Jack of All Maids (Hawthorne Hall Book 2), page 4
Jack
Alright. C u 2morrow.
After sending the message, Jack opened the text he’d been writing to Mick. He looked over his words, inhaled the temptation to hit send, and turned off the screen without deleting the draft.
Eden was breathtaking! Her laugh was contagious, her skin was perfect despite the few freckles that dotted her nose, and her slender figure curved considerably in all the right places. At first, the whole doctor thing was a bit threatening, but the simplicity of her Geordie accent, paired with her humble disposition, forced him to abandon all worry and pursue Eden with unguarded intent.
As he sat at the Burkes’ dining table and studied the finest intricacies of her demeanor, he realized even the casual way she held her wine glass and her slight lean into the conversation communicated the confidence he sought in a woman. However, beyond all the identifiable positives, there was something indescribable about her: a familiarity…the feeling he’d known this beautiful stranger all his life. And it was from this sentiment that all his attraction seemed to stem.
“So, let me get this straight,” Eden said, “you and Thomas went to Oxford together…?”
“Mhmm.”
“But only he was a student?” she asked, confused.
“Correct. I tagged along. Slept on Thomas’ floor for four years. You know, Eden, if my time at one of the world’s top universities taught me anything, it’s that Oxford – more than grades and diplomas – is really about making connections. Thomas chose to pay eighty thousand pounds for that privilege. I did it for free. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which of us made the wiser decision.”
“So, if you didn’t graduate from Oxford, where did you get your degree?” Eden asked while holding up a bottle of wine.
He graciously declined her wine, then replied, “From the far more reputable…no offense, Thomas…school of hard knocks.”
“Brilliant,” she said with a playful laugh.
“A degree like that doesn’t pay much,” Jack continued, “but it pays off.”
“Oh, Jack. Don’t be so humble. You’re doing alright for yourself, aren’t you?” Jada asked with some forceful prodding. “Maybe you should give Eden a little more info so she doesn’t misinterpret your situation. You wouldn’t want her running off because she thought you were a vagrant, would you?”
On numerous occasions over the previous month, Jada had voiced her opposition to Jack hiding his wealth from the women he encountered. However, this was the first time she’d felt so bold as to hint at ending the charade in front of one of them. Jack had no quarrel with her reasoning. She made perfect sense. He hated that he needed to start every conversation with a lie. He also hated how much more difficult the lie made dating, but what else could he do?
Jack quickly thought up the perfect reply to both keep up the façade and remind Jada to stay in her lane, but before he could respond, Eden responded for him.
“Well, I suppose no woman goes out searching for a derelict, but one of the benefits of being a doctor is I can afford to fall for Mr. Right…even if he calls home the most decrepit cardboard box in all the East Village.”
It was a strange sentence, yet it was probably the sexiest thing he’d ever heard a woman say. His expression must have revealed his thoughts because Eden glanced over at him, blushed, and then looked down at her empty plate.
“Speaking of dereliction and cardboard boxes,” Thomas said, “have I got a story about this guy for you.”
“What?” she asked as she sat up in her chair. “Tell me.”
“Well, maybe I should let Jack tell you. I’m sure he could spin it in a much more favorable light for himself…”
“Dereliction and cardboard boxes?” Jack whispered aloud before it dawned on him. “Oh! The Danger Place Debacle?” Jack asked as Thomas nodded. “That wasn’t bad at all! I’m happy to tell her. No reservations.”
“The Danger Place Debacle?” she asked.
Jack nodded and then proceeded.
“We were eleven…maybe twelve…”
“We were twelve.”
“…and we’d both really taken to playing trumpet in music class.”
“No,” Thomas corrected. “I really took to playing trumpet in music class. You just put it to your mouth and pretended to blow while moving your fingers.”
“I called it finger-syncing, and it worked.”
“It worked until Mrs. Clinger had us perform our finals individually…”
“I’ll give you that,” Jack conceded. “That was a rather ugly day. But that summer was ace. With Thomas’ newfound musical talent and my wits, we set out like Robin Hood and Little John to help the poor.”
