“No,” she said, shaking her head. “But I still don’t think your way is right. Your way, all connection and no substance, could just as easily lead to a stranger in the bed next to you. And then what do you do? You don’t even have anything to talk about.”
If she was going to lie in bed next to someone after sex and not have anything to talk about, she might as well hook up with random men at bars. Or hire a male escort service. That sounded better—at least in theory he should be good in bed.
Being single was better than the isolation of being with someone and feeling alone.
“It worked for my parents.” Water sloshed in his glass as he shrugged. “I think they developed things to talk about as they built a life together. Who needs to talk about a shared interest in music or what Greek life was like at your college if you can talk about your job and your day and what’s for dinner?”
She shook her head, though at the back of her mind she wondered if her parents had even tried that. “I just don’t understand how that doesn’t lead to chaos and heartbreak.”
“Have you had your heart broken?”
“Well, sure. Hasn’t everyone?”
“I mean since you were twenty. You had that serious boyfriend, right? Did your heart break when that ended?”
She knew heartbreak. Had felt the life drain out of her as she sobbed, collapsed on the floor, uncertain how to go on.
That had been her college boyfriend. She’d cried when Richard had moved out. She screamed and yelled. But life hadn’t felt like it was ending. It hadn’t felt like the rotation of the earth had stopped and the moon no longer had any pull on the oceans.
“No. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. I understand that now. But that’s one man. You can’t generalize to the entire dating experience, love and marriage based on that one example.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing with your parents?”
“So are you,” she snapped, smarting from being called out.
His head cocked to the side, and she felt the force of his gaze. He was going to be irritated with her for pointing out the obvious. More than irritated. She was irritated that their argument had come out at a draw—if she was being generous to herself. But men could be different, and often were, when arguing with a woman.
“You, girl, made me look stupid,” her calculus teacher had hissed as he’d handed down his sentence. She’d explained to him, in the middle of class, that her answer was more right than his was. “I covered this in my summer session at Berkeley,” she’d said with the snootiness of a too-smart teenager. The detention had been fair. She’d backtalked and she shouldn’t have.
But neither should he have told her that she was the dateless one in school because boys don’t like girls who are smarter than they are.
She and her best friend had kissed later that week. Her friend was going back and forth between coming out and not. Marsie was hoping she was a lesbian; girls probably liked smart girls. The kiss had been disappointing for both of them, though for different reasons.
So Marsie waited. She’d know the difference between Jason being irritated at the argument and being irritated at her.
To her surprise, he laughed. “You’re great. You know that, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“I love how you don’t let up. How you push and push and push. Such commitment, it’s just great. I’ll bet your friends think it’s incredibly irritating when they’re down and you sweep them up in your intensity to propel them forward. But I’ll also bet they know they wouldn’t be able to live without it.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re relentless. Spending time with you is great. When I’m on your floor and I want coffee, I always check to see if you’re in your office. Because coffee with you is better than coffee without you.”
The restaurant was a little overwarm. The heat seemed to have been sealed into the fried appetizers, which she still had to blow before she took a bite. But neither of those accounted for the warmth flooding her at Jason’s words, a warmth that a sip of her ice water couldn’t dampen.
“It’s too bad there’s no spark between us,” he said, moving his hand—fried croquette pinched in his fingers—between them. “I could spend days talking to you and never be bored. I think you’d always have the capacity to surprise me.”
Those words, though, were a bucket of ice water, and she wouldn’t recover her warmth for days. She smiled through gritted teeth. “No spark. Right. Of course.”
Her smile must not have fooled him any more than it made her feel better, because his face fell out of the cheer and good times brightness it had been in for the entire dinner. “Oh, Marsie. I’m sorry. Did I...? I didn’t think...” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t think you were interested in me, like that.”
Neither did I.
She wasn’t. He was the building manager for her office. She didn’t know if he’d gone to college, but he didn’t have a profession to match hers, so his education didn’t really matter. He would fail her algorithm on profession alone. And he was too short.
He was cute, though, with a nice smile and a butt she checked out regularly. She felt comfortable around him. He was the only person in the office that she got coffee with on a whim. She never did anything on a whim.
Still, his words shouldn’t have hurt. She put a little more force into her smile. Her cheeks were warm from the effort, at least, even if the rest of her body was still chilled. “No, no. You’re right. I’m not interested in you, like that. We’re friends.”
There. That sounded right. Friends. Buddies. Pals. People who got coffee together and talked about their dates with other people.
“Besides,” she said breezily, pretending she couldn’t still feel his words in her heart, “I have a strict algorithm. You wouldn’t pass. Most men don’t.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes me feel much better,” he replied; the hurt that had punctured her was darkening his eyes now.
“But I thought... You just said... Does it matter if you wouldn’t pass?” It didn’t matter that he didn’t think they had any of that mysterious and poorly defined “spark.”
