Finding Jack, page 6
“I’m going to change your mind.”
“You’re really not.”
“I am. Because there’s no way you can say no to what I’m about to suggest.”
“No.”
“Stop being boring and listen to me. Here’s the plan. You’re going to start leaving funny comments on all of Jack’s pictures, and he’s going to find you irresistible. So then you guys will start DM-ing, leading to a delicious flirting affair. And then he’s going to be so impressed with your sense of humor because you’ll be the only woman who could ever keep up with him that he’s going to fall madly in love with you, and you’ll finally lure him out of his flannel cave nest, and Sean will get off my back.”
“No.” I blinked at her. “Wait. What do you mean Sean will get off your back?”
“I didn’t say that. Let’s stick with the plan. Write something funny on his Facebook. Or better yet, his Twitter.”
“No way. You’re not getting off the hook. What do you mean Sean will get off your back? About what?”
“Nothing.” She waved at the phone in my hand. “Write the funny things.”
I shrugged. “Sure,” I said, tapping the screen. “I’ll write all the funny things, but this is your phone, so it’s you who’s going to be flirting with him.”
“What? Stop.” She sloshed the milk from her bowl as she plunked it on the table and raced to snatch back her phone. “Now go do it on your own account.”
“That’s the least compelling suggestion anyone has ever made to me.” I settled back into my chair to enjoy my cereal.
“You have to.”
“I will. Right after you tell me what Sean has to do with this.” I knew Sean well enough from previous appearances on our couch when he visited Ranée, so now my curiosity was way up about why he was involved. But Ranée only sent me a sulky look and hunkered back down over her cereal bowl. There was no way I was dropping that Sean comment, but I let it go for the moment. I’d find a different way to drag it out of her.
She left a while later, yelling something about tai-chi in the park on her way out. I had a whole Sunday stretching in front of me now, and no commitments to keep. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do with all that time.
I opened Facebook to look at Paul’s profile for myself, but he wasn’t in my friends list anymore. When I typed in his name in the search bar, it offered me the option to add him as a friend. Which meant that I’d been unfriended.
It stung a little, like when someone said they couldn’t go to lunch with you because they had a meeting. And even though you saw them walk right into the meeting, you still felt sort of dumb for having asked and been told no.
It was stupid to feel that way, considering Paul probably felt way worse, but I had thought we’d stay friends, or at least politely ignore each other on social media while still kind of keeping tabs on each other. Because of curiosity. Was that weird?
I wished Ranée were home so I could ask her, but then remembered her regular ex-boyfriend stalking and realized she’d tell me not only was it not weird, it was pretty much my right and duty as an American to keep track and make sure his next girlfriend wasn’t as cute as me.
For sure I wanted Paul to move on. He could even move on to someone prettier and it wouldn’t bother me. I just wanted her to be less successful or have weird habits.
Annoyed, I clicked to my own profile and changed it to “single” and uploaded a picture I’d taken from the boat yesterday, a shot of my bare feet, the bow stretched past them, the water glinting off the bay in the background. I captioned it “Lazy Saturday.” I knew Paul wouldn’t see it now, but it finally made me feel better to post about the day without any mention of him. Why not? He wasn’t part of my landscape anymore. It seemed like a fair trade for Paul’s unfriending, a passive-aggressive way to feel like I hadn’t given him the last word.
But I didn’t feel better. He’d straight dropped me from Facebook after we’d spent a good afternoon as friends. Rude.
I tagged Ranée in it and added a comment. “You should come with me next time.”
I used the rest of the morning to re-organize the pantry, throwing out stuff that was past its expiration date and making grand plans to cook more and eat out less. I’d never stick to it, but the planning made me feel better anyway, pushed back the slight ickiness that came from breakup aftermath. Sometimes I felt relief when a relationship ended, that feeling of breathing a little better. This breakup with Paul was like that. Still, there was a bit of sadness when something you started with a spark ended with a fizzle.
My phone sent me an alert around lunch. “Jack Dobson has tagged you in a picture.”