“That may be how it ended, but we didn’t set out to help the poor,” Thomas said.
“Speak for yourself. Sounds like someone was much less like Little John and more like Prince John in this Nottingham simile.”
“First of all, before the bobby came, you literally asked, ‘What are you gonna do with your half?’ Second, why are you making me out to be Little John? It was my idea. If anyone, I was Robin.”
“Robin!? Pshh! Maybe if we were similizing about Batman!” Jack shot back.
“Boys…” Jada interrupted.
“Sorry. Where was I before Thomas started embarrassing himself in not one but two fictional worlds?”
“Nottingham is a real place, Jack.” Thomas retorted.
“Oh yes. I remember.” Jack continued. “I recognized that so much of the downtown homeless population was leaving a lot of money on the table. Most were only making signs to garner attention. That might work in a quaint little village where people have time to stop and read, but it just doesn’t cut it in the Big Smoke. They needed more flare…more pizazz! So, Thomas and I showed ‘em how it was done. We bought some grubby old clothing from a flea market, dirtied up some fake beards, and took a hackney downtown. We set up shop right outside the British Museum, and Thomas and I played…”
“You finger-synched,” Thomas reminded him.
“…the one song no creature with a soul can ignore…”
“Bohemian Rhapsody?” Eden guessed. “Uptown Funk? Blinding Lights?”
Jack shook his head and quietly chuckled at her naivety before saying, “Freeway through the Danger Place by Kenneth Clyde Messina.”
“The greatest song of all time,” Thomas added with three impassioned nods.
“A musical masterpiece that makes even Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partiro” sound like Miley Cyrus rage-farting into a jar. Needless to say, without a single hastily made sign, we brought in more money that day than any street performer ever had.”
“Well…” Thomas interjected.
“What? You think someone’s done better than forty-three pounds and seventeen pence?”
“Probably,” Thomas responded honestly. “Yes.”
“Maybe. But we were the only street performers that ever gave all their money to the poor.”
“Probably because most street performers are, themselves, poor. Plus, the bobby said he’d call our mums if we didn’t give it to them.”
“I didn’t care about the money, Thomas. I would have given it to them – bobby or no bobby.”
“Wow,” Eden said under her breath. “Jack, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a man like you. I mean, to be so loyal to a friend that you’d sleep on his floor for four years just to be there for him…to be so centered at such a young age to not care about money. It’s quite impressive. I really like you, Jack.”
“Really?” Jack asked as he caught a glimpse of Jada and Thomas mirroring his excitement.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I really like you too, Eden.”
“You do?”
“Of course! You’re smart, beautiful, fun, and…beautiful. I’d love to do this again sometime.”
“You would?”
“Yeah,” Jack said as all the nerves he’d been battling for weeks seemed to raise the white flag and retreat.
“Perfect. That’s exactly what I hoped you’d say. But I just have one more question, Jack - a question I like to ask anyone I’m considering getting serious with.”
“Of course. Ask away.”
“You sure? It’s kind of a personal question but one that I think tells me a lot about a man.”
“Yeah…go ahead,” he responded confidently.
Eden leaned in close, penetrated his pupils with her stare, and asked, “Do you have any regrets?”
Jack – caught off guard – thought for a second or two, then said, “No. Not really. I’ve always looked at life as a…”
“Really?” she inquired rather forcefully. “You have zero regrets whatsoever?”
Her tone changed. Her demeanor changed. She changed. She was all at once a stranger, and the attractive familiarity he’d felt with her all evening was suddenly gone.
“I guess…maybe…if I had to pick one, I’d…”
“If you had to pick one? Well, let me tell you something, Jack Adamson – if you had any feeling whatsoever, empathy or even sympathy for that matter...”
“I’m sorry,” Jack interrupted. “Did…did we used to date or something?”
“You would be so lucky! I might have had a crush on you during upper fifth, but that was a long time ago! You selfish, arrogant, and mean little man!”
Thomas gasped, then said, “Edie…is that you?”