Did it?
He shook his head. “Of course not. We have no spark. We’re friends.” She recognized the fake smile as quickly as she’d recognized the hurt.
They finished their dinner in tense conversation, never once going back to the dating and the very reason they were having this dinner in the first place. He talked about the progress on the renovation at the other end of the building, and she talked about the grant she was applying for.
Neither asked to see the dessert menu or wanted coffee.
Marsie didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t want to be a part of this conversation anymore, either.
She needed to think.
CHAPTER TEN
JASON SLAMMED HIS truck door hard, then sat in the driver’s seat and watched Marsie back out of her parking spot. He watched her practical and boring little Prius pull up the street and her blinker come on. Then she seemed to wait for a space large enough for a bus, and she turned left.
Only after he couldn’t see her taillights any longer did he jam his key into the ignition and back out. Turning left would get him home faster. He turned right.
He needed to think.
Instead of heading directly home from this one wrong turn, he picked the turn lane with no cars and went that way. He wasn’t in a hurry to get home, but it was too late to head out for a country drive, so he’d take the long way home and drive until he put that dinner behind him.
Marsie’s comments about him not passing her algorithm shouldn’t have hurt. He wasn’t trying to pass her algorithm. They had no spark. Their future was as friends and, if he was being honest with himself, they were friends of happenstance. If either one of them g
ot another job, their friendship wouldn’t survive.
His shoulders dropped. That was a shitty, sad thought. He and Marsie weren’t a match, but she was funny, smart, interesting, and he still wanted to know what she looked like when she was relaxed on the couch, glass of wine in her hand, and her hair a mess like she’d just had sex on the living-room floor.
And he didn’t really want to put the dinner behind him. What he wanted was to not have said that thing about no spark, so she wouldn’t have said that thing about her algorithm and he wouldn’t be driving around randomly, trying to decide why his feelings here hurt.
Stupid. Stupid.
He reached for his phone in the center console to call her and apologize, then he pushed it away. His parents and their marriage was his goal. I knew your father was the man I was going to marry as soon as I saw him.
He liked Marsie, but he didn’t feel that way about her. Just because he’d never thought that about any woman didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. It just meant that he hadn’t met the right woman yet. She was out there, and this area of North Carolina had enough people that she lived locally.
He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that the right woman for him only lived in someplace like Michigan or Utah or, hell, Morocco. The world didn’t work like that.
He would meet a woman and he would know that she was the woman. He was as sure of that fact as Marsie was in the power of her algorithm to pick the right man for her.
Reaching a decision, he changed lanes and turned back to the path for home. He’d stop by Marsie’s office with a proposition. They’d see whose way worked best. No more avoiding talking about their dates.
He slapped his hand against the steering wheel.
Yes. This was a good idea. Brains versus emotion. They’d see who was right.
Jason turned into his driveway laughing. Despite his mom’s eye rolls, his dad repeatedly said emotions weren’t men’s business. Men were brawn. Clearly, though, Marsie was the brains.
He’d still win.
* * *
JASON PAUSED IN the doorway to Marsie’s office while she sat behind her desk. He didn’t go in, not yet. The strangeness of their dinner and their dismissal of each other—he was at least honest enough to admit that he had started it and that it wasn’t just her who’d dismissed him—had lingered. It still lingered, not quite like a bad smell, but one he wasn’t familiar with. Maybe a pleasant smell gone sour.
That was how he had felt walking out of the restaurant—like he’d soured something nice.
Sure, winning was one of his motivations for starting this competition with Marsie, but getting them back to their comfortable friendliness was the bigger one. He liked many things about her, but the easy way they’d always gotten along was the biggest.
“Hey,” he said, after a long second of standing there without her noticing. She must have been thinking hard, because she started, then smiled and turned in her chair. She was wearing black and gray today. Her sleek gray suit jacket was lined around the lapels and the sleeves with black. Her shirt was black. Her earrings were black. He would bet that her pants were gray like her jacket and that she was wearing a pair of black high heels that made her a little taller than he was.
But with her light blondish, reddish hair and sharp, intelligent face, she looked anything other than boring, even if that’s what she was trying for.
“Hey.” Her voice was warm, without the hesitation he’d been afraid of. Maybe their dinner hadn’t ended as awkwardly for her as it had for him.
Then she tilted her head and scooted back a little, and he knew she’d felt the oddness too. “I didn’t expect to see you today. I guess...”
“Dinner ended poorly,” he finished for her.
“Yeah. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, with what I said about the algorithm. I didn’t mean it.”
He waved her excuse away, as well as any lingering hurt. “Yeah, you did. And I meant what I said, too. But we didn’t expect saying it to hurt the other person.”
“No. And I didn’t expect to be hurt.”
“Sucks to feel dismissed.”
