“Yeah, I know. I paid for it,” he said with a wink.
“And I paid you back, every last penny,” she retorted. She did something with her face then, and he narrowed his eyes.
“Did you just wink at me and fail?” he asked.
She tried again, her face scrunching up comically, her whole head tilting to the side.
He laughed. “Mollie Carrington, are you telling me you can’t wink?”
She sighed. “Apparently not. I’ve never thought much about it, but I tried it earlier in the mirror and it was a disaster.”
“Why were you winking in the mirror?”
She glanced down. “I was trying to see if I could pull off this dress.”
Jackson nearly groaned. “Trust me, you can pull off the dress.”
She gave a happy smile that did dangerous things to his insides, so he cleared his throat and steered them back to safer topics.
“So you have your master’s…”
“Right, I have my master’s, but in order to move to the next level, I need my doctorate. But I don’t want to do that until I have a better idea of my focus.”
“And do you?”
She let out a weary sigh and took a sip of her cocktail. “Not really. I still want to do it all.”
He laughed, and she narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“It’s just that you haven’t changed since you were hell-bent on pulling off a quadruple major in three years.”
She laughed. “Oh, right. That phase. Yeah, well…all dreams must die.”
“But you still pulled off a triple major and graduated a semester early. Biology, chemistry, and sociology. No easy task.”
Her lips parted. “You remember that?”
Jackson glanced down at the table, feeling strangely embarrassed. “Apparently.”
She stared at him before shaking her head. “Anyway,” she said after a moment of awkward silence, “I know the Ph.D. is next, and I know I’m close to deciding. I just want to be sure.”
He took a sip of his drink. “Do you think you’d go to school here? In New York?”
She shrugged. “It’d depend where I got in. It’s beyond competitive.”
He nodded.
“But I’d apply,” she said softly. “To schools here, I mean.”
He swallowed. He didn’t know why her answer was important, but it was.
“What about you?” she asked casually, running a finger around the edge of her plate to scoop up some of the sauce before licking it off. “Planning on staying in New York?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s not home.”
“Left your heart in Texas, did ya?”
His eyes narrowed as he wondered if she was making some reference to Madison, but she only seemed curious.
“You don’t like New York?” she went on.
“If I had a gun to my head and had to describe it one word? Hideous.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can’t tell me you don’t get off on the energy here. The city is so alive.”
“Sure. Alive with pigeons and rats and roaches and—”
She laughed. “Stop. Why are you here, then?”
Great question. “Nowhere else to go, I guess. Needed to do something after the accident. Oxford’s the only one that offered. Other than porn.”
She snorted. “It’s that bad, then?”
He took a sip of whisky. “Actually, it’s getting better, I think.”
“The job or the city?”
“The job.”
“I read your latest article. It was good, Jackson.”
He snorted. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m just glad you’ve found something. Something besides football.”
Jackson’s head snapped back a little. “This is only a temporary gig, Molls. Until—”
She frowned. “Until what?”
Until I can convince my former boss to give me a coaching job. But he didn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it out loud until he knew he had a chance. But the last email he’d gotten from Jerry had said that while he was damn good at football, there was no chance until Jackson had gotten his public image in order. Which meant…
“I’m thinking of doing an interview with Oxford.”
She frowned. “You mean for Oxford?”
“No, I mean telling my story. To the sports editors there.”
She sat back in her chair. “Wow.”
“You don’t think I should?” he asked, oddly desperate to hear her answer.
She took a sip of wine. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess you should. If Madison hadn’t talked, you could play the whole ‘Please respect our privacy during this difficult time’ card, but she did talk. She went on the offensive, and unless you defend yourself, you look guilty as hell.”
He shook his head. “You can admit that, and yet you and Madison still think I’m going to want to get back together with her?”
“People make mistakes,” Mollie said gently. “Madison knows she made some: going public with your problems, divorcing you when she did.”
“Those aren’t little mistakes. Those are the rip-a-man’s-heart-out-and-pour-salt-in-the-gaping-hole-in-his-chest type of mistakes.”
Something flickered across her face. “So her leaving—it ripped your heart out?”
He groaned and reached for a piece of bread.