Chapter 10
Jack. Jack had tagged me.
Jack had tagged me because—since I was still in the 24-Hour Super Honesty Cycle—I had tagged Ranée with the sneaking suspicion that he might see it since she was a mutual Facebook friend.
Even though I hadn’t done anything more strenuous than toss stale pasta in the garbage, my pulse suddenly jumped to mid-workout speed.
I pulled up the photo. It was the boat picture, but now it had a seagull the size of a Buick hovering in the air in front of it in an oddly regal pose, like an ancient thunderbird, and Jack captioned it, “When you’re trying to hang out but things get transcendent.”
I burst out laughing. I wanted to type back something funny, but that seemed too…I don’t know. Like I’d just been sitting and waiting for him to say something about it. Which I had.
My thumbs hovered over my keys, twitchy to type something smart-alecky, but instead I hit “like” and set the phone down. I didn’t want to play games, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure why I’d wanted him to see it. I felt the way I did before I dipped into my grandparents’ lake for the first time each summer. Why had I opened my timeline to him?
Because I needed a good laugh this post-breakup morning and thought he might deliver, that’s why. And he had. So that was good. Hitting “like” was a way to acknowledge him without turning it all into A Thing. This wasn’t A Thing. I pushed him out of my head for the rest of the day.
Monday morning on my coffee break, I put up a new picture of the view from my office window. It was a cruddy view of half the facing building and a giant billboard advertising bail bonds. I captioned it, “Fancy executive suite.”
After lunch, Jack tagged me in a photo. It was my office window, only it had the transcendent seagull outside of it again, blocking the billboard. His caption read, “Am I being…followed?”
We were one step away from a DM flirtation. I was kinda sorta doing exactly what I had told Ranée I refused to do. And I didn’t care.
Tuesday morning I lined up my action figures along the window ledge. Jane Austen, General Leia, my Amelia Earhart Barbie, and Wonder Woman now looked back at me. I took a new picture captioned, “There. I fixed it. The view is 100% better.”
Tuesday at lunch, I had a comment on it from Jack. “This picture can’t be improved.”
Oh, man. That’s the one thing he could have said that I had no defense against.
Then another comment popped up. “But I’ll try.”
Of course he would.
I tried not to refresh my notifications obsessively all afternoon. I failed. Just before I was ready to pack up for home, Jack tagged me. This time, the seagull was floating in front of my office window, bowing to the action figures. It said, “Transcendent Seagull salutes you.”
I thought about the picture all the way home. Half the time I was smiling at Jack, and the other half I was frowning at myself. What was I doing? I mean, really? I was setting out pictures as deliberate bait for Jack to Photoshop because…why? Did I want the attention?
No. I wasn’t an attention seeker. And I’d had attention from Paul, so it’s not like I’d lacked it. Maybe…I…
I couldn’t come up with a good reason. I liked the way he turned the ordinary into the absurd. That was it. Everything about him was absurdity: his long hair and the way he made it the butt of his jokes, the way he introduced transcendent seagulls into ordinary photos. Something about it appealed to me.
Not the hair, to be clear. The hair was ridiculous.
But the other stuff…I didn’t remember the last time that I’d had so many laughs startled out of me. Ranée was funny, but not in a laugh out loud kind of way. More of a subtle, dry way. Jack…
At home, I headed straight for my bed and turned on my laptop so I could send him a DM. Why not? I mean, besides the obvious drawback of listening to Ranée say “I told you so”? It had been a cruddy few days in the post-Paul breakup funk, and I liked how Jack breathed a little life into—
Oh. No. Nope. Lots of nope.
I shut the computer off again. What I did NOT need to do was get caught up in flirting with Jack just because I was at a romantic low point. That was dumb. I’d never been the kind of girl who needed or wanted to get over one guy with another one. I preferred the old-fashioned method of ice cream and Hallmark movies.
I picked up my phone and opened Jack’s profile. I scrolled through the transcendent seagull in front of the boat, appearing again in front of my office window, then again bowing to my girl power action figures. That was gold. And suddenly I was laughing again. I couldn’t help it.