“Yeah.” She gave a cute little snort. “Even when you’re dismissing the person dismissing you. Or not dismissing you. That’s not a nice word.”
“I know what you mean.”
Her hair fell across her shoulders as she cocked her head at him. “So we’re better now.”
“I think so.” He took a deep breath and the weight that had pushed against his shoulders for the past couple days lifted. He took several steps into her office and sat in his usual chair. “No, not I think so. I know so.”
“Do we still talk about our dating? Or has that become taboo?”
“Dating,” he confirmed. “And, I say we take it a step further. I think we should compare systems. You have your algorithm, and I’m going with my gut. We make a bet. First person to true love wins.”
“Okay... What do they win?”
“Bragging rights.”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “That’s not enough.”
“True love and bragging rights aren’t enough of a reward? How’s that?”
“It’s not the bragging rights that I have a problem with. There’s also the matter of how we determine true love.” She folded her arms and leaned forward on her desk. Her black silk shirt gaped a little at her breasts. To his surprise, she was wearing a red lace bra under her shirt. He could barely see the top of the lace.
And only if he looked closely. No. He shouldn’t be looking that closely. He wasn’t a lech.
Did she have a date tonight? And, if she had a date tonight, was a fancy bra a sign that she expected—hoped?—her shirt would come off?
They didn’t have spark. He shouldn’t be jealous, but the bitter taste in his mouth couldn’t be anything else.
He blinked to clear his head and focus on their conversation. They were trying to find true love, and they both knew it wasn’t to be found with each other.
They both knew it. He was looking for spark. She was looking for some magical number in her algorithm.
“Shouldn’t each person get to determine their own true love. It’s personal, right? Your true love will look different from my true love,” he said. Marsie loved to plan everything, but true love couldn’t be planned or laid out on a timeline. No matter how much she tried.
She raised one index finger. “No. I’m cautious about words like true love. I don’t believe in spark. Plus, you’re the romantic, which makes that an unfair measure.”
“But our dating history suggests that neither of us falls in love on whim. It’s not like we’re hopping from true love to true love.”
“No, but you’re more likely to call it that than I am. We need a timeline. Like first person to date someone steady for three months gets to say they’re the winner.”
“Three months isn’t a long time.”
“I don’t want to have to wait a year to claim my bragging rights,” she said with a cheeky smile.
“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re certain you’re going to win, then?”
“Of course. If I didn’t think my algorithm would work, I wouldn’t use it. I’m not leaving anything up to fate or chance or mystical nonsense. I’ve considered what would make me happy in a relationship for the long term. And I’m looking specifically for that. No fooling around.”
“Mystical nonsense.” He laughed. “I love the idea of me sitting in my house, lighting candles and burning incense while I meditate on the love of my future.”
“Hey now, I meditate.”
He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, not quite believing her, especially after the story about her mom and dad. “Really?”
“Yeah. I can get too caught up in the buzz of my own thoughts. If I don’t come out
of it, I can end up predicting the doom of my life. I’m certain that I screwed up the math of some report somewhere and an eight-grader will find my mistake as part of a school project, get on the news with their findings and get me fired.”
God, she was such an interesting person. Just when he thought that he knew who she was, she admitted that she meditated and he was even more captivated. If he was being honest with himself, his coffee consumption had skyrocketed as their friendship had developed.
He just liked spending time with her.
Like a buddy, he assured himself.
“Eight-grade school project, huh? That’s an elaborate story.”
“Oh,” she said with a smile and a dismissive gesture with her hands, “there’s more to the story. I just gave you the highlights.”
“Okay, so maybe meditation would help me with my search for spark. But I don’t think you’re guaranteed to win because yours is scientific. Your algorithm limits your pool of possibilities. I’m open to anyone. Thus, I have numbers on my side and will win.”
When she lifted one corner of her mouth, her cheek went from looking serious and intellectual to having the curve of an apple. Cute enough to eat, especially when she was embarrassed or caught up in the heat of an argument.
“I predict that you’ll drown in the numbers and not be able to differentiate one woman from the next.”
“Shall we shake on it?”
She evaluated him long and hard. “We need a better prize than bragging rights. I mean, I love to brag, but...”
No, she didn’t. She was one of the smartest people he’d ever met, and she never bragged about that. She persistently pushed until she got her way—and she was usually right—then she moved on to the next problem without looking back and without an “I told you so.”
“Fine. Bragging rights assumed because you will have the love of your life in your bed. What else is good?”
She looked off into space for a moment before turning her attention back to him. “Date night.”
“Date night?”
“Yeah. The other person will be with the love of their life, but even spending time with your true love needs a boost every now and then. So the loser buys the winner and their partner a fancy date. Dinner out in Durham and a show, maybe. Or a couple’s trip to the spa. Or golfing.”
Dating by Numbers Page 9
