Betting Jessica

by Deanne Wilsted

  Anyway, no matter what Peter thought of Blaise, Becky was excited about going on a date. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been on a date in a while either, so it was about time someone had asked her out. She climbed into bed thinking how much fun it would be to get all dressed up the next night. Maybe she would go out shopping for something new to wear. In fact, she could make a whole day of it. She smiled to herself. It was nice having something fun to look forward to.

  Chapter Nine

  “Damn,” Erik muttered as he swung at the ball again. How had he ever been convinced to join the stupid company softball team?

  Bats and balls had never been his thing…though racquets and balls were a different matter altogether. To be fair, he didn’t usually play quite as badly as he was at the moment. And though everyone noticed, no one gave him grief since he had been in such a lousy mood lately.

  After what seemed an interminable time at bat, Erik finally struck out and wandered back to the bench. He was still so lost in his own inner turmoil that he never even noticed the pathetic looks from the other players. Jessica had really done it this time. I mean, who would have guessed she would take his bet seriously. Her call a couple of nights ago had thrown him for a loop.

  Thinking back to their phone conversation, though, finally brought a smile to his face as he remembered how obvious it was that she hadn’t remembered that night at all. And one part of Erik was totally relieved about that. Although, on the other hand, he did sort of wonder what would have happened had she remembered what a flub he’d made of asking her out.

  Really smooth going, too, Erik buddy, he thought to himself. The night came back in a flash…the way she was so unusually relaxed, the way it seemed like they were talking instead of fighting for a change, and most importantly, the way she had smelled. He shook his head. He had never thought she smelled like anything before.

  Of course, it probably hadn’t hurt that he had had a few drinks himself. I mean, what on earth was I thinking anyway…asking Jessica out? She was the last person he wanted to take on a date. In fact, maybe that was why the invitation may have sounded a bit, well, grudging. But still, she didn’t need to laugh in my face. Shock he would have expected. But instead she had thought she was so funny. He replayed the conversation in his head still amazed.

  “You can't be serious?” Jessica had asked. “No, of course not,” she had answered herself. “Nice joke though Erik. But we both know it’s far more likely I'll end up on a date with anyone, even a celebrity like Ian Drake, than with you.”

  “Oh right,” Erik had replied, “like Ian Drake would ever ask you out.”

  “He might,” Jessica had said, clearly miffed, “If he met me. You don’t know."

  “Jessica, I can categorically state that there is no way Ian Drake will ever ask you out.”

  “Really Erik? Well I bet you if I put my mind to it I could get him to ask me out.”

  Erik couldn't believe he had wasted any brainpower imagining him and Jess together. She was clearly nuts.

  “Ok Jess,” he’d said, “I'll take you up on that, even if it is a sucker bet."

  Erik was still confused about how it could have gone so wrong. It was so typical of Jess to get her bristles up over nothing. She was lucky he’d asked her out at all. Some gratitude, he thought.

  Now, of course, he could see the very huge cliff he had pushed her off. Correction, she was jumping off all on her own as usual. But still, Erik knew Peter wouldn’t thank him. From the conversation they’d had Jess had sounded determined to do whatever it took to get that date. Which, knowing her, could turn out to be anything.

  He’d done what little damage control he could over the phone, trying to limit the time-frame of the stupid bet. He had thought perhaps if he made it too difficult she would give up. Instead, he had to give her credit for being only momentarily thrown when he said they had agreed that night that she would be able to do it in six months.

  Thinking again how she wouldn’t have dared admit to him that she couldn’t remember any of this he started laughing. The whole thing was so Jess. She fell into the most outrageous and stupid situations and then could be more dogged than anyone he knew getting herself out of them.

  Still, he hated to see her get hurt when she lost the bet. Thinking back, that must have been why he had been so nice about the stakes. It wasn’t like him to miss such a golden opportunity. But he figured she would have enough people laughing at her antics… he didn’t need to add any sort of extra humiliation on top of it.

  Jessica’s approach to life was exactly opposite from Erik’s. He was glad his life was simple and straightforward. He didn’t really have to think too much about where he was going or why. This was in direct contrast to Jessica, who seemed to obsess on it.

  He admitted there had been a good measure of luck in his life. For one thing, he’d been born an only child, something that certainly kept things simple with his parents. For that matter, looking around at all of the screwed up families out there, he considered himself very lucky to have gotten such normal parents. Sure, sometimes their attention drove him a bit crazy…like how they would pull out the good silver and china whenever he came home for dinner. Those were the times he wished he had a brother or sister to share some of their attention. But in general, it was nice to know they were there, and would be if he ever really needed them.

  College had been a breeze. He’d studied math and science, thinking at first that he would be a doctor. But later he realized that he really liked thinking about the way things worked. He’d added a marketing class and found that putting it all together established him in product development. He’d enjoyed his classes, but of course the best part of college was playing tennis.

