“I’ll just have to trust you on that one, I guess. But I think maybe for now, I’d rather meet you somewhere in town. I have to run some errands anyway, so it would work out well. What time should I plan on meeting up with you?”
“Well, let’s shoot for cocktail hour and say five o’clock. Sound good?”
“Sounds great,” I replied quickly. Too quickly. “And I was thinking coffee at the Starbucks on Bayou.”
Maybe when we knew each other better, the idea of letting down my guard enough to allow alcohol into the equation would be less worrisome. For now, though, I wanted to stay sharp and focused. In control. Jack didn’t know anything, so we could start from a place of me being confident, capable Zoë who owned her own store. Zoë, who didn’t have even the smallest piece of baggage in tow.
Clean slate.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you at five.”
We rang off, and I closed my phone, tossing it onto the bed with a sigh. I felt a little like all of my emotions were being spun around in a blender. It really was insane, this mélange of happy and sad and excited and guilty. Not to mention exhausting. And then there was the added bonus of trying to figure out how to decode guy-speak. That was hard enough on a good day!
Oh well, I thought with another sigh as I sank back into the bed pillows. No use in trying too hard. Not only was it an exercise in futility, but Jack really wasn’t interested, anyway. So that was that. No pressure.
Oh, help me, Lord.
Five o’clock at the Starbucks on Bayou was a busy time. But then, there didn’t really seem to be much of a lull in anything right now. It was crowded when I walked through the door into a waft of coffee-scented air, a muted cacophony of various conversations all tugging at my attention. It would have been easy to miss Jack, so deeply buried was he among all the bodies crushed into the space.
It took me a minute to recognize him, since I’d only seen him once. He’d had the advantage of getting a few extra minutes to study me as I’d stood there looking for him amid the sea of faces, so I felt a little off-kilter as I wound my way to the table he’d picked.
His green eyes were more intense than I’d remembered, and they seemed to bore into me. Or maybe it was simply that I was feeling at such a disadvantage. I’d wanted to be the first to arrive, the one to choose the table and have a chance to watch him, unobserved, for those first few seconds.
“Zoë.”
Jack’s lips curved in a smile as I neared, the warmth in his voice smooth and sweet like hot fudge. It was amazing, how disarming the man was. He could have easily been arrogant and off-putting, but he had a certain charm that dissolved my insecurities. He seemed knowable.
“Jack,” I replied, smiling back.
I reached up to loosen the scarf I was wearing, unbutton the top button on my coat. It was getting a little too warm in the room, and I’d only just arrived. Maybe I wouldn’t need coffee, after all.
“Please, have a seat. Unless, or course, you’d rather stand,” Jack said, his eyes sparkling under the strange light of the coffee shop. The velvety tones of a female jazz artist played over the speaker, conflicting with the swirl of chatter and shrill sounds of machinery.
I slid into a dark wooden chair opposite Jack, loosening the remainder of the buttons on my coat as I sat.
“Been here long?” I asked, searching for something to say.
I was desperately hoping this would not turn into an exhaustive study of small talk, but I knew the ice had to be broken somehow, by someone. If it had to be me, then so be it. I was determined to make the most of this time. I had, after all, lived through that excruciating date with the Fabulous Doctor Gregory. How could this possibly be any worse?
From my impressions so far, Jack was hardly boorish or conceited. It was his continued behavior that remained to be seen.
He looked a little sheepish at my question, dropping his eyes from my face to his lap.
“Well,” he hesitated. “If I’m going to be honest, I’m going to have to confess that I’ve been here an hour.” He raised his eyes again to meet mine, searching my reaction.
“An hour?” I asked incredulously. “Really? Why?” I realized the question could have been taken many ways, none of which were my intention, but I seemed to have lost control over my tongue.
To his credit, Jack didn’t bristle at the question. Instead, his smile just widened.
“I wanted to make sure I got prime real estate. That, and I was a little nervous.” I noticed then that his leg was bouncing up and down at a rapid pace. “I guess maybe the pre-coffee coffee wasn’t really a good idea.”
I caught my lower lip between my teeth, trying to fight off the laughter that seemed to be climbing its way up my throat.
“Nervous? What could you possibly have to be nervous about? I thought women were the only ones that ever got nervous.” I didn’t finish the thought, didn’t say the words that seemed to hang in the air, unsaid. The ones that got nervous before a date. This was, after all, not a date.
Right? Had I missed something? He’d specifically said this wasn’t a date.
Did I want it to be a date?
I sat silently in my chair, my discomfiture growing. I desperately wanted the distraction of conversation, but at the moment, I could hardly seem to catch an idea long enough to start one.
Jack seemed to sense my unease.
“So tell me, Zoë. You and Neil were…a couple?”
Over the next hours, I told him a vague story about Neil being the friend of a friend, how I had ended up the temporary squatter in Neil’s house while he’d been deployed. I didn’t fill in the most important details—the reasons I’d needed to leave my own home in the first place. The devastating tail-spin I’d been trying to escape.
