Finding Jack, page 14
But why had Ranée pushed me? And why had I let her? She couldn’t talk me into anything I didn’t want to do.
The first answer was easy. Ranée had pushed because not only did she know that Jack was a doctor, but because she must have some idea of why he’d quit practicing.
The second answer was harder. I’d let her push me into digging. Because…
I really wanted to know. That’s why.
And if I really wanted to know it was because I cared. Curiosity alone would never have driven me to make such a ridiculous plan to make Jack tell me his secrets. Because this had been a secret. I’d known it when I was digging for it, but somehow I’d decided I was entitled to it.
Jack didn’t owe me his secrets. And the fact that I’d worked so hard to uncover them said more than I wanted it to about how far I’d already fallen. Into this rabbit hole mystery.
And into him.
Chapter 23
I woke up to a gray dawn. I wasn’t sure how long I’d lain there last night trying to figure out how to quit falling so hard for a guy I had no future with, but I didn’t wake up with the answer.
I reached for my phone, but only email alerts from overnight business spam waited for me. No Jack. But I hadn’t expected anything. Not really. I wasn’t sure he would want to hear from me again, much less talk to me.
I pulled on some workout clothes, grabbed my keys, and headed to the gym for the early morning weight training class. I hated the instructor. He was way harder and barked much louder than the evening instructors did, but it felt like exactly what I needed to banish the fog that had followed me out of sleep.
An hour later, I racked my weights and toweled the sweat off my face and chest, and decided I was wrong; the fog was still with me.
I stopped at my favorite café on the way home to see if I could drown the fog with a big enough shot of espresso, or smother it under the weight of the largest possible banana nut muffin. Instead, when I got home, I only felt jittery, overstuffed, sore…and still bad. I wished jumping in the shower would wash off the feeling as easily as it did the sweat, but no. It didn’t.
I collapsed on my bed and opened the notes on my phone, trying to tap out a list that would help.
How to Stop Feeling Bad
Apologize
Make it up to Jack
Accept that I broke this and I can’t fix it and move on
Wait for Jack to cool off and contact me
The problem was that I’d apologized last night. I hadn’t even tried to make excuses. I’d said a simple, heartfelt, “I’m sorry.” Sometimes, continuing to apologize when the other person didn’t want to hear it was a way for the apologizer to make herself feel better while it did nothing for the other person. Maybe it might even make it worse.
As for making it up to Jack…how? I couldn’t turn back time and not do the internet search. Maybe this was time for a grand gesture, but what? And why? That was kind of at the heart of everything here. Why it mattered. Who I was doing it for. Because right now, a grand gesture still felt more about me than him. About taking control over a situation that was making me feel bad instead of sitting with it and letting it play out.
And that told me exactly why it mattered.
It was the epiphany I’d already had last night. It mattered because I cared. So. Much.
Which was why option three wouldn’t work. I could accept that I had broken this. I could accept that I couldn’t fix it. But I couldn’t accept that I needed to move on.
How had this even happened to me? How did this man who I’d never met become the standard I measured my other dates against? How had we so quickly gotten to a point that a day without talking or texting made my insides feel the way I had when Ranée switched our coffeemaker to decaf without telling me? The day carried an extra weight without Jack to put some snap into it.
It was more than that. But I didn’t want to wrap words around it. This was enough to process already. But no moving on.
The next option—waiting for Jack to cool down and contact me—was far more passive than I liked. Because what if he never reached out? What if I’d shut him down completely by pushing so hard for him to talk to me about his past?
I’d been so disrespectful. So very, very disrespectful.
I dropped my phone and considered crawling beneath the covers again as the full weight of my wrongdoing pressed me down flat, and I sank further into the mattress under the heaviness in my chest.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to play through the whole chain of events that had led us to this point. Ranée pulling Jack in on a joke, me telling him off, his genuine apology, the easy chemistry we found right away through our senses of humor, my increasing interest in him shining a light into the gaps I hadn’t seen yawning between Paul and me. Me breaking up with Paul. Jack and I laughing. And talking more. And going on dates.
I hadn’t understood it. That was the problem. Hadn’t been able to see the way it would all play out. We had become a puzzle I couldn’t solve, so I had gone looking for pieces. I thought if I understood him better, I could understand what we were. And then I would know how to feel about it.
So stupid. Because no one got to decide how to feel. The feelings showed up. Like warts. Or rainbows, if you were happy about them. Which I wasn’t. So, warts.
Maybe not warts. These were feelings that appeared like freckles when I forgot industrial strength sunblock—and I never, ever forgot. I’d forgotten to apply my industrial strength feelings blocker. And now I had them, all pressing me deeper into the bed.
The heaviest was guilt. I had done so wrong by Jack. And shame. Because I’d done it out of a need to make myself feel better about something I didn’t understand.
Except now I did. And sitting on top of everything else was the fear that I’d figured it all out too late.
Ranée popped her head in an hour later. I opened my eyes but kept them trained on the ceiling.
“Didn’t see you last night. How did your date go?”
“I burned everything down with the match you handed me.”
