Finding Jack, page 8
“I’m not sure he does. It’s almost a…I guess it’s more like respect. Some people deserve to have stories told on them. But some people deserve to tell their own stories. He’s more like that.”
“You’re freaking me out, being all deep and stuff. Stop it.”
She grinned at me. “You got it. Can we talk about how insanely hot Jack is?”
“I appreciate him for his mind.”
“And his fine-looking face.”
“And his fine-looking face.” And then I remembered something. “You never even told me what Jack does. I asked you before and you ducked the question.”
“I don’t think I was trying to. I don’t actually know what he does now. I know what he used to do. He and Sean worked together. They don’t work together now, although Jack found his new job because of Sean. He went out to visit him and he says the area ‘spoke’ to him.”
“Portland?”
“Outside of it, yeah.” She yawned. “Ugh, I need a nap before I go out. I’m so tired.”
“You can always just not go out.” She raised her eyebrows at me, and we both burst out laughing. “I forgot who I was talking to. You’re right. Take your nap.” I got my argument ready for when she tried to convince me to go out with her. I already had big plans for the night. I’d come up with a new strategy to do some Jack research, and I was itchy to get to it, but she didn’t say anything, just went back to her room.
The door shut behind her, and I opened my laptop. I’d no sooner logged in than a DM popped up.
JACK: Hey.
EMILY: Hey. I don’t have time to talk right now. I’m trying to do some research on you.
JACK: On me? You can just ask.
EMILY: I have. You don’t answer.
JACK: Oh yeah.
EMILY: Are you going to answer now?
JACK: Probably not.
EMILY: Why not?
JACK: I guess it depends on the question. Maybe you want me to answer boring stuff.
EMILY: It would be interesting to me. Doesn’t that count?
JACK: Wait. You set that question up so that I can only say yes or I look like a jerk, and if I say yes, it implies I’m willing to answer your other questions.
EMILY:
JACK: Okay, I’ll answer. But there are ground rules. No asking boring work cocktail party questions, like where are you from and what do you do. Do you accept?
EMILY: I accept.
JACK: And for every question you ask, I get to ask you one too.
EMILY: Any other rules?
JACK: We can choose not to answer any questions we want.
EMILY: This isn’t turning out to be a very high stakes game.
JACK: Them’s the rules.
EMILY: Fine. Me first.
I took my hands off the keyboard so I could think about how to ask the questions that would get me all the answers I wanted. What could I ask Jack that wasn’t “cocktail small talk” but would still help me get to know him?
EMILY: What are the best and worst purchases you’ve ever made?
JACK: 8 inch chef’s knife. That was the best thing.
EMILY: You like to cook!
JACK: No. I like knives.
EMILY: That’s not disturbing at all.
JACK: Yeah, I like to cook. I think this is where I’m supposed to impress you by telling you that I like making my own pasta from scratch.
EMILY: I’m impressed.
JACK: Don’t be. I don’t actually do that. But I do cook a lot.
EMILY: Is it small talk to ask you what your favorite thing to cook is?
JACK: Hmmm. Yes.
EMILY: Okay, then what’s the biggest kitchen disaster you’ve ever had?
JACK: That’s a good one. That I don’t want to answer.
EMILY: Too revealing? Will I be able to psychoanalyze you too well? Does it involve fava beans and nice Chianti?
JACK: Nicely done with the Hannibal Lechter reference, but maybe I’m the one that should be nervous you had that just sitting in your back pocket.
EMILY: If I can overlook your knife obsession, you can overlook this.
JACK: Fair. And I don’t want to tell you because it’s embarrassing, not revealing.
EMILY: I know I agreed to you vetoing questions, but I get to add a rule now: you can decline to answer on the grounds that something is too revealing because it would allow an internet stranger to track you down at your place of employment, but not because it’s too embarrassing.
JACK: But what if I don’t agree to that rule?
EMILY: Then I log off, and we don’t play anymore.
JACK: I’ll agree to the rule.
EMILY: Then you’re up. Tell me the kitchen disaster.
JACK: My brother and I had a double date for the winter formal one year. To save money, we decided to make dinner at home. We decided to make pasta but not from scratch. From chefs Barilla and Ragu. That’s already embarrassing.
EMILY: Better than Chef Boyardee. But you were saying how you’re a total cheapskate and wouldn’t take your dates out?
JACK: Rude.
EMILY: I kid. I’m sure you were trying to be fun.
JACK: No. We were being cheap. Anyway, our dates were sitting at the breakfast bar watching us and I decided to showboat. I plopped the noodles in the sauce pan and tried to get fancy with the tossing. It landed in my hair and ruined my white shirt, so then I had to borrow one of my dad’s and it was way too big and I looked like a slob for the rest of the night.
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
JACK: You’re trying to stop laughing long enough to type, aren’t you?
EMILY:
JACK: My turn. Best thing you ever bought?
EMILY: Some shoes.
JACK: ARE THEY MAGIC?
EMILY: Not exactly.
JACK: Then how can they best the purchase ever?
