In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  Jessica didn’t much care what it covered. Fifty-eight hundred covered a lot of things in her business already, things she couldn’t afford to not pay.

  “It sounds great,” she said. “I just don’t have the wiggle room. Maybe next year.”

  Mrs. Thomas cut in. “Not to doubt your abilities, but without the leadership skills Caren can provide you, I wonder if you’ll have a bakery to run in a year.” She cringed apologetically. “Anyway, it’s not that much money. I tell you what. I’ll loan It is Risen the money, as an investment, then you can use that to pay for this conference. That way, it’s a tax deductible expense at the end of the year.”

  “I can’t keep asking you to loan me money, Mrs. Thomas, not when I’m behind on payments to you.”

  Mrs. Thomas chuckled sweetly and shook her head. “You didn’t ask. I offered.” She turned to Caren. “See? How many others in her position would simply expect a handout, and here she is trying to turn them down left and right. I told you I had to force her to take my help in the first place.”

  Caren nodded approvingly. “You’ll be a great fit at the retreat. Lots of women like you will be there. It’s so important to create connections with people who have experienced what you’re going through.”

  Jessica thought about Jesus and how she could kinda take it or leave it with him, despite their similar positions. “I’ll take your word on that.”

  “You’ll consider coming?” Caren said, tilting her head to the side.

  “Definitely. I mean, it sounds great. It’s just a matter of looking at finances and making sure—”

  “You’re overthinking it,” Mrs. Thomas said. “I just told you I’d give you the money. I don’t see what there is to look over. I give you fifty-eight hundred dollars, you tack it onto the amount you currently owe, and you make that money back twice as quickly using the skills Caren and her wonderful cabal of teachers give you.”

  “I don’t know that I’m overthinking it,” Jessica said. “If I keep getting further in debt—”

  Holding her palms flat toward Jessica, Caren cut in with, “I’m sensing a lot of resistance.”

  No shit.

  “I imagine that’s your natural reaction to new things, yeah? You hear about an opportunity and your first response is always no.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jessica said defensively.

  “Mm-hm.” Caren had her eyes closed now, her hands still up, reading who-knew-what coming off Jessica in waves. “Yes, that resistance can affect all sorts of things—the energy you attract, your liver health.” She opened her eyes. “It’s the sort of thing that builds up over a lifetime of broken trust and disappointment.”

  Okay, she might be onto something.

  “It can be removed, and quite easily,” Caren continued. “And a single weekend with us is plenty to completely shift your energy, release the resistance, and begin attracting only the best things into your life.”

  Resisting the impulse to resist, Jessica said, “That sounds pretty good.”

  “It is.” Caren rubbed a hand gently up and down Jessica’s arm, staring into her eyes. “It’s quite a burden to have lifted.”

  Jessica sighed and held up the business card. “Okay, I’ll check it out after work tonight. I’d better get back to it.” She stood, and while she was feeling emboldened, she added, “Oh, hey. Mrs. Thomas, I still can’t find the contract in any of my inboxes. I hate to keep asking you over and over again to resend it, but could you?”

  Mrs. Thomas chuckled and pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “Of course, Jessica. I know you’re a little overwhelmed with the paperwork. I’ll send it right away.”

  Jessica pushed in her chair and was already behind the counter when Mrs. Thomas caught her attention with a wave and said, “Just sent it. Mexicankicker7, right?”

  Jessica sucked in air, her eyes darting around quickly to see who all might’ve heard that. “No. I had to delete that one.” When would that ill-advised address stop haunting her? She hadn’t used it for years. Mrs. Thomas had her new one, right? Yeah, she’d sent her emails from it and gotten responses. Did everyone age out of technology, even someone as savvy as Mrs. Thomas? “The other address.”

  “I only have that one saved for you.”