“Um, what?” She came in and climbed up to sit cross-legged on the foot of my bed.
I struggled upright and sighed. “I made this whole dumb plan to get Jack to tell me all about his past. It backfired. Now he’s mad I went looking, and I don’t think he’s going to talk to me again.”
She winced.
“And I’m kidding about you handing me the match. This is all on me. I just feel like spreading the misery around a little.”
“No, you’re right. I know Jack hates talking about the doctor thing. I was trying to walk this fine line of wanting you to know that your man-bun-wearing internet comedian had more layers than he was letting on, but…” Now it was her turn to sigh. “I guess that wasn’t my call to make.”
I plucked at the blanket. I should get up and do a bunch of work, get a jump on the week before it started tomorrow. I could keep myself busy enough that I didn’t have to think about all of this. But I didn’t make a move. I plucked up a new piece of lint instead.
“What’s the plan?” Ranée asked.
I shook my head. “No plan.”
“Of course there’s a plan. You’re the queen of planning.”
“Not this time. I’ve run the scenarios and there’s nothing that doesn’t make it worse.”
“Even an apology? Apologies make everything better.”
“Except I already apologized. It was the last thing I said to him before he hung up. That I was sorry.”
“Okay, but was it a sincere apology?”
I glared at her. “Ranée. Seriously? I know how to apologize. I learned in preschool, same as you.”
“In my preschool, the teacher would make us say we were sorry, explain why what we did was wrong, and tell what we would change in the future, then ask for forgiveness. Did you do any of that? Like this. I’m sorry I ate all your peach vanilla yogurt. It was wrong because it didn’t belong to me. Next time I’ll ask first. Do you forgive me?”
“I guess I didn’t get specific. But it was totally clear from the context that I meant I was sorry for snooping.”
“What were your exact words?”
“I’m sorry.”
She stared at me like I was dumb, but I felt the first sputters of purpose rumbling to life in my chest, and I didn’t care.
“I need to be specific in my apology so he knows I really get it,” I said.
She gave me two exaggerated thumbs up. “Good job. But also, you didn’t answer the question.”
“What question?”
“Do you forgive me?”
I blinked at her, waiting for my brain to catch up to her words. Then I got it. “The peach vanilla yogurt wasn’t a hypothetical. You ate it all.”
“In my defense, it was really good.”
“You’re right. That yogurt was just asking for it. How can you be held responsible for it sitting there in the fridge, just out in the open like that?”
“You get me.” She hopped off the bed. “Next time I’ll let you know before I eat it all. See? That’s how an apology is done.”
“I don’t think you get it. You’re supposed to apologize and say you’ll buy me more.”
“I’m teaching the apology lesson here, not you, and I went to the best preschool in Elko, so I’m sure I’ve got it right. I’m going to hit the shower.”
Only now did I notice that she was in her riding clothes again. “How’s it going with the horses?”
“The kids are great with them,” she said. “It’s amazing to me how the horses seem to get these kids and the kids know it. They feel it. And it knocks off one or two of their hard edges. I was mostly in it for the free riding, but the joke’s on me.”
“That sounds pretty awesome. How’s Paul doing?”
“He’s amazing with horses. Who would’ve thunk, huh?”
“I meant with life in general.”
The tops of her cheekbones went pink, and my radar finally went off. That was interesting. Very interesting.
“He’s fine, I guess,” she said, heading for the door.
I let her get away with it. “Bye, yogurt thief. Thanks for listening.”
“Sure.” She shut the door behind her, and I picked up my phone and stared at it.
It stared back. I blinked first. It was still blank.
What to say? And how to say it?
I opened up my text messages and started drafting.
Hey. Sorry about last night. I was out of line. I was trying to—
I broke off typing and erased it all. What was I supposed to say? That I was trying to get Jack to spill some personal information he obviously didn’t want out there? He already knew that.
The “why” mattered a lot more here than the “what” did.
I tried typing again. I wanted to show you—
I stopped and deleted. No.
I set the phone down. I didn’t want to text. It was too easy to mistake tone, to get things wrong. This needed a more direct approach.
I ran my hands over my hair to tame any flyaways and thought about what I wanted to say. I’d give him the truth, but how much of it? Considering the twelve miserable hours I’d spent between last night and this morning, thinking and second-guessing everything, I didn’t know what else I had to lose. At this point, I wasn’t at all sure I would hear from Jack again. I couldn’t make things any worse.
The whole truth, then.
I picked up the phone and opened my messaging app. Then I took a deep breath, activated the camera, and hit “record.”
“Hi. I just want to say I’m sorry again for last night. The more I think about it, the worse I feel. You didn’t owe me any explanation, and I shouldn’t have pushed you for one. I definitely shouldn’t have treated it all like a big joke. I’m not even sure why I pushed so I hard. I think it’s because—” I broke off. I couldn’t bring myself to put everything out there. “Anyway,” I continued. “I’m sorry for digging into your past and bringing it up. It was wrong because it’s your life and your story to tell. Next time I’ll…” I trailed off. There wouldn’t be a next time. So I said that. “Next time nothing. This isn’t something I’ll ever do again. I’m really, really sorry.”
