“We can call it Dumped; the Times will love it.” Janey enjoyed his youthful exuberance about everything. “So is this your go-to first date? Do you take all the girls to the alley of Whole Foods and then lure them back to your kitchen?” Janey regretted them the moment the words left her mouth. A wounded look crossed Jacob’s handsome features.
“You’re the first date I’ve had in a while,” he said quietly. “Being a full-time dad doesn’t make it easy to pick up chicks.” He smiled. “There was something special about you. I noticed it the first time you came into the shop.”
Janey felt like a creep for letting her assumptions get the best of her. She’d seen this handsome man and assumed all was well and good in his world and she was one in a string of ladies. She of all people should know that appearances were deceiving and everyone was dealing with his or her own shit.
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his, noticing that he bit his fingernails. “So how long have you been working in the juice shop?”
His easy smile returned. “Since I opened it. The shop’s mine. I don’t just work there.”
Janey tried not to look so surprised and knew this time he was choosing his words in order to keep her off guard as he sliced the chicken into thin cutlets and immersed them in a bowl of red wine. “I came out of Penn with no idea what I wanted to do. So like half my class I went into Consulting with a capital C. I worked eighty-hour weeks traveling to places like Tulsa to tell big bosses at companies that had been around since before I was born that they needed to downsize in order to stay competitive. I had no idea what I was talking about, but they paid my company five hundred dollars an hour for my supposed expertise. Then the market crashed, I got laid off with a six-month severance package. Everyone told me to get another job, another big job. But I ignored them. I backpacked around South America for three months, got healthy again. I had lived on Doritos, Big Macs, and Thai delivery for those five years out of college. I got into juice and used my last bonus to open Wandering. That’s my life story in a nutshell.”
He threw his arms over his head to simulate being in some kind of nutshell.
“And how’s it going? Business?”
“It’s good. My rent’s still low, but things could get touchy if they raise it later this summer, which they definitely could. There’s one thing, though.”
“What?”
“Have you heard of broth?” Jacob said, wincing a little.
“Like soup?”
“Like soup with nothing in it. Just broth. Just vegetable stock or chicken stock or beef stock. Just broth.”
“Yeah. Broth. I think my friend CJ was on an all-broth diet once. Right after her all-yogurt diet. But before the all-cauliflower diet.”
“It’s a thing now. A new wellness trend on all the blogs. Anyway, some guys opened a broth place across the street from Wandering. They’re calling it BRO-th.” Jacob turned the word into two syllables, “bro” and the “th” sound. “Their shtick is that juice isn’t manly enough, so broth is the right diet for guys, for bros. It’s so stupid. But it gets me mad.”
Janey thought back to the irritation she felt when David’s Bridal ripped off one of B’s early designs. Everyone kept telling her that imitation was the highest form of flattery, but she still stewed over it more than ten years later.
“That sucks. Does that mean you lower your prices?”
Jacob shook his head. “Just the opposite. Our investors said we need to raise them to stay competitive. Our customers are crazy enough to believe that the more expensive something is, the better it is for you.”
“Oh that’s so true,” Janey exclaimed. “The sad truth you learn working in the wedding dress business is brides want to pay a fortune for their wedding dress. If you try to lower the price they think it’s less luxurious.”
Janey had a wild hair of an idea, but she didn’t want him to think she was telling him he was running his business all wrong. But when it came to business and making money, Janey had never been very good at keeping her ideas to herself.
“Do you need an actual store? Is it like a coffee shop where people linger and buy a lot of things, or could you operate out of a juice truck that could move anywhere? Then you wouldn’t have to deal with BRO-th anymore and you could probably save a ton of money on rent if they raise the price.”
Janey searched Jacob’s face for any sign she’d offended him, but he just stared past her for a second and then met her eyes. He’d been pondering the concept.
“It’s a great idea. It would take a capital investment. But it’s something cool to keep in the back of my mind. We could do it even if we kept the store. It would be easier and probably more lucrative than opening another location.”
She couldn’t believe her wineglass was already empty. Thankfully, so was Jacob’s, which meant she didn’t feel bad pouring herself another, even though she rarely had more than two glasses of wine at a time anymore, and this glass was so large it definitely held two normal glasses. She gestured to his goblet with the head of the bottle. He nodded.
As she poured, Janey began to tell him the story of B to change the subject. “I started the company right after business school with my best friend. I ran it. He designed dresses and I sold them. And that went great for a long time. And a couple of months ago I decided to take some time off.” She felt so stupid saying it like that, but the truth was too absurd to explain to a near stranger.
“A single woman running a wedding dress company?” He raised one eyebrow, and Janey realized it was his polite and lazy way of asking whether she’d been married.
“I got divorced last year. No kids,” she said. “We’d been friends since college and we outgrew each other. So that’s me in a nutshell,” Janey said, throwing her own arms over her head. “Divorced and unemployed and forty.” Shit. She hadn’t meant to say “forty.” It just came out. But she had said both “divorced” and “unemployed.” The two of those were worse. Right? “I feel like one of those Lifetime movies or a nineties network sitcom with Calista Flockhart.”
“Come on. I’ve got you beat. Fell for the struggling actress, got her pregnant. Scruffy hipster single dad. I wear a lot of flannel shirts. They make sitcoms about guys like me.”
“I’d watch that show.”
“Would you now?” He stepped closer, moved her wineglass out of the way, and leaned in close. God, he was sexy. And funny. And smart. And now that she knew his name she had absolutely no problem sleeping with him tonight if that’s what ended up happening after dinner. The wine must’ve been kicking in because she was ready to head back to his bedroom before dinner even began.
“I would. I might not watch it in real time, but I’d binge-watch it later.” She looked up at him and parted her lips just a touch, hoping he was about to kiss her.
“Your heart rate is higher than average.”
“What was that?” Jacob pulled back. “Did you say something?”
Janey blushed and grasped her wrist. “No. It was this watch. I guess it’s not a watch. This FitThing. It tells you how many steps you walk and your heart rate and a slew of other uninteresting statistics about your body. It was a gift from a friend, and I don’t know how to use it.”