I snapped a shot of the red stilettos I’d bought with Ranée to celebrate my promotion and sent it. It wasn’t a fancy picture, just them sitting on my closet shelf, but I felt they spoke for themselves even without telling the whole story: that buying those shoes had indirectly led to us having this conversation at all.
JACK: I get it now. Without seeing anything else you’ve ever purchased, I’m positive you’re right.
EMILY: I am. So it was a two part question. Worst thing you ever purchased?
JACK: I saved up a bunch of Fruity-O’s box tops so I could trade them for x-ray specs. It turns out that x-ray specs don’t work.
EMILY: But that’s not really buying anything.
JACK: I had to buy all the boxes myself because my mom said she wouldn’t buy us sugar cereal. In six months I had twenty boxes and two cavities. I could have bought them at a local store for the price of four boxes. That…is the most 90’s story ever. Do they even still do contests like that?
EMILY: Ranée lives on cold cereal. Let me check…nope. Five different brands, no contests. Although any time McDonald’s does Monopoly my dad goes crazy and eats there three times a day while he tries to collect all the pieces. He doesn’t even like McDonald’s.
JACK: I mean, the burgers are bad. I get it. But can anyone truly not like McDonald’s? Because the fries.
EMILY: The fries.
JACK: Your turn. Worst thing you ever bought?
EMILY: Easy. Tickets on a discount airline to Mexico.
JACK: Without any further details, that already sounds bad.
EMILY: So, so bad. But you’re just repeating my questions. You need to come up with some of your own.
JACK: Uh…worst place you’ve had to bury a body.
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
EMILY: …
JACK: HAHAHA why would anyone ask that no reason next question
EMILY: Sorry. It’s just that I’m a planner so I pick pretty convenient locations to bury bodies.
JACK: Understood. Then let’s go with…an expression you would ban from English forever.
EMILY: “At the end of the day.”
JACK: Amen.
EMILY: You would ban amen?
JACK: No, I meant at the end of the day, I agree with you.
EMILY: You’re not funny.
JACK: I am.
EMILY: FINE. A little bit.
I stretched my fingers and yawned, realizing I’d been sitting so long that I had a trigger spot throbbing near my shoulder blade. I flicked a glance down to the time. It was almost eleven. Holy…
EMILY: Didn’t realize it was so late. I have to go, but not until you tell me your answer. What phrase would you ban forever?
JACK: “I have to go.”
My heart turned a tiny bit melty. Well-played, Jack Dobson. Well-played.
Chapter 14
It was weird to wake up and grab my phone first thing not to check my work email but to see if Jack had messaged me. But that’s what happened the rest of the week. Every single morning. And every single morning, he had. And I’d smile and write back.
I didn’t have time for any long exchanges so mostly I sent gifs of people drowning in paperwork, fighting tornados, anthills in crisis, and anything else to represent job chaos and Jack sent seagull gifs.
We’d picked up a new client that meant a massive amount of overtime for my team as we worked like said ants to integrate our software with their systems. I got home late every night, worked some more, and fell asleep exhausted, but it was funny how fast those morning exchanges became a part of my routine. They were almost better than coffee for waking me up.
Fine. They were better than coffee.
On Saturday morning, I slept in a whole hour and had my phone in my hand before I was even fully awake. Jack had sent a picture of a seagull doing a yoga child’s pose to the sun and a message: “Good morning, sunshine.”
EMILY: A yoga seagull? Mad talent.
JACK: Don’t know if I can explain how hard that was. I know I make this look easy, but imagine a weightlifter doing lifts with popped out veins and bulging eyes and that was pretty much me with Photoshop last night.
EMILY: I’m honored.
JACK: I just realized how pathetic I made my Friday night sound. Please say you did something better.
EMILY: Is falling asleep at 8:00 and waking to this on my nightstand “better”?
I sent him a picture of a Haagen-Dazs pint I had only half finished before nodding off. Now it was a melted and congealed chocolate mess.
JACK:
EMILY:
JACK: But how is it possible that this is your Friday night? I thought maybe you went out and had wild nights on the town with Ranée, or…
EMILY: Or…?
JACK: …dates?
I held the phone against my chest and grinned like an idiot. He was fishing, and that meant I could too.
EMILY: You must be confusing me with yourself.
JACK: You think I’m going out for wild nights on the town with Ranée?
EMILY: Or…?
JACK: No dates.
I hugged my phone again. I was fine if he was dating people. Not seriously, or it would make him sketchy for messaging me. But it wouldn’t surprise me if lots of women were interested in such a smart man.
Fine. And a hot one.
EMILY: Same here. No date.
JACK: Because?
There were several options here, like the truth. Or a version of it.
EMILY: Too tired. I was asleep an hour after I got home from work.
JACK: I feel you. I used to work a lot of long hours.
EMILY: On the railroad?
JACK: All the livelong day.
EMILY: I have an earworm now.
JACK: You started it.
EMILY: Quick, give me a chaser, something to knock it out with.
A minute later a YouTube link appeared for “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
EMILY: I thought we were friends.
JACK: Do you remember the other earworm?