  Jessica’s eyes caught sight of a man waiting impatiently for service while Judith helped the customer ahead of him. Not in a hurry to scream her personal email across the restaurant where anyone could jot it down for later cyberstalking, Jessica said, “I’ll send you an email from it after we close tonight and you can just hit reply.”

  Mrs. Thomas nodded, returned to her conversation, and Jessica went on to help the customer, who was, unfortunately, Doug—David?

  “Hi,” he breathed, his weak chin quivering.

  She swallowed down the acidic taste in her mouth and took his order and swiped his card.

  “Do you need a name for the order?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s Donald.”

  “Great.”

  “Do you like TV?”

  Now she looked up from the register. “TV?”

  “Yeah. Do you like watching it? I thought maybe sometime we—”

  “Not big on TV. Any of it.” It was the “we” that tipped her off to where his question was leading, and she had so little desire to spend alone time with whatever-his-name-was that the lack of it might fold in on itself and create a black hole that swallowed up her desire for other things like money or sleep or nature shows.

  She grabbed a thermal to-go cup from the stack by the register, hoping he’d take the hint and not camp all day, and shoved it at him. When he missed his cue to walk away, she took the responsibility upon herself and left the register to clean out the microwave.

  She never saw Caren and Mrs. Thomas leave. She simply looked up a minute later, and they were no longer there.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sometimes Jessica wondered if Jameson spent all of his free time looking up new places to eat. Just in the time since the two of them had started seeing each other, a handful of the restaurants where they’d grabbed dinner had opened and shut down. She suspected the one they were in now would meet the same fate before long. (Somewhat inexplicably, though, S8 Su4 was really taking off.)

  Instead of music, tonight’s new restaurant played the synthesized sounds of a heavy downpour. The walls were covered in fake, backlit windows where a never-ending cycle of water washed down. While it did make the place feel cozy, So Wet’s menu was a strange hodgepodge of hot dishes. Soups, mostly, but plenty of simple carbs, too. And the drink menu was mostly varieties of spiked hot chocolate and hot apple cider.

  She wasn’t complaining about that. After all, it was the middle of November, and the temperatures were getting all the way into the low sixties at night.

  A plasma TV on the wall behind Jameson showed a fire burning on loop. She was sure she’d seen that pattern of flames only a minute before. She set out to determine exactly how long the loop was. She’d thought she’d had it when the waiter had interrupted her concentration to drop off a giant basket of warm, fluffy buttermilk rolls. Chris would love this place, she thought before catching herself and insisting she pay better attention to Jameson.

  “Table reads start Tuesday,” he continued. “So I need to spend tomorrow packing, then I leave Saturday morning for Vancouver.”

  “And you’ll be there …?”

  “Probably six months. I’ll have a handful of mini vacations mixed in there, stretches of days when they’re not shooting any of my scenes. I’d like to come down to Austin to visit during some of those.”

  He was asking for her blessing, she could tell. “That would be fun.”

  “Wendy already told me I don’t get to be seen with any other women while I’m up there until we call it quits.”

  “That sucks. Should we call it quits now?”

  He shrugged a single shoulder as he stuck a pad of butter on the top of his bread. “Nah. No need.
I’ll let you know if I meet anyone, but I’ve met most of the principal actresses already, and none of them are my type. Besides, this is about the speed of dating I prefer.”

  “The kind where you don’t get laid?”

  “Well, okay. Admittedly this is the first setup like this where there weren’t fringe benefits, but—”

  “I know. Don’t want to bang God’s daughter. I totally get it.” She failed to mention that he couldn’t even if he tried. She had yet to bring up that catch and had no plans to.

  Later, as she dipped her buttermilk roll into her broccoli cheese soup, her discussion with Mrs. Thomas from the day before popped up in her mind. “Have you ever been to a leadership retreat?”

  He looked up from his chicken noodle soup, his spoon hovering above the surface, and his expression brightened. “Not a leadership one, but I love retreats!”

  “Really? Just … any old retreat?”

