Chapter 5

The message was from Jack, all right. It was another picture, but he’d Photoshopped himself again, this time astride a gray dappled unicorn on a beach, his long hair streaming in the breeze, the sky behind him filled with kites. He was wearing linen pants and no shirt, and he had a fake barbed wire tattoo around his bicep. But the best part was the crown of flowers he wore. He’d captioned it, “I AM MANLY, NOT GIRLY.”

I laughed. And kept laughing.

“Let me see.” Ranée snatched the phone from my hand. “Oh, now this is some of his best work yet. Can you really say no to that?” She handed my phone back. “I mean, compared to—"

I could tell by the look in her eye that it was going to be some kind of anti-Paul remark, so I held up my hand. “Enough. I can’t even tell you how old that’s getting.”

She shrugged. “Thank goodness Paul won’t see those DMs.”

“Why are you saying it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m hiding something.”

She tsked. “Ah, baby girl. I didn’t say anything like that. That must be your guilty conscience talking. And if you feel guilty it must be because there’s a little spark there that Paul wouldn’t like.”

“You’re ridiculous. I don’t feel guilty even a tiny bit. Jack and I were forced into this conversation because you put us both in an awkward position.”

“So, you’re done talking to him?”

I set the phone on the coffee table and picked up the magazine again. “I think so. I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.”

I expected an argument so when she stayed quiet, I glanced up from an article debating who wore a yellow latex dress better. Since the answer was neither, I gave Ranée my full attention again. She opened and closed her mouth twice without saying anything. “What? Spit it out.”

“It’s just…I don’t think Jack usually bothers staying in touch with someone after he does a Photoshop request. I mean, if you look at his Instagram, he doesn’t really interact beyond posting the pictures even though his followers are constantly trying to get his attention on there and Twitter.”

“So?”

“So you obviously have his attention.”

“I don’t want it.”

“But why not? He’s hot, and Sean vouches for him.”

“Because I have a boyfriend!”

She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m just saying, he’s provoked more emotion from you in a single day than Paul has the whole time you’ve dated him.”

“That’s a point for Paul.”

“Fine,” she said, flouncing toward her bedroom. “I won’t try to save you from a boring relationship anymore…today.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, but as soon as she closed her door, I opened Jack’s message again.

 

EMILY: Fine. Not girly. You’re practically an Old Spice commercial. You should be so proud.

 

I couldn’t really explain why I’d responded. It made much more sense to let the conversation die like I’d told Ranée I would. Maybe it just seemed like a shame to let all the effort that he put into the Photoshop masterpiece go to waste.

But I definitely didn’t want him to think I wanted to keep the conversation going just because, so I sent a quick follow up message.

 

EMILY: Also, does acknowledging your non-girliness guarantee me that I’m not going to get tagged in any more posts?

JACK: No. Just telling me that you didn’t like it was enough to do the trick. Again, sorry.

 

I mean…it was a pretty decent thing to say, especially since it hadn’t even been his idea. My fingers almost tapped out another reply, but I caught myself. I set it down instead and went back to celebrity gossip.

But my phone buzzed again, and I snatched it up.

 

JACK: Also, girl isn’t an insult, and I wasn’t offended when you said that. Girls are cool. I just want you to know that I know that.

EMILY: Appreciate your wokeness, but if we’re going to be truly politically correct, I don’t think we say “girls.” I think we’re supposed to say “women.”

JACK: Point taken, but I actually meant girls. As in small humans. Which sounds weird. Some of the toughest, coolest people I know are girls.

 

I believed him. It surprised me, but I did. So I said so.

EMILY: I get it. My nieces are tiny and fierce and amazing. Anyway, we’re good. Best wishes, etc.

 

At least now the conversation had closure, no weird, half-finished thoughts on either side.

And now that the situation was settled, I sent Paul a text letting him know that the Photoshopping would stop. His reply was terse. “Good.”

I couldn’t explain why that bothered me, but it did. I mean, I’d be annoyed if some woman started Photoshopping him and tagging him on social media. Probably. Maybe? I might just think it was funny. But I could definitely understand why it had bugged him. But saying “Good,” like I was a child who had obeyed, or his secretary at work who’d done as ordered…

I’d been on the verge of suggesting a do over and going somewhere nice to eat, my treat, but now I didn’t want to. I didn’t have anything to make up for. Instead, I downloaded a fantasy novel my mom had been raving about and curled up with it in my room.

