“Not yet, but,” she says, lifting her glass, “another one of these, and I should be ready.”
Jack, however, is never ready. When Jess and I prepare to huddle up to read her messages, he turns on ESPN without the volume and sips his wine. I guess girls’ night isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’re not one of the girls, but looks can be deceiving. While some might think him uninterested, I know better. Jack is here for me, not Jess and her work project. If I trip into what he sees as bad advice trouble from Jess, he’s here to catch me. That’s called friendship, and as it should be, it’s familiar, warm, and comfortable, like a favorite sweater that never grows old but does become cozier.
As for Jess, she’s wholly focused on her mission to clear as many messages as she can and find the golden gooses, as she calls them. “You sound like my mother,” I tease her.
“Jeez,” she murmurs. “That’s uncalled for, Mia.”
I laugh and eye her remaining messages, unable to stop myself from mentally plucking through them for familiar names. Names like “Adam.” But Adam is not in Jess’s messages at all. The insecure, self-destructive person that I am cannot help but decide that means Adam believes Jess wouldn’t give him the time of day. The man has a cartoon head as a photo.
For the next half hour, Jess reads and deletes, answering no one. We’re almost to the end of her list when a message window pops open on her screen from, of all people, Kevin. Hi Jess, it reads.
Jess glances at me. “He won’t respond to you, but he’s going around you to me?”
“Who?” Jack asks, moving to sit across from us, on the coffee table.
My lips are tight. My shoulders, too. “Kevin,” I murmur, watching the box as I wait for whatever else he’s typing. Words appear, and my vision hyperfocuses: I contacted Mia again, and I told her she looks beautiful, but I have to be frank. She is who she is because you make her that person. It’s not Mia I want to get close to again. It’s you, Jess.
Jess shuts her MacBook with a solid thud. “Okay, enough of this. The idea was to de-stress you tonight. Screw dating sites. They’re my work project. That’s all.”
A fist forms in my belly. “Open your Mac, Jess.”
“What just happened?” Jack demands, his voice calm but punched with insistence.
“Kevin just hit on Jess,” I reply, reaching for Jess’s computer.
Jack curses under his breath, when Jack generally does not curse. He is, after all, unlike Akia, a stereotypical, quiet librarian, the geeky type. I like that about him. I also like that he’s upset now, upset for me, that he understands how intensely I’m losing my mind in my head right now.
She holds on to it. “He is out of your life for a reason.”
“She’s right, Mia,” Jack chimes in. “Let it go.”
“Let me just be clear with both of you. I’m not going to let this go until I read whatever else he has to say to you, Jess.”
Jess casts Jack a desperate, pleading look, and he sighs, scrubbing his jaw. “You’re not going to win,” he states. “We both know it.”
Jess draws a breath and presses her lips together, slowly easing her grip on her MacBook to open the lid. Once she’s signed back into the dating app, Jack slides into the seat beside her. On another occasion, the three of us here like this would feel like an accomplishment. Now it just feels like my funeral. Kevin’s message reappears on her screen, but there’s nothing more added.
“How do you want me to reply?” Jess asks.
I chew on my bottom lip. What do I want her to say? I just, literally just, reminded myself how much I don’t regret breaking up with Kevin. This only serves to validate that point. I suck in air through my nose, reach across her, and shut her MacBook. “Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything, but thank you for humoring me and offering.”
“I wasn’t humoring you, sweet pea,” she says softly, a nickname she’s randomly called me for a decade. It all began with my love for Popeye cartoons and my wish that something as simple as spinach could make one feel strong. “You’re my sister from another mother,” she adds. “I can’t believe he put this between us.”
“Let’s watch a movie,” Jack suggests. “I’ll even agree to a chick flick.” He glances over Jess to me. “But please don’t say J.Lo’s Marry Me. I cannot.”
I liked that movie, I think, but a chick flick is the last thing I want to watch right now. “What’s on the top ten on Netflix?”
I reach for the remote with every intention of dictating what comes next, at least on the TV.
Apparently life is a whole other thing and not my story to tell.
It feels as if someone else is turning my pages, and I’m terrified to start a new chapter.
Chapter Thirty-One
I blink into my bedroom hued with white light and gray ink, reluctantly allowing the drowsy haze of slumber to fade. The pitter-patter of another rainy-season storm on my steel roof is a symphony of music to my ears, and with it, the sweet promises of a perfect day lost in a book.
For me, weekends are about rise and shine, the earlier the better. I jog, I do my laundry, I clean up, and, when all my chores are complete, I allow myself the indulgence of reading time. In the middle of all this, I often meet up with one of the Js, and about every other weekend, I visit my parents.
But none of that, not today.
I stretch and glance at the clock, finding it early, 8:00 a.m., which is too early, considering the two Js left at two—way too late, but I didn’t dare rush them away. When do I ever have the two of them together, in one place and acting civil?
Only when they think they need to be here for me.
And that, I decide, is pretty special.
But so, too, is a day for me.
An hour later I’ve showered, dressed in comfy sweats and a tank, and am sitting at my island with a steaming cup of coffee before me, my book ready to open and the rain a steady thrum above me. It should be a perfect moment in time, but today there’s a slice of emptiness inside me, inching its way wide, and wider. I’m alone. This is my life. This may always be my life.
I have one instant flash of time when I imagine me and Kevin back in the day on my couch, side by side, a day like this consuming us. Only there was no us. There were just two people in the same room. That’s not my dream. That’s not better than being alone. It’s another version of being alone.
That’s the truth, and sometimes taking control means facing the truth.
I grab my phone as if I might actually call Kevin and tell him how I feel. Instead, I glance at my messages, where he has yet to respond, debating what I might say to him if I did actually contact him again. The answer is nothing. He doesn’t get to drive my conversations or emotions. He doesn’t get to decide what I do next.
Neither does Jess.
This, I think, as I slide my laptop closer and open the lid, is for me.
Sipping from my cup, I type in the dating site and wait for it to load. Remarkably, I have another ten messages. It’s not the millions Jess had last night, but it’s something. I click on my inbox and do what I came here to do. I find Kevin’s name, and I hit the “Block” button. There, done. I’m about to shut down again when my gaze lands on Adam’s last messages. His icon is no longer a cartoon character. It’s a photo of a man. I click on the image and suck in a breath. Adam is attractive, with sandy-brown hair, a chiseled jaw, and intelligent eyes. Per his profile, which he’s now filled out in detail, he’s thirty-eight, a civil engineer, and speaks three languages: Spanish, English, and French.
I’m just about to convince myself he’s just this good-looking arrogant guy who enjoys critiquing people, lesser people like me, when a message box pops up. A message from Adam that reads: You’re judging me right now, aren’t you? Just like I said you would.