friendship.”

“Friendship? Come on, this is at least a flirtation.”

“All right, flirtation. I’m fine with a virtual flirtation indefinitely.” It was true. Going back and forth with him in any medium had become a bright spot in each day, but I wasn’t into the idea of a long-distance relationship with a person I hadn’t met, would never meet, and even if I did meet…what was the point? I wasn’t moving. I didn’t expect him to, either.

“Indefinitely.” He scratched his nose. It was adorable. “All right. I accept your terms. An indefinite virtual flirtation.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what else to do. It was so official sounding that it seemed like we should shake hands.

I held up my hand to the camera. “High five to seal it?”

He held up his hand too and we high-fived.

Okay. So we were in agreement. It was exactly what I wanted.

So how come I felt disappointed?

I pulled myself together and tried to figure out where to go next after opening the date with basically, “I know we’ve never met, but let’s define this thing.” I glanced around the room, trying to find something I could seize on for conversation. There was nothing. Unless I wanted to talk about throw pillows or indoor lighting. Which I didn’t.

“I’d like to destroy you in Scrabble now,” Jack said.

It was pretty effective as changes of subject went. “You wish. You should probably tell me now if you’re one of those types who hates losing to a woman.”

“What if I am?”

“It’ll make beating you even more fun.”

He grinned, and I had a full-blown pitter-patter of the heart. Man, he was gorgeous.

“It’s on,” he said as a link for an online match pinged in my DMs.

I opened the game and examined my tiles. I got first play and I made it bloody. As in I literally spelled out the word “bloody” and scored 24 points.

“I see how it’s going to be,” he said.

“From start to finish.” I flashed a return grin at him.

“That looks less a smile and more like what a shark looks like before it eats you. People are friends, not food, Em.”

I liked the way he used my nickname instinctively, like he’d said it that way forever. But all I said was, “Chomp, chomp.”

It was a bruising game, and even though I led the whole time, he always stayed within twenty points, not something a lot of people could do when I played. And for sure no one had ever made me laugh as much during a match. At least, not until he wiped the smile off my face by playing “zambuck” on a triple word score for his final play and destroying me.

“Zambuck?” I said.

“You want to challenge it?”

“Obviously not.” The program didn’t let you make up words. If it was on the board, it was a real word.

“That’s one of the downsides to the online games.”

“That it keeps you honest?”

He laughed. “No. That I can’t lure you into challenging a word that ends up backfiring on you.”

“So ruthless, Jack.”

“Only because I’ve discovered you really are a shark.”

“Sharks don’t go from winning the entire game to losing by thirty in one play.”

“You know how it is. Sometimes letters just line up exactly right.”

“It’s not luck that lets you come up with a word like zambuck.”

“Could be. Maybe I put letters on the board until I guessed a real word that the game let me play.”

“I doubt that’s what you did.” He didn’t seem the type, and I liked that.

“You’re right. A zambuck is a slang term for a paramedic in Australia.”

My jaw dropped, and he laughed.

“You didn’t even have to Google that, did you?”

“Nope.”

I almost wanted to give him another fifty Scrabble points for that answer. “Why would you know that?”

He shrugged. It drew attention to the many favors his soft cotton thermal did for his broad shoulders, so much so that I almost missed his explanation.

“I knew a guy.”

“You knew a zambuck?”

“I did. Play again?”

“Wait, I feel like this requires more investigation. How did you meet a zambuck? Did you go on vacation to Australia and stumble across one?”

He shifted and rubbed his eyes. “Not exactly. It was kind of a work thing.”

I wanted to ask what kind of work thing requires you to cross paths with a zambuck, but he didn’t look like he wanted to get into it any further, so I let it go. Instead, I clicked to start a new game. “Play again.”

I beat him by ten points that I had to work really hard for. Somehow, at the end of two hours, we were tied at one win each, but he was about a hundred points ahead in the making-me-laugh category.

“You’re really funny,” he said. “I like that.”

“I was literally just thinking the same thing about you,” I admitted. “You’re even funnier than you are on Twitter.”

“Thanks,” he said. His focus shifted for a second, blinking at something on his screen that wasn’t on the camera. “I should probably call it a night. But I’ve never had so much fun being a loser before.”

I gave him a mock frown. “If we’re talking total points, this is a murder scene and I’m dead.”

“Dark. I like it.”

I liked how often he said he liked things about me. It was a nice change from Paul’s earnest but constant suggestions for improvements I could make. “That’s me. Pitch black soul.”

“On that note…”

I smiled at him. “I’ll ‘see’ you around.”

“Definitely.”

We cut the connection, and I stood up and stretched, enjoying the prickle of every nerve ending coming alive.

Wait.

I sat back down as the adrenaline washed over me. How could I feel this tingly and alive after playing Scrabble for two hours?

I almost wished Ranée were here to help me work through that. Because this wasn’t as simple as, “You feel tingly because you like him.” There was something else at play, but I wasn’t sure I could explain it to her. Besides, she would most likely be out for hours still. It was only ten at night.

For a second, I paused to wonder why Jack had needed to go. It looked like he’d gotten a call or text while we were talking. But I refused to jump to fretting that maybe he had another virtual flirtation going on. So what if he did? It was none of my business. I wasn’t the jealous type, and I wasn’t going to become so now.

I was a whole ball of things at once. Energized, worried, slightly smitten, a little stressed. All of it made my insides itchy, like when I was a kid and I’d watched too much TV, and I’d suddenly need to be outside doing pretty much anything as long as it got me moving.

I headed back to my room to do my FEMA work. Imposing order on chaos always cleared my head, but as I plucked some workout clothes from the floor to fold, I realized what I really wanted was to be OUT. Out of my house, out of my head.

I changed into the workout clothes instead of putting them away, grabbed my keys and phone, and headed out the door to the gym. There was nothing like several miles on a punishing treadmill course to burn off the restlessness. It hummed in my chest and over my scalp, like I could flick my fingers and strike a spark with the excess energy buzzing through me.

If that didn’t work out the strangeness cresting inside me…

Well, I needed the run to work. That was all. I just did.