When Paul texted in the late afternoon to see if I wanted to go to dinner, I took a raincheck and then claimed the TV remote when Ranée left for the night. When she came home close to midnight, I was polishing off some mint chip ice cream and finishing up the last season of “Jane the Virgin.”

“Big night?” She pushed my feet off the sofa and settled in the other corner.

I waved my ice cream spoon at her and puffed my cheeks out. “The biggest, hashtag no regrets. Did you do anything fun?”

“Sushi and an escape room with some of the girls in accounting. Hey, I was wondering...”

Her tone was far too casual to fool me. “Yeah?”

“Was there more to your DMs with Jack than I saw today?”

“Huh? No.” And even though I hadn’t said or done anything wrong, and even though I had nothing to hide, a pang of guilt darted through my chest for a blessedly short second. “Why do you ask?”

“I just got the most interesting phone call. You sure you didn’t say anything that could be…misconstrued?”

Wait a minute.

Had I?

“I feel like you’re getting at something, but I don’t know what,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything I’d hidden about my DMs with Jack because there wasn’t anything to hide.

“Sean called me. He wanted to know if I was in the mood for a road trip up to see him. And maybe bringing my roommate along too.”

I dropped the spoon. “Are you suggesting that your brother wants you to come up to see him, but this is a trick to get me up to Jack’s neck of the woods?”

“You have no idea how literal that is.” It was a grumble. Ranée didn’t much care for the woods. Her idea of a good time outdoors involved a beach and frou-frou drinks. “But yes, I think that’s what Sean was getting at. He wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“That is so weird and over the line. No, I would not like to go see some random dude from the internet. I wouldn’t like to do that AT ALL.”

She sighed. “I want to convince you that you should live a little, but yeah, in this case it’s over the line. I was mainly worried that I’d missed out on some juicy DM that would inspire such love in Jack’s heart.”

“No. Ugh, this is no bueno. He seemed like a totally normal guy. I mean besides the thing where he was willing to go along with your idiotic scheme in the first place.” I climbed off the couch and tossed my empty ice cream carton in the trash. “It’s definitely time for me to go to bed. My day has officially reached it’s crazy quotient.”

Ranée’s answer was a yawn, and I wandered off to my room, happy to read myself to sleep and quit worrying about Jack.

When a call from Paul woke me up the next morning, it was a reminder that there were still sane men with healthy boundaries in the world, and one of them was mine. “Hey,” I said, blinking the sleep out of my eyes.

“Sleeping Beauty, huh? You’re missing a beautiful day.”

“Yeah? Good weather?”

“Not a wisp of fog anywhere. Let me take you out to breakfast.”

I struggled to sit up. I had a far too co-dependent relationship with my comforter. I realized I had no desire to leave it and snuggled down further instead. We needed more time together, my bed and I. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come by after I’m more awake, and I’ll make you breakfast?”

A DM chirp sounded in my ear. I stifled a sigh when I realized who it probably was. Great.

“Cooking for me, huh? Sounds great. When should I come over?”

I sniffed my shirt. No stink. That meant I didn’t need to shower, and I could make an omelet in 15 minutes flat, so I did some genius-level computations and figured out how much more quality time I could give myself and the comforter. “An hour?”

“See you then.”

Yessssss. Forty more minutes in bed, five to change and brush my hair, and then fifteen to cook. I wiggled down and pulled the covers up to my chin. This was happiness. People talked about trying to bottle it like it was a scent or a potion. Nope, it was just a down comforter. Come to think of it, I could stay in bed for fifty-five minutes if Paul and I just cooked together. That was a fun couple thing to do.

I closed my eyes. Bliss.

Until my DM alert pinged again. I snatched up my phone to tap out an annoyed, “Go away,” but Jack’s first message caught me by surprise. All it said was, “SORRY SORRY SORRY.” Then he’d followed up with an explanation.

 

JACK: My idiot friend Sean just told me that he tried to talk Ranée into coming up here and bringing you with her. I had nothing to do with that. This time I’m staying out of your inbox for real. Just didn’t want you to be stressed for no reason. Sorry again.

 

Relief washed over me.

 

EMILY: Thank goodness. Have to admit, I thought for a second there that everything had escalated quickly. Like maybe have-SWAT-on-speed-dial kind of quickly.

JACK: I know. Seriously. That was all him. I won’t bother you again.

 

I realized that the relief I felt wasn’t about him leaving me alone. It was…I wasn’t sure I could explain it. It was more like I’d left our exchange yesterday feeling like he was a good guy, and it was nice to know it was true.