  “Yes. It’s like pressing pause on life. You get to escape into a completely different universe and be whoever you want to be for a few days. It’s kind of like taking on a new role in a film. You get to try being that person for a while, and if it feels good, you can incorporate it into your personality. For instance, there was this time I played Al Capone’s muscle in this weird sci-fi indie film—it was terrible, and I’m pretty sure they canned it right after the premiere—but during the shoot I got to go around pretending to murder robots all day and be this tough guy who took no shit off anyone. Afterward, I chain-smoked for like two years.”

  Jessica narrowed her eyes. “The character smoked, I take it?”

  “Yeah. They offered me fake cigarettes, but I was really into method acting at the time, so I insisted on smoking real ones. Sometimes I would go through two packs in a day because of all the takes. Anyway, that character taught me I really liked smoking, so I was able to incorporate it into my real life.”

  “Jameson, I think you’re talking about addiction.”

  “Well, same thing.”

  “Not … quite.” And just like that, her lasting desire to take up smoking was temporarily abated.

  “Right, not quite, but basically. My point is retreats allow you to try new things without any long-term consequences. You get to experiment and be free.”

  Jessica made a note not to try any new addictive substances if she did decide to attend. “You think I should go to a leadership retreat then?”

  His eyes widened. “Yes! That would be perfect for you! Oh, I’m so jealous. I wish I could go. When is it?”

  “In two weeks. Out near Carlsbad.”

  “Ooh! I bet there will be a sweat lodge!” He spooned soup into his mouth excitedly while Jessica puzzled over why anyone would seek out sweating.

  “I didn’t see that mentioned on the website, but maybe.” What she had seen mentioned was an on-site masseuse, a Michelin-rated chef, private suites, meditation sessions, ovarian acupuncture, transformational play, and something called “spirit animal visioning.” She assumed the leadership training was a given and that’s why they failed to mention it on the list of activities.

  “You’re going, though?” he asked.

  “Not sure. It’s more time away from the bakery, which usually turns out poorly, if for no other reason than the emails I have to go through when I come back.”

  He waved that off, “Oh, but you’ll have all these great leadership skills!”

  “It’s also pretty expensive,” she added, acknowledging the resistance in herself. She wasn’t completely sold that it was a bad thing to say no as a default. Maybe the retreat, if she went, would change her mind on that. Or maybe not.

  “Yeah, they can get pretty pricy,” he said, and she appreciated him acknowledging her concern. “What are we talking about here, like, seventy thousand? We talking six figures?”

  “Holy shit, no. Are there retreats that expensive?”

  He bit off a chunk of saturated roll. “Are there not?”

  “This one is only fifty-eight hundred.”

  He stopped chewing, and set down his bread. “That doesn’t sound safe, Jess. Is it just … camping? Wait, is this one of those survivalist retreats where they drop you off in the desert?”

  “That sounds more like a mob kidnapping, and no.”

  He nodded. “True. That was one of the scenes from AI Capone, actually.”

  “It looks pretty luxurious on the website. They have an on-site masseuse.”

  The corners of Jameson’s lips remained firmly downward. “At a fifty-eight hundred dollar retreat? Have they done a proper background check on him?”

  “I didn’t see that in the FAQs.”

  “You should probably ask.”

  “Will do.” She had no plans of it. She wasn’t letting a strange person touch her, past felony convictions or not.

  “Do you need the money for this? I’m happy to shell out, assuming, you know, it checks out and I won’t be paying for you to be murdered in the New Mexican desert. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  “I also don’t want that,” she said. “And no, Mrs. Thomas already said she’d lend me the money for it.”

  “She’s the one who invested in the business right away, right? Your teacher?”

  Jessica nodded. “She’s friends with the woman who runs the retreat.”

  “Hm.” He nodded slowly and sipped his bourbon hot chocolate. “Maybe it’s safe, then. Or maybe I’ve been paying too much for retreats. Either way, you’re pretty lucky to have someone like her in your life. A lot of people don’t have that kind of support. Did you have to sign an amendment with her for the loan adjustment?”