  He’d loved tennis all of his life. He knew he wasn’t good enough, or disciplined enough, to actually compete. But tennis was what grounded him. He was happy to let others think he never worked at anything. In reality, however, he knew he worked as hard as just about anyone. But he had learned long ago how to let go of things at the end of the day. One of the things that drove him craziest about Jessica was how she was always obsessing about her work and her job. In his mind, you only worried about things you could and would change… otherwise it wasn’t worth it.

  And it wasn’t even like Jessica’s job was so important that it would impact people’s lives if she got something wrong. Erik could have understood that… in fact, it was probably the reason he had stayed away from medicine. At the end of the day he had never been sure he would have been able to let go of the worry and stress of his patients’ suffering.

  Though Erik would have been the last to admit it, he did have a big heart. And so, even as the game ended and he headed home, he continued to do the unthinkable, dwell on a problem that was out of his control.

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday evening Jessica put phase one of the project plan into action. Jess had been thrilled when Becky had agreed to go with her on vacation to try to find him. Now she was wandering around her kitchen looking for anything halfway decent to eat and thinking through the plans for their getaway.

  HGTV had done a whole special on celebrity hideaways, and Jessica had managed to find a piece about Ian in their online archives. Apparently in August, whenever he wasn’t working, he would go to Lake Tahoe to escape. The Web site had posted these amazing pictures of his house on the lake, though there wasn’t any specific information about exactly where it was.

  Jess stretched and rolled her neck. Her eyes were tired and her back ached from hunching over the computer all day searching through the photos for clues to where it might be and what his vacation life was like. Well, she also may have spent a few minutes, okay, a couple of hours, daydreaming about being in his gorgeous kitchen.

  She looked around her own small space and thought, Forget Ian, just let me get my hands on that marble countertop and subzero. She imagined herself in a very retro apron pulling fresh bread out of the convection oven. She’d slice off a huge piece and put
the rest in the bread-warming drawer, then slather on a hunk of local churned butter. She’d stand on her tiptoes to reach for a delicate floral plate from one of the beautiful cherry cabinets, and then slowly she’d turn around to find Ian watching her.

  Jessica sighed and let her mind continue the daydream. Their eyes would meet. He’d reach above her, his muscles rippling… for some reason he was walking around without his shirt on, and he’d pull the plate down for her. Without a word they’d take the still warm bread into the beautiful front room to enjoy together as they looked out over the lake.

  She laughed and shook her head. As nice as the dream was, it wouldn’t solve her basic problem of how to actually meet Ian. And until she met him it would simply be a dream; like all the other dreams in her life she’d had but never acted on. Forcefully she pulled out one of the kitchen stools and opened up her notepad. She refocused herself on the main dilemma, how to actually meet Ian when she reached Tahoe. That, more than any other aspect of the bet, had really been plaguing her.

  She had learned that once Ian arrived in Tahoe he rarely left his house. Supposedly he didn’t even go out to get food, he would simply call before he got there and everything would be brought in and waiting by the time he arrived. Or sometimes, she read, he would have food catered when he wanted something special.

  Nice life, Jessica decided as she looked yet again into her bare fridge. How did it always get to be Sunday night before she remembered she needed to go shopping? Really, it wasn’t like her life was that exciting or even so very busy that she couldn’t have found the time.

  In retrospect she realized that at least half of her weekend in fact had been wasted looking for the library books that she had meant to return ages ago. She sighed. At least she had gotten that one thing accomplished. Still, between sleeping in late on Saturday and her research for “The Project,” she’d somehow lost her entire weekend. Amazing, really, that in a life filled with opportunity to do great things, she’d managed to actually lose time.

  I bet Cynthia spent her weekend productively. As usual, Jessica’s mind held Cynthia up as her personal benchmark. She’s probably one of those people who wake up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays so she can take her run through the park while it’s nice and cool, then comes home to find the fresh, hot coffee that she of course remembered to turn on before she left.

  Jessica imagined Cynthia sitting on her little balcony, watching the day start, reading her paper while sipping her coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. She compared it to her own morning routine of hitting the snooze button just one more time; Heaven forbid I actually make time for any exercise. This little admonishment, along with the fact that once again it looked like she’d be eating macaroni and cheese for dinner, motivated her to prioritize her new diet.

  She pulled the mac and cheese out of the fridge and didn’t even bother heating it up. She sat back down at her tiny little island, running through all of her ideas about how she might meet Ian in Tahoe. Of course, this all presumes he even plans to go as usual this year.

  According to HGTV, his only trips out of the house would be for fishing, hiking, boating, or golfing. The pictures showed a great dock, so he probably took his boat out from there. But the other things…he couldn’t possibly have enough land for his own hiking trail, could he?

  Jessica looked over her list of ideas for finding him:

  Idea 1: Rent a boat for a while and hang out on the lake. Okay, and then what? Wave or something? Sunbathe nude? She looked down at her tummy and nixed that idea. Swim around and pretend to get a leg cramp so he would have to come out and save her. Hmmmm… that last idea has some potential, she thought, but I sort of hate lying like that.

  Idea 2: Hang out on the hiking trails near North Lake Tahoe. This idea seemed quite a bit more risky, not to mention difficult. And she thought it might be a lot less likely to lead to success given that Ian probably knew and used all of the hidden trails.