I spent another half hour bonding with my blankets and then finally climbed out of bed to brush my teeth, wrangle a ponytail, and put on some hummingbird leggings and a thin, comfy sweater. I was in the middle of pulling all the ingredients out when Paul rang the doorbell, an hour to the minute after we’d hung up.

“Hi,” he said, stepping inside and dropping a kiss on my cheek. I smiled. Looked like he was back to feeling like himself.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Oh, hey, did I not give you enough time to get ready? I’m sorry. You didn’t have to rush for me.”

“No, I just thought it would be fun to do this together. Come on into the kitchen.”

Confusion wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “What are you—oh. No, I meant…never mind.”

But he’d flicked a glance at my outfit. I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Something wrong with my clothes?”

His cheeks flushed slightly. “No, not at all. Forget it. I was obviously being an idiot.”

A cough sounded in the hallway. OF COURSE Ranée had been there to overhear that whole exchange. Of course she had.

I refused to look at Ranée, knowing her face would be lit up with glee over Paul declaring himself an idiot. Instead I grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the kitchen. “You chop onions, I’ll make a green salsa.”

Ranée wandered into the living room and settled on the sofa where she’d have a clear view of what we were doing. “Can I get one?”

I waved her off with a spatula. Nope. She didn’t want an omelet. She wanted fodder to use against Paul. I mentally willed him not to give her any ammunition. My ESP must have worked because he kept his conversation to the crazy hours he was keeping at work and questions about the food prep. She finally grew bored and disappeared into her room again.

Paul glanced over as I chopped some cilantro. “I don’t like cilantro, remember?”

Of course I remembered. We’d had an entire conversation when we’d first started dating about how he thought it tasted like dish soap and how I thought he was crazy. “I know that, Paul.” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice.

His eyebrows shot up. “Sorry. You seem, um, irritable today.”

“Only when you show up to my house and start nitpicking me when I’m trying to do something nice for you.”

“Whoa, I’m not nitpicking you.”

“You implied my clothes were slobby, and you’re micromanaging what I’m putting on your omelet.”

He went back to slicing the mushrooms I’d switched him to. “Sorry,” he said after he had one portioned into perfectly sized pieces. “I can see why I was coming off like that. I didn’t mean to sound critical.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine.”

He winced. “If there’s anything I learned about women from my mom, it’s that ‘fine’ never means fine.”

“I mean it.” I didn’t mean it. But I didn’t feel like getting into it. I just wanted to get the omelets in the skillet. “Why don’t you sit, and I’ll get these cooked.”

He almost looked as if he would argue, but smart man that he was, he closed his mouth again and busied himself with setting the table while I poured the eggs into the skillet. I used the few minutes it took for the omelets to set to let go of the temper that had been rising since he walked in.

They cooked up perfectly, and I slid his onto his plate with a smile and took a seat across from him.

He dug right in, making appreciative noises as he ate, then he smiled back, a touch of hesitation in the curve of his lips. “It’s really good.”

“Thanks.” My mom had taught me to make them when I was twelve. I couldn’t cook a lot of things, but omelets I could do.

“No, seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever had a better omelet. Like this is French chef good.”

“All right, that’s enough. You’re already forgiven. You don’t have to go that far.”

A look I couldn’t quite read crossed his face, and it surprised me. We’d been dating five months. I thought I knew all his expressions except maybe extreme pain.

“Emily...” He set his fork down. “I meant it, it’s an excellent omelet. But I get why it sounded forced. Do you feel like we’ve been off-kilter for a while?”

This was another thing I liked about him. He wasn’t afraid to face things head on. It was all part of his extreme efficiency. He’d rather solve something than wait for it to solve itself, and it was something I needed to be better about. I could do it at work, but when it came to relationships I tended to wait for problems to magically go away by ignoring them.

“Off-kilter.” I tried the phrase out to see if it was the right one to describe the way things had been lately. “Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.”

“I know I’m working a ton right now, and it makes it hard to give everything in my life the attention it deserves. I worked up a spreadsheet to help me strike a better work-life balance.”

In the distance, approximately the distance of Ranée’s room at the end of the hall, I thought I heard a snort when Paul said “spreadsheet,” but he didn’t seem to notice as he went on. “I’ve realized in some ways it’s easier for me to carve out longer blocks of time less frequently than it is to try to string together shorter blocks of time more often. Interesting, huh?”

“Um…” I realized I was failing to see his point. “That’s…wow.”

“I’m not communicating clearly. Hang on.” He pulled out his iPhone, tapped a few things, and handed it to me. It was a chart with color-coded blocks labeled with things like “work” or “gym” or “Emily.” I showed up in one large pink block on the Saturday column.