  “No. Shit. I forgot to email her from my new address.” She waved it off. “I’ll do it later.”

  “She must really believe in you if she doesn’t make you sign anything. You could take the money and just claim she gave it to you as a gift and never pay her back for it. I have plenty of friends who would do that kind of thing.”

  She didn’t want to tell him how to live his life, but it seemed like he shouldn’t hang out with those kinds of people. “I honestly don’t know why she trusts me. I’m already months behind on my payments to her. She just sort of allows it, doesn’t hound me or anything. I know she has a little money because she’s married to a congressman and they’re not spending anything on her kids’ college, but … yeah, I don’t think I’d be so generous without anything in writing.”

  He sighed and extended his hand across the tabletop. “I guess it’s just one more person who believes in you, Jessica.”

  She chuckled at the sappy compliment and put her hand in his. “Seems a bit misplaced.”

  “Hasn’t been for me.”

  She smiled at him, cheating her head to the side when she noticed the phone recording them at the table over.

  “You’re learning,” he said, squeezing her hand before letting it go. “I’ll sleep well in Vancouver knowing my lessons didn’t fall on deaf ears.”

  “I’ll miss hanging out with you, Jameson. I don’t know how I’ll have the time to sniff out all the newest niche restaurants in the three months they stay open. Plus, I won’t have anyone to go with.”

  He blew a raspberry at that and returned to his food. “You have all kinds of people to eat with. Just be less picky.”

  “What can I say? You’ve set the bar so high,” she teased.

  “You sound like none of my exes.”

  “That’s because I’m not one. Yet.”

  He smiled but his tone was serious when he said, “I’ll be sad when that day comes.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

  He laughed. “No, you won’t.”

  “Huh? Why not?”

  “You’ll be in a real relationship again.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’d bet you money, but I know you don’t have any to spare.” Then he flagged down the server and ordered another round of hot drinks.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

/>   Jessica bit into one of the So Wet-inspired broccoli and cheese croissants she’d been experimenting with after-hours over the last few days. It was perfect, and since she was alone in the kitchen of It is Risen, she allowed herself to moan loudly and obscenely.

  She jotted down a few last details about preparation and baking, plated two more for herself, and moved to her laptop to type up the official recipe.

  On impulse, she pulled up her internet browser, auto piloting instead of pulling up the text document. The headline on the homepage caught her eye, and she knew she shouldn’t click it.

  But it was eleven at night, she had eaten nothing but bakery food all day, and her paper-thin self-control tore down the middle. How often was the news something she wanted to read, anyway?

  And damn, Chris looked fine in his warm-up gear, gripping the football effortlessly by the laces, left arm pointing downfield while the right extended behind him, ready to launch a pass. Someone ought to paint him like that.

  She clicked the headline of Rookie QB Brings Super Bowl Hopes to Philadelphia.

  The article was more of a profile, and she enjoyed reading about someone she knew, outside of herself and Jimmy, to see just how much the writer got wrong. There was plenty. For instance, he said Chris had been starting quarterback at Mooremont High for four years, but that was impossible, since high school in her hometown only lasted three years, with ninth graders having a separate transitional campus they attended between junior high and high school.

  Chris’s stats looked pretty good, too. Since the Cowboys, Redskins, and Giants had done piss-poor in conference play, with the Redskins and Giants both losing to the Eagles twice this season and the Cowboys losing by a point in their week two match-up, the Eagles were positioned for play-offs despite a 7 – 5 record on the season so far. Their next game could clinch it for them, and it took place on none other than Thanksgiving. Against the Cowboys. She quickly made up her mind to call Chris and chat about the conflicting feelings he must be having, but she changed her mind just as quickly when she scrolled to his name in her phone and saw Chris Riley DO NOT CALL.