Eden nodded. A look of sheer fear spread over Thomas’ frail countenance.
“Umm. Sweetheart,” he said to Jada. “May I please be excused from the table?”
Jada looked too frozen in discomfort to respond.
“Edie?” Jack asked. “How do you know her? What am I missing here, Thomas?”
Eden continued, “You and Thomas were back from Oxford for break while Zuri and I were finishing up year twelve. I was sleeping over at the Burkes’ house. So were you. I thought you were so cute. I wanted to talk to you, but Zuri made me promise not to. She said you were the biggest prat she’d ever known, and wow, was she right! When we went to bed that night, I saw Zuri lock her bedroom door. I’d slept over there dozens of times before and never seen her do that. I asked her why she locked it, and you want to know what she said? She said, ‘If we don’t, Jack will burn our hair while we’re sleeping or wake us up with a bucket of ice water.’ I thought she was exaggerating, but her assessment of your potential cruelty was far too merciful. Had I known then what I know now, I would have boarded it up and stuffed every gap in that door.”
It still hadn’t dawned on him who she was or what he’d done to upset her, but maybe he could fake his way out of it.
“Oh! Eden!” He exclaimed, feigning revelation. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You live life with no regrets. Remember?”
“It was childish and mean and…and…”
“Jack!” she interrupted. “You don’t have a clue, do you? What you did went way beyond childish and mean. Zuri and I woke up that morning - the second to last week of the semester with only one final remaining: PE – the mile run. I’d spent all my life being the heavy girl who had…”
“Oh! I remember now!” Jack exclaimed before realizing he probably should have waited for literally any other part of the story to make that admission.
“Of course, that’s all you remember about me,” she said with a sarcastic, pained, and frustrated laugh. “Not my name. Not what you did. Just that I was Zuri’s chubby little friend.”
She was right. Eden hadn’t even gotten to the most incriminating part of her story, yet she’d already presented enough evidence to convict him of illicit narcissism and cruelty.
“Is it alright if I finish before you pretend to show remorse?” she asked.
Jack - defeated and ashamed - nodded.
“I had no hope of running a mile in under fifteen minutes. But Zuri – a true friend – ran with me around the track all semester. With her help, I lost some weight, and a few days before your mean joke, I had clocked my first fourteen-and-a-half-minute mile. We’d both showered the night before so we could jump right out of bed, throw on some clothes and light makeup, and be ready for first-period PE. Unfortunately, I beat Zuri to her bedroom door that morning. Had it been her, it wouldn’t have been a big deal – disgusting and awful, of course, but not life-changing. As I reached to unlock the door,” Eden said as she extended her hand towards the imagined knob she seemed to be staring at. “My bare feet and brain register the soggy carpet beneath my toes. At first, I thought maybe Zuri got up during the night for a glass of water and accidentally spilled it. Within seconds, the soles of my feet begin to burn and itch. I feel the hives start to form. I know right then precisely what it is because only one thing on this planet causes me to have an allergic reaction like that: ammonia.”
Immediately, Jack remembered.
“You tinkled, Jack! You tinkled on Zuri’s carpet! To this day, I can’t figure out how you did it. The door was locked…so were the windows, but I know it was you! And it ruined my life!”
“Eden,” Jada interrupted, “I know Jack can be a dinglehopper, but don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit? To say he ruined your life…”
“Well, what would you call it when you’re working eleven years to achieve a goal, and in one fell swoop, someone steals it all away from you? My dream was to go to Cambridge. My parents went to Cambridge. My brother and sisters went to Cambridge. I worked and worked and worked to get my grades where they needed to be, all to fail PE over swollen and hived feet…right before college applications,” Eden said softly before beginning to sob.
“Oh, Eden. I’m so sorry,” Jada responded as she shot Jack a look that seemed to scream say something, you nit!
With some hesitation, Jack took the hint and said, “Eden, I have something to say. I am deeply and truly sorry for my actions…but I am so happy for you that it all turned out alright in the end.”
Immediately, her eyes stopped sobbing, and instead, shot twenty-gauge shells his way.