“I don’t really want to be pink.” It was a joking complaint so I could buy time to process the weird, gut-level reaction that was happening. It wasn’t warm fuzzies or happy tingles. More like…indigestion. Except my omelet was too good for it to be indigestion. This was not annoyance. Or uneasiness. But it was definitely somewhere between the two.

“The color is beside the point.” His tone was a tad impatient, which happened sometimes when he wanted to talk shop and I wanted to goof off. But my goofing off was good for him, which he recognized when he pulled his head out of his…spreadsheets.

He took the phone back. “What color do you want to be?”

“Azure, and make it honey-scented.”

He blinked at me.

I sighed and took the phone from his hands, turning it face down on the table. “I don’t want to be a checklist item. I don’t want to be something you fit in around everything else.”

“But that’s the whole point. I’m happy doing anything with you, but I want us to be able to spend real time together, not the time we can grab at the end of the day or in between other things.” His blue eyes shone with sincerity, and I grinned and leaned forward to steal a quick kiss.

“All right. I understand what you’re saying. This weirdness between us has got to go. What is it even about? I want to be done with it.”

He reached over to play with my hair, one of my favorite of his habits. “I’m not sure. I think it’s because we were both getting so busy at work and then all of a sudden you’re showing up in pictures with another guy. I felt…threatened.”

I pulled away. “That had nothing to do with me, and I’m not going to apologize for it again.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I’ll rephrase. I got insecure, but I think it’s because I’ve felt disconnected from you. So I have an idea. Let’s go to Napa next weekend and reset. I’ll work like a maniac to clear all my work so I can leave it behind, and we’ll forget the rest of the world for a while.”

Napa was a magic word right on par with bibbity-bobbity-boo. But this time, it didn’t cast a spell over me.

And that…that was a problem. A big one.

“Paul,” I said, gently pulling his hand away from my hair so the section he’d been winding slipped through his fingers. “A trip to Napa sounds so good, but work is crazy for me right now too. It isn’t a good time for me to leave for a whole weekend. Even if I could make the time—which I can’t—I don’t think my mind would be on Napa. Or you.”

His face fell, and he rearranged it to hide his disappointment, but the visible effort made me smile. “Stop. You look like I just told you that you can never have a puppy.”

“I feel about that disappointed,” he said, sighing.

“Don’t. It’s helping me see your point about trying to carve out big chunks of time instead of lots of little ones. Don’t worry about it.” I slid my hand around his neck, tickling the hair perfectly trimmed along his nape. He loved when I did that, and it won a reluctant smile from him. “We’ll be fine. I just have to find the groove with this promotion, and we’ll be back to usual.”

A tiny shadow flitted through his eyes, but finally his smile widened. “Fine. A long weekend is out of the plan, but can you give me Saturday?”

I was going to protest, but he swept in for a kiss and stole the words. I gave up with a laugh. “Yes, I can give you Saturday.”

“Thanks for the sacrifice.” He smiled, but I could sense ragged edges that he wasn’t quite letting me see.

“Stop,” I said, softening the order with another kiss. “It’s not a sacrifice. I want to spend next Saturday with you. No subtext.”

“I’m going to make it so worth it.” He was already on his phone, probably pulling up a spreadsheet to plan it.

I laughed again and took his phone from his hand and set it on the table. “Be present. I’m here right now, you’re here right now, so what should we do?”

I didn’t expect him to say, “Window shop,” but that’s what he did.

“Window shop?” I repeated like it was a German word I was learning to pronounce.

“Yeah. Let’s run over to that new pedestrian market and see what they have. I’ve been looking for interesting pieces to put in my office to give it a cooler vibe.”

Well. It wasn’t as fun as any of the things I’d imagined, all of which involved staying inside (cough cough kissing) but sure, okay. We could go look for office knick-knacks to give him some street cred. Or whatever kind of cred cool art gave to an upwardly mobile type like Paul. Fun.

I mean, not really. But making out was also not fun if you had to suggest it, so instead I grabbed my sneakers and we set off for the market. It ended up being fun for real, mostly because Paul grew more exasperated with every recommendation I made. He finally gave up altogether when I insisted he needed some blown glass grapes that looked more like stylized crystal poop emojis.

“Come on, you should totally get these grapes since we can’t go to Napa for the real thing,” I’d said.

And he’d pried them from my hands, hauled me from the gallery, and herded me into an ice cream shop to shut me up. Smart man.