I told him about the store and all of the happiness it brought me, the steadiness it provided. The ways I felt enriched. To his credit, Jack seemed to genuinely catch my enthusiasm. Most of the questions directed at him, however, were quickly redirected to bring the conversation to me. Admittedly, it left me curious, but it had been so long since a man had been truly interested in finding out about me that it was easy to fall into the groove.
Jack provided a comfortable atmosphere, an easiness. Once begun, the conversation between us branched out rapidly, almost epidemically. I hardly wanted the evening to end, but when we parted ways, we did so with plans firmly in place. Our next meeting would be for dinner at a restaurant we had both been wanting to try.
The dinner a few days later proved to be just as effortless, just as friendly. Just as hopeful, in ways that I couldn’t even try to define. Still, Jack kept the focus on getting to know me, though I was able to wrestle some more personal details from his lips as the night lingered on.
From what I gathered, Jack had been in the military since graduating high school, picking up the family vocation of patriotic duty. He was an impassioned soldier, a proud representative of his country, a believer in traditional values and family. He seemed a rarity, and I almost told him as much. I was afraid, though. Afraid of tipping my hand and showing him even the edges of the attachment I felt growing. It might have been apparent, actually, but I still didn’t want to introduce any amount of unease by highlighting the possibility of the relationship that seemed to be blooming.
For now, I just wanted to be.
Chapter 30
I rang the doorbell with a bag in each hand, wondering if he would think me strange for the offerings I’d brought. Call me strange, but my mother had taught me better than to show up empty-handed, even when someone claimed the only thing you needed to bring was yourself. And heaven forbid Jack would think me anything but well-mannered.
The smile he rewarded me with upon opening the door was reassuring, to say the least. It gave me unexpected pleasure. Warmth spread from my belly all the way to my toes and shot back up again to my face, which was undoubtedly, undeniably red.
Beet red.
“Hey,” Jack said, his eyes doing a visual sweep and r
esting on the plastic shopping bags hanging from my fingers. “Need help with that?” he asked curiously.
“This just needs to go in the fridge, if you have space,” I replied, hoisting a bag containing a six pack of light beer.
“Come on in,” he said, motioning me into the house and shutting the door behind me. “You know where the kitchen is; feel free to make yourself at home.”
Jack spread his arms at the room around him and then dropped them at his sides. He looked completely at ease here, in this space he had claimed, surrounded by the things he had made his own. I noticed that Neil’s couch had been replaced by a more compact, streamlined couch made of chocolate micro suede, and a new coffee table stood in place of the old one. The entertainment center remained, as did the small bookcase, though it was now tightly packed with books of every size, color, and ilk.
I swept past Jack and headed for the kitchen, taking note of all the other changes I could see without being too obvious in my inspection. I was pleased to see that there were still things here to keep it from feeling entirely foreign, though there were also enough changes to avoid eerie familiarity. It was strange, being back here in the place I had thought of as home for nearly ten months. To see the changes that had been made and have to wrap my brain around the fact that someone other than Neil—other than me, even—now lived here.
I set my bags on the counter and put the beer in the fridge, easily finding space for it among the sparse contents. A couple of leftover Chinese takeout cartons, a half dozen bottles of water, Rubbermaid containers of various shapes and sizes. All very neat and orderly on the refrigerator shelves.
“So what’s in this bag?” Jack asked, coming up behind me and peeking in the one that remained on the counter.
“That would be baked pita chips and pretzels. I wasn’t really sure what to bring, but I figured that was a pretty safe bet.”
“You really didn’t have to bring anything, but thank you. It definitely won’t go to waste,” he said, reaching into the plastic sack to extract the pretzels. He smiled widely at me and waggled his eyebrows, ripping the bag open and shaking the contents before shoving his hand in for a healthy fistful. “What do you think of what I’ve done with the place so far?” Jack posed, holding up one of the pretzels for inspection before popping it into his mouth.
I looked around the room, nodding thoughtfully.
“From what I’ve seen, it looks good. I especially like the new couch. Big improvement.” Even as the words escaped my lips, I wasn’t sure I really believed them. Neil’s couch might have resembled little more than a thrift-store cast-off, but I’d grown oddly fond of it during my time here. I’d spend many nights sleeping on that couch, many hours writing or reading or talking on the phone as I sprawled across its cushions. It had become familiar, almost like a hug. And now, it was gone.
“Well, I tried. So,” he said, putting the pretzels back on the counter and reaching above the stove to inspect the contents of the cabinet. “What would you like to drink? Beer, Goldschläger, Jäger…random wine cooler…Crown…?”
I stood behind him on my tippy toes, trying to get a clear view of the bottles cluttering the small cabinet. He certainly did have a few in there. Which, given my recent discovery of Paul’s alcoholism, was a fact that gave me more than a moment’s pause. In fact, I found it slightly unsettling.
Jack must have sensed my discomfort as I stood there silently assessing his liquor cabinet, because it only took him a moment to address it.
“I really need to clear out most of these bottles,” he said under his breath, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. He looked over his shoulder at me, his expression tinged with worry. “I really don’t do a lot of heavy drinking. Like I said to you on the phone before, most of it came from friends who were unimaginative in their gift-giving.”