  Idea 3: Ring the doorbell and introduce myself. Duh! Except of course this assumed she would eventually figure out exactly where his house was. And then let’s face it, she was pretty sure he had security. So the chance of actually reaching the door would be pretty slim.

  Still, modifying the idea a bit, she had heard he liked dogs. Maybe she could offer to walk dogs in the neighborhood. Eventually she’d have to run into him, wouldn’t she? An image flashed through Jess’s head of colorful leashes tangled around Ian’s legs as she tried to introduce herself. Probably not the easiest way to meet, but like her other ideas, it was the best she could come up with.

  Jess dumped the empty Tupperware in the sink and decided a change of scene might help her think more logically and realistically. She sat at her makeshift desk, an old kitchen table and stacked milk crates that took up one corner of her living room. She pulled out the red crate, labeled “Dire,” and threw her project notes into it. It jingled her spare keys and landed on top of her unpaid bills and unlooked at career file. She didn’t give them a second thought.

  She sat tapping her pencil while she thought. Finally she yawned and gave up. Maybe she should focus on something more fun, like where to stay when she went to Tahoe.

  She logged back onto her computer and Googled places to stay in Tahoe. After a brief look at the hotel rates, yikes, she crossed them off her list. Motels didn’t seem to project the right image and although some were like little cottages and might work they seemed really small to share with Becky.

  Jess hit the back button what felt like twenty times in order to return to her Google results. She paged down more slowly this time and finally stopped when she ran across an advert on vrbo.com. Oversized 1 br condo, available monthly. Nice kitchen, fully furnished, $2500/mth, call… And there were at least three similar ads, all about the same price.

  On her own it would be too expensive. But if Becky came along maybe she could swing it. They could always invite Blaise, he certainly had enough money to help out…and maybe Peter would want a little vacation. Jessica’s mind went into overdrive trying to plan how to make it work.

  One thing was becoming obvious… she’d have to include others in her little project if she was going to have any chance of success. Jessica decided that it was time to face her friends again anyway. She reached for the yellow milk crate, the color she used to organize all her social stuff, and pulled out her phone list. Then she rolled back her shoulders and got ready to start dialing.

  Chapter Eleven

  What on earth am I doing here? Erik thought to himself. It wasn’t like he had even been invited, a first as far as he could remember. And it all seemed a bit too convenient to have been accidental.

  To be fair, since he hadn’t really seen anyone all week it could have simply been that no one thought to tell him. But after eventually hearing about the plans from Peter, Erik had decided to go just to spite Jessica. These were his friends too after all.

  So, here he was, and now Jessica was acting like she didn’t even care.

  “Hey Erik,” she had said with a little smile, as if nothing were amiss.

  “Man, what is up with you, Erik?”

  Peter’s question brought him back to his surroundings. Erik scowled and Peter shrugged.

  “Whatever! You just looked like you swallowed something sour,” Peter said as he walked off to get another beer.

  The truth was Erik felt like he had swallowed something sour. He never should have come tonight. He hadn’t really been in the mood to go out; he had wanted to hang out at home, maybe invite someone over to watch a movie. Instead here he was watching Jessica flirt with every guy in the bar. That little smile of hers was what had gotten him into all this trouble to begin with.

  What on earth is wrong with me, Erik thought, realizing he was checking her out again. It’s not like I’m even drunk yet.

  Even sober he had to admit, though, that Jess looked sort of cute in her tiny miniskirt. I never even thought she had much of a body. To him she had always been, well, like a wicker chair; not v
ery comfortable and ready to break at any moment if too much pressure was applied. Face it, Erik thought to himself, she worked her way out of the chair image a while ago and you didn’t want to see it.

  Glumly, Erik looked down into his beer. Lost in thought, he was startled to find Cynthia standing by him when he looked up.

  “What’s up Erik? You’re not your usual chipper self.”

  He stared into her big blue eyes and not for the first time wondered why they had never gotten together. There was still nothing really there to interest him, but he pulled out his best dimpled smile and tried to rally.

  “I guess I just needed some attention from the cutest girl in the room.”

  Erik suddenly realized that from across the room he and Cynthia were being observed.

  “How about a quiet drink in one of the booths over there,” he whispered into Cynthia’s ear.

  Pointing to a spot, he watched her make her way over to it and then went up to the bar for drinks. That would give Jessica and Becky something to talk about. He congratulated himself on a good tactical maneuver. In case Jessica did remember him asking her out, flirting with Cynthia would be a good way to prove he had only been messing around.

  Erik was still waiting for his beer when he heard Jessica’s voice at his side calling for the bartender. She slid in next to him at the bar and smiled to get the bartender’s attention. Erik wondered what it would be like to get that sort of attention from her instead of her normal antagonism.

  “Better get plenty,” Jessica said slyly while waiting for the bartender to bring the drink she’d ordered. “Looks like Cynthia has a nice spot saved for you in the corner of that booth. You should be fairly well stuck there for a while.”