“I mean, look at you. You’re beautiful. You’re successful. You’re intelligent.” Eden, trembling with anger, wiped away a tear from her cheek as Jack continued, “Perhaps my childish antics inspired you to become the person you are today. Plus, let’s be honest, if you really wanted to go to Cambridge, couldn’t you have just slept on a mate’s floor like I did?”
Enraged, Eden shot to her feet, threw her white wine in Jack’s face, and slapped him with the fury of every woman ever scorned by man.
“Owwwwww! I’m sorry, okay? I really, really am! Please. Tell me. What I can do to make it up to you, and I’ll do it…other than money, of course, because of my current financial situation,” Jack said, remembering she thought he was poor.
Eden grabbed Jack’s shirt collar with both hands, pulled him in close, and through her teeth whispered, “I know you have money, Jack. But you know what? I don’t want it. I don’t want your pity. I don’t want your help. I just want one thing.”
“Name it.”
“I want to know how you did it.”
Jack assumed she meant how he got his tinkle onto the other side of Zuri’s locked door, but he wasn’t sure enough to answer.
“How did you do it, you horrible troll?!” She said, shaking him.
Intuitively, Jack forced himself to whimper until he was sobbing. He even squeezed out a few tears amidst his pretended bawling - a survival tactic he’d learned years earlier at Summer Fields Prep.
“I…I…sniff…I took a cookie sheet…”
“And…go on!”
“I took a cookie sheet, and I…you know...filled it with tinkle. Then I brought it downstairs to the deep freezer, and after it turned into a thin puddle of ice…I…I…”
“…You took it off the sheet…slid it under the locked door…and let it thaw!” She exclaimed as if she’d just discovered the means of cold fusion or lightspeed space travel.
“Y…yeh…sniff…yes.”
“Wow,” she said, nearly impressed. “You’re an ingenious little muppet, aren’t you?”
With that, she released Jack’s collar, grabbed her purse and keys from the entryway hanger, and opened the front door. But before leaving, she turned to Thomas and Jada, thanked them for the lovely meal, and apologized for getting wine on their table and rug.
Instinctively, they snapped out of their frozen disbelief and stood to see Eden out. When she was beyond sight, Jack’s crying theatrics quickly concluded. He felt the droplets of Eden’s Prieur Montrachet coalescing into a stream, running down his cheek and stopping at the edge of his mouth. He basked in the faintest of tastes, purposefully forgot why he’d ever stopped drinking, grabbed the rest of the bottle, and chugged it down just as his hosts reentered the dining room. They sat at the table with an almost synchronized and enviable unison. Yes, even their simple movements served as a mocking mechanism from which he would ever be reminded of just how deflated a third wheel he’d become.
After some shared silence, Thomas said, “I’m so sorry, mate. I didn’t…”
Jack cut him off with a weak shake of his head. He stared down at the puddle on his plate and said, “I deserve worse.”
“No, you don’t,” Jada said.
“You heard her. I ruined her life. I didn’t even know she… What’s wrong with me, Thomas?”
“That was a long time ago, Jack,” Thomas said. “You’ve changed.”
Jack didn’t need to look up to know Thomas was fibbing, but he stared deep into his soul anyway. Thomas’s eyes seemed strong, determined to hold their truthful gaze, but they wavered and admitted the lie upon prolonged inspection. Jack forced a defeated and concurring smile before returning his attention to his plate.
“You know who’s behind this, don’t you? This has Zuri’s name written all over it. I could kill her!” Thomas said as he pulled out his phone and excused himself from the table.
As Thomas fumed down the hallway, leaving an angry voicemail on Zuri’s phone, Jada stood up, stacked all the dirty plates, and firmly planted a platonic kiss on Jack’s wine-soaked head before disappearing into the kitchen. Jack’s hand had been in his pocket, clasping his phone since the moment Eden stood to leave. But when he was all alone, he pulled it out, opened the message he’d almost sent to Mick, and with a mild buzz, added, “love 2.” Then Jack hit send.