“Oh, think nothing of it,” I replied lightly, trying to convince him as much as myself that it wasn’t something that bothered me. “I think, though, that I’m just going to stick with the beer I brought. I’m not really much of a hard liquor lover,” I said with a shrug.
“Me neither, actually. Which is why most of those bottles date back to the early days of college.”
Jack closed the cabinet and stepped over to the fridge, opening it long enough to reach in for two bottles of beer. He twisted the caps off and tossed them into the sink in one swift motion, holding one out to me with a smile.
“Cheers.”
I returned his smile as I took the bottle from him.
“Cheers,” I whispered back, clinking the edge of my bottle with his.
“Let’s go sit,” he suggested, motioning toward the living room. “It’ll be more comfortable in there, don’t you think?”
I nodded and started for the other room, wondering what we might find to talk about. It seemed strangely intimate, this being alone without the distraction of other people and their activity. What on earth had possessed me to agree to this? What was I expecting?
Nothing, I realized as we each took a seat on the couch. I looked into Jack’s face, new and open and friendly, and smiled. I was expecting absolutely nothing, and it made me unexplainably happy.
Cocktail hour at Jack’s turned out to be only the beginning. We’d nursed our beers and played with the bottles until the labels were reduced to shredded, soggy bits. The couch was finally vacated after two hours of talking, our conversational flow interrupted only long enough to pile into his truck—yes, he drove a truck—in search of dinner.
We lingered over our meals, which ended up being a turkey sandwich on white bread with a side of fruit for me and waffles with a side of smothered and covered hash browns for Jack at the nearest Waffle House. Not exactly five-star cuisine; but we were talking so much that neither of us really gave much thought to the food in front of us, or even to the lack of ambience.
We exchanged stories about work and families and friends, and by the time we finally brought the evening to a close, I felt even more as though I’d known Jack most of my life. It wasn’t a one-sided exchange, either. Jack had shown genuine interest in hearing everything I had to say, and I could tell from his responses that he was truly listening.
I realized, with no small measure of disappointment, that I still didn’t know if what we were doing qualified as dating. Jack hadn’t bothered to define it, and neither had I—which might have been the reason for the easy rapport between us. We hadn’t been operating under the pressure of a date, trying so hard to impress that we got in our own way. Maybe Jack didn’t usually have that problem, but it was one I’d regularly encountered in the past. All that angst and awkwardness for an evening that seemed to fall far short of my expectations.
Over the next few weeks, we spent more and more time in one another’s company, meeting for dinner or coffee, late afternoon runs, even the mundane activity of such things as trips to Wal-Mart for groceries. Being together made hours seem to evaporate, and Jack’s presence was easily infused into the time I spent with Ray and Kate, who’d moved back to set up her satellite office and get the final details of the wedding all hammered out.
It was amazing, really, the effortlessness of it all. Effortless and somewhat scary. I wondered sometimes if it was too easy, if perhaps I was living in some self-created fantasy that would come crashing down on my head at the least expected moment.
But somehow, everything fell into place.
Nothing was happening the way I’d ever envisioned.
Not even our first kiss. We were unloading our respective carts into our respective vehicles at Wal-Mart one evening, and after he helped me put the last bag in the back of my car, Jack closed the trunk lid, exchanged good-byes with me, and then absently leaned down for a peck on the lips.
Which turned into a real kiss.
A real kiss that both stole my breath and filled me up, that felt like going home and unexpectedly finding the most beautiful place on earth, all at once—right there under the harsh lights of the Wal-Mart parking lot.
In times of insightful clarity, I wondered if much of my adulthood had been spent playing house. First, with Paul, then with Neil. If maybe I had been more in love with the idea of a future with Paul than with Paul himself.
And if maybe, somehow, we had been chasing some unrealistic, unattainable happiness. A life with Paul had seemed safe, but would it really have been a happy one? After all, how happy or secure can one be in a relationship that isn’t firmly based in trust? I had thought I’d known everything about Paul, but he hadn’t even trusted me enough to tell me that he was a recovering alcoholic.
And wasn’t that a betrayal of sorts in itself? How could Paul pledge to honor, respect, and trust me if he couldn’t even include me in such an integral part of his life? Had we been deluding ourselves into thinking we really had a chance to build a life together?
And what about Neil? Neil had been a relatively safe place to transfer my hopes, since he was far enough away to maintain the illusions I had built in my head. I had manufactured an identity for him that, while threaded with realistic facts, was largely based on fantasy. He could have never lived up to everything I had imagined, to the perfect man I’d invented. And any relationship we might have formed was never safe from the preconceived expectations I had placed on it, from the future I’d envisioned for us. It had served as a distraction, however unintentional, from the work I needed to be doing on my own life and my own future. I’d been too afraid of really focusing my attention on that, so I had begun chasing another fairytale.
This time, though, I realized I was strong enough to face the end of the illusion without being shattered myself. I knew who I was and what I wanted for myself, and I was satisfied and secure in that. I no longer depended on someone else to make me happy. Yes, I still wanted to share a life with someone, but I knew the happiness I found in a relationship was only part of the whole.
Coming Home to You Page 24
