And he didn’t want to think of her going home with him.
God, no wonder people said men and women didn’t make good friends. He couldn’t even think about Marsie stepping through some strange guy’s front door without his jaw tightening. And he had no reason to be jealous.
He should be happy for her.
The elevator dinged and they stepped in together. Marsie and Padmal, who’d been on the elevator when they got on, were going to the same conference in a couple months, so they chatted while Jason stood and stewed.
The weekend would be here soon. He had a couple dates lined up. He’d meet a wonderful woman this weekend. He could feel it in his bones. This weekend was the weekend.
* * *
“HEY, SON.” JASON’S dad always sounded surprised whenever he answered his cell phone, like he couldn’t believe he could carry technology like that in his pocket. Of course, his dad also nearly always sounded like he was out in the woods—because he was. Retirement hadn’t brought his parents wealth—both his parents still worked a part-time job, though his mom said it was because she needed to “keep busy.” But Jason remembered how his dad used to joke that all he ever wanted to do was fish and hunt.
And when he wasn’t working, that’s pretty much all he did.
“Anything biting?” Jason asked as he poured brown rice into a casserole dish for his dinner