Then I ended the recording and sent it before I could talk myself out of it.
I half held my breath while I watched the screen, tapping it now and then to wake it up. A couple of minutes later, the little checkmark appeared next to my video telling me Jack had seen it. Another few minutes went by and the “…” thinking dots appeared.
Then they disappeared.
They reappeared.
It went on for a few more minutes until finally they disappeared, and I realized I’d been waiting for almost a half hour with no dots at all.
Jack had seen it. But he had nothing to say.
Chapter 24
For the next two days, I still didn’t hear from him. What I should have done was blow it off.
Prime me: “Whatever. I don’t have time for guys who get their feelings hurt that easily.”
Current me: *Refreshes phone madly.*
I knew it didn’t make sense. If I had heard the last of Jack, what had I lost, really? We weren’t in a relationship. We didn’t have a future. We didn’t owe each other anything.
But at a bare minimum, we’d become friends. And when it came down to it, that was no small thing. Friends whose senses of humor were as out there as your own…those were four leaf clovers in the weed patches of life. I would feel just as bad if I had this kind of fight with Ranée.
It was cold comfort to know I’d at least offered up a sincere apology. I’d done the only thing I could do to make things right.
On the third day, I still didn’t feel any better. I’d read a book recently where a character described the feeling of missing someone as losing a tooth and constantly poking at the hole in your mouth where it should be. That was how the silence felt between Jack and me.
It was absurd. And unsustainable. And I couldn’t do a thing about it but suck it up and move on.
I decided to pour my frustration into work, and I kicked on my afterburners for the rest of the week, scheduling more meetings, running more efficiency diagnostics, checking in personally with more of my team than I had since my promotion.
On Thursday morning, my assistant Hailey chased me down the hall waving a message slip at me. “Peter called.” I read over the message from my boss while she put her hands on her knees and caught her breath. “I’ve got four times as many steps as usual today, and we’re only halfway through. Just tell me, are you trying to kill me? Because if you are, I need to go upgrade my healthcare plan.”
“Peter wants to order lunch for the team tomorrow because we’re two days ahead of deadline. I’ll find out what everyone wants.”
Hailey straightened. “Boss, that’s my job. You have to let me do it. Go sit in your office and think management thoughts while I handle the details.”
“But—”
“But that’s my job. Half of which you’ve been doing for a few days. Let me. I enjoy the feeling of earning my paycheck.”
Hailey was six years younger than me, but I felt like I’d just been schooled by someone twice my age and experience. I hesitated, then nodded. “Have I been micromanaging?”
“Um.”
I waved her off. “Enough said. Go get the orders. I’ll stay out of the way.”
I returned to my office and looked at my list of tasks, trying to figure out which ones I was micromanaging. I had eight things on my list. Technically, I could cross off five and leave them for other people. And maybe now was a good time to read a few articles on effective leadership to remind myself not to be a giant pain in my team’s collective backside.
I picked up my phone to pull up some bookmarked articles and froze.
I had a text from Jack.
I should set the phone down and do some deep breathing, manage my expectations before I opened it up.
I should.
But I fumbled it to the floor in my effort to swipe the message open as fast as possible.
In your message you said you weren’t sure why you pushed so hard, but you thought it was because…and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say?
I set the phone down again. Whatever I had expected, it wasn’t that. Maybe, “We’re cool. Wanna FaceTime later?” Possibly, “Please don’t contact me again.” But not this.
I picked up the phone and opened our DMs to replay my message, trying to hear it from his perspective.
My face filled the screen. Even through my makeup I could see the slight circles under my eyes from the restless night I’d had the night before. Video Me started with a wobbly smile then cleared her throat. I fast forwarded to the part he asked about. “You didn’t owe me any explanation,” Video Me said. “And I shouldn’t have pushed you for one. I definitely shouldn’t have treated it all like a big joke. I’m not even sure why I pushed so hard. I think it’s because—”
Video Me broke off, stared down at her hands, and her shoulder rose and fell as if she were brushing something off. Then she picked up again. “Anyway, I’m sorry for digging into your past and bringing it up.”
I closed the message. It had been a two second pause, but even I could hear what he must have heard in it: a silence that spoke louder than words.
Why did he need me to fill it? What did he want? A true confession…of what? Feelings? But how was that supposed to play out? I dropped my head into my palms and tried to imagine it. Not how I wanted it to go, but how it would actually go.
ME: Well, Dr. Jack, it turns out that I feel something for you at an emotional level that I don’t remember feeling before, and maybe there are names for this feeling, but I don’t want to use any of those names because they all make me feel panicky. Do you have a prescription to fix this?
JACK: Sure. Let’s meet and see where this thing between us goes and figure out if we’ve got what it takes to grow a relationship. Because I think you’re right. We’ve got something.
ME: Is that crazy? We haven’t even met for real.
JACK: Why would that be crazy? We’ve spent hours talking and making each other laugh.