I flipped over to his Twitter feed. Today some smug-looking bro-dude had sent him a picture of himself standing in front of an old, tired Volvo and asked Jack to Photoshop him in front of an exotic sportscar. Now the bro-dude stood smugly in front of Lightning McQueen.
Ha. Pretty good, Jack. Pretty good.
I scrolled through a few more of his tweets and stopped on one that didn’t look funny at first glance. It was a tween girl with an adorable wash of freckles on her pale skin. Her request broke my heart. “Can you get rid of the freckles so I look prettier?”
My hand crept up to my throat. The world of social media could be brutal for kids seeking validation. Unless she was lucky enough to ask Jack, who’d posted the exact same photo as the before and after with a simple message. “I never mess with perfection.”
I mean…COME ON.
I dropped my phone and jabbed my laptop power button. It would be stupid not to talk to Jack just because I’d broken up with a sweet, boring boyfriend recently. It’s not like I’d broken up with Paul for Jack or anything. And it wasn’t like Jack was in any danger of becoming a rebound, especially not when he lived ten hours away in Portland. Really, it was overstating it to call my current situation a romantic low point. It was maaaaybe a slightly-below-average point. It would be no big deal to say hi.
Still, I couldn’t help taking a deep breath before I opened our old chat and typed, “Hi.”
He answered in less than a minute, with “Hey, stranger.”
EMILY: You’re never going to believe this but…
JACK: But…?
EMILY: I’ve been seeing these seagulls everywhere.
JACK: It’s strange that you think that’s strange. You’re in San Francisco, right? Isn’t that by the sea? What kind of gulls were you expecting?
EMILY: That’s the thing. These are no ordinary seagulls.
JACK: Tell me more. How would you describe these birds?
EMILY: It’s just one, actually. The same one.
JACK: Uh, how can you tell? I’ve seen a few seagulls. They’re all the same. They can’t even tell each other apart.
EMILY: I don’t think that’s science.
JACK: Sure it is. I just looked it up on Seagullpedia.
EMILY: Did you also just make up Seagullpedia?
JACK: Yes, I did. But tell me more about this seagull that follows you. Does it have a name?
EMILY: I don’t feel safe telling you about this anymore. It’s almost like you’re making fun of me.
JACK: Never. But I know a little bit about brains. I’m checking to make sure yours is firing on all cylinders.
EMILY: Ha. Brains don’t have cylinders. I think you don’t know anything about brains.
JACK: Busted. I’m just super curious. I promise I’m not judging. Anymore. Tell me about this seagull that follows you.
EMILY: It does have a name. It’s called…
JACK: Larry?
EMILY: Transcendent Seagull.
JACK: Oh, I get it. These aren’t hallucinations. They’re spiritual manifestations?
EMILY: Yes, exactly. See? I’m not crazy.
JACK: No, not at all.
EMILY: It would definitely be weird if I thought just one seagull was following me, like a regular one. But when you find out that it’s a giant seagull, as big as a car, and that it’s bowing to my Shrine of Powerful Women then it doesn’t sound so crazy anymore, huh?
JACK: Um, no. Definitely not crazy. But a point of clarification: it’s closer to the size of a small house.
EMILY: YOU’VE SEEN IT.
JACK: Busted again.
EMILY: Do you know why this seagull is following me?
JACK: No. Why?
EMILY: I meant that as the kind of question you’re supposed to answer. Do you actually know?
JACK: No idea. Here’s a theory: Transcendent Seagull has a message for you.
EMILY: What do you think it’s trying to tell me?
JACK: Google says that seagulls symbolize that you’re about to win the lottery.
EMILY: Google just told me that seagulls symbolize freedom. Wait…
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
JACK: hi…?
EMILY: Why would you pick a symbol of freedom?
JACK: Real talk: that was pure dumb luck.
EMILY: So this isn’t some comment on my recent breakup?
JACK: You’re single now?