EMILY: I guess not. Am I really about to thank you for “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
JACK:
EMILY:
JACK: But no work today. So, plans tonight?
EMILY: Why are you forcing me to tell the truth and sound like a loser?
JACK: So that’s a no. Me either. Which is normal, so judge away. But that doesn’t seem right for you. Are there no smart men there? A smart man would take you out.
EMILY: Maybe I don’t want to be taken out. My prerogative, right?
JACK: A smart man would say yes. And I’m a smart man, so now I’m torn. Because a smart man would both ask if you’d like to go out this evening but also recognize that it’s your prerogative not to want to go out.
Wait. Did that mean he’d been about to ask me out for tonight? What the…
EMILY: Before I try to pick through all of that, let me start with: are you in San Francisco now or planning to be sometime today?
JACK: No.
Well. I was glad I’d asked before jumping to an embarrassing conclusion. I wasn’t sure what to say next though. Umm, funny cat gif? It was always time for a funny cat gif. I was searching for one when his typing dots appeared.
JACK: …
JACK: …
JACK: I take it back. I’m dumb. I meant to ask you out but it came out wrong. So I’ll try again.
JACK: Hey, Emily. Are you available for a virtual date tonight?
EMILY: Let me check my calen—yes. Yes, I am.
EMILY: Except I don’t know what I just said yes to.
Jack sent a gif of a woman diving from a sheer cliff into the ocean.
EMILY: Pretty much.
JACK: I…like that.
EMILY:
JACK: I can guarantee you a Cheeto-free evening.
EMILY: Swoon.
JACK: If I was in San Francisco, I’d see if you wanted to grab lunch some time. I think the equivalent here is a phone call? How about I call you and we can chat with our actual voices. Is that called a conversation? But not Skype or anything. Just a regular phone. Then we don’t have to do our hair. Conditioning is such a pain, amirite?
EMILY: I…
JACK: I’m only half kidding. I’ve only come to appreciate how true that is over the last two years. Now I feel bad for making fun of how long my sister took in the shower. But I’m not kidding about calling. In case you don’t want to do that, in which case I was definitely kidding.
EMILY: Sorry, I was just really stunned that you would even half-joke about something as serious as conditioner. Okay. Let’s not do our hair and talk on the phone tonight.
JACK: Does this feel like middle school? Getting on the phone and talking forever to a girl you like?
EMILY: I didn’t really like girls that way.
JACK: Fine. To a boy you liked?
EMILY: No. I punched them and ran away.
JACK: I’m talking about when you were a teenager.
EMILY: I am too.
JACK: I deserve this.
EMILY: Transcendent Seagull agrees. But in all seriousness, no. I didn’t get a cell phone until high school, and by then, it was mostly texting or IM-ing with boys I liked.
JACK: YOU’RE SAYING YOU LIKE ME?
EMILY: I’m saying if you want to call me around 7:00, I’ll answer.
JACK: Cool. I’m just going to calmly saunter out of this conversation and go look up “Interesting Discussion Questions for Phone Conversations.”
EMILY: I’ll prepare some in-depth descriptions of our current weather.
And I signed off from the chat with the dumbest smile ever and went to condition my hair anyway.
Chapter 15
At 6:55 I was next to the balcony sliding glass door with my phone in my lap. That was where we got the best cell reception.
Would Jack call right at 7:00? Or would he wait a few minutes to try to play it cool? What would I do?
Call at 7:00. Definitely.
6:56.
6:57.
The door opened and Ranée walked in wearing her scrubby clothes and increasingly tattered Vans. Was that…? I squinted. “Why do you have straw on the bottom of your shoe again?”
She glanced down, plucked it off, and threw it in the trash on her way to the fridge. “That’s a boring story.”
6:58.
I held up my phone. “There’s an interesting story about why I’m sitting here waiting for my phone to ring. I’ll trade you my interesting story for your boring one.”
She cracked open a can of sparkling water and took a few huge guzzles. It was like watching a beer commercial parody. I half expected her to belch and smash her sparkling lime La Croix can on her head when she finished.
6:59.
“I’ll take that trade,” she said. “I’ve been volunteering at a horse barn.”
Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that. “In San Francisco.”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s small, but there’s a stable near the equestrian course by Golden Gate Park. I help out.”
“With the horses?” I knew she’d ridden growing up in Nevada, but I hadn’t heard her talk much about it.
“No, with underprivileged kids.”
I couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t wanted to tell me about that. “Were you afraid I’d recognize you as the good person you are if you told me that’s what you’re up to?”
“No, of course not.”
7:00.
My phone rang with a Portland area code. I’d looked it up.
I help it up. “Sorry, but my interesting story is that Jack and I are going on a phone date right this second, and I need to take this.”
She grinned, and I turned away from her before I picked up the call so that my sudden nervous energy didn’t make me giggle.
“Hi,” I said. And then cursed myself for not thinking through the greeting first. “Hi” is what you said when your roommate or mom’s number came up, not when a number you didn’t know came up. Maybe I should have said, “This is Emily.” But no, that was too business-y. Or maybe, “Hello?” like—