EMILY: Did you just type that in a suspiciously innocent tone?
JACK: Of course.
EMILY: Yeah. I’m single.
JACK: …
JACK: …
JACK: …
JACK: Are you okay with that?
EMILY: I chose it.
JACK: That doesn’t always mean things are okay.
EMILY: They’re okay.
JACK: Better than okay? Or just okay?
EMILY: They’re…fine. I feel weird talking about this.
JACK: Let’s talk about the seagull some more. Tell me more about its magnificence.
EMILY: I didn’t say it was magnificent.
JACK: I saw it, remember? It was magnificent.
EMILY: You *made* it, you mean.
JACK: That’s a filthy accusation. But it was magnificent. Admit it.
EMILY: FINE. It was pretty good.
JACK: That cuts deep.
EMILY: Are you always this insecure?
JACK: Only about my seagulls and maybe one or two other things that I can’t remember right now.
EMILY: If it means that much to you, then yes, it was magnificent.
JACK: You’re just saying that to make me feel better.
EMILY: Brb, just gonna throw my laptop out the window now.
JACK: Do you have anger management issues?
EMILY: Not usually. You seem to be a special case.
JACK: If I had a nickel for every time I heard that…
EMILY: What could you buy?
JACK; Nothing. I never hear that. I’m the least upsetting human on the planet.
EMILY: I feel like that might not be true.
JACK: On what evidence?
EMILY: Your Twitter account, for one.
JACK: Oh, you follow that, hm?
EMILY: Why are you saying that like you just caught me riding past your house on my bike to see if you’re home?
JACK: Because this is the digital equivalent.
EMILY: Is not.
JACK: Is too.
EMILY: So what’s the analog equivalent of a guy who Photoshopped himself into my pictures then Photoshopped in a stalking seagull? Is that you waving at me from your window as I ride by on my bike? No. That’s you hiding in my bushes and peeking through the window.
JACK: That seagull was not me hiding in the bushes. That was me standing in your yard, throwing pennies at your window.
EMILY: Pennies?
JACK: Rocks would break it, probably.
EMILY: Fair enough. Just got home. Gotta go eat.
JACK: We cool?
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
EMILY: I asked my WINGman, Transcendent Seagull, if we’re cool.
JACK: Ugh. I can’t talk to you anymore.
EMILY: Then you’ll never know what he said.
JACK: What did he say?
EMILY: He said we’re cool.
JACK: I can only speak for myself here, but I’m not cool.
EMILY: Duh.
JACK: That hurts.
EMILY: I doubt it.
JACK: Smart woman.
EMILY: I really do have to go.
JACK: I’m glad we’re cool.
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
EMILY: Me too.
Chapter 11
Ranée came home after dinner. She had a piece of straw in her hair and another one stuck to the bottom of her Vans. I almost asked, then decided I didn’t want to know the answer. A different question popped out. “Why is Sean all up in Jack’s business?”
She was opening the washing machine lid but paused and stuck her head out of the tiny utility closet at the end of our galley kitchen.
“Pardonnez-soy?”
“Moi.”
“What about you?”
“No, you’re mixing languages. The expression is ‘pardonnez—never mind. You mentioned that Sean is the one who wanted you to make me talk to Jack again.”
“I never said that.” She disappeared into the laundry closet again.
“It’s what you meant.”
“You read minds now?” Her voice was muffled as she stuck her head almost into the machine.
“You said you wanted Sean to get off your back and it had something to do with me talking to Jack.”
“I guess if you’re reaching you could connect those dots.”
“I’m connecting them.” There was a loud thump as the washer lid clanged shut followed by a curse. Ranée knew a lot of good curses. I made a mental note of this one for the next time the network went down at work.
I waited until she rustled around in the laundry closet for long enough that there was not possibly anything else she could be doing in there, even if she decided to separate and fold all her clothes before she reappeared. When she finally walked out, she had a big old piece of lint from the dryer guard clinging to her hair on the opposite side from the straw. I almost told her. Then I decided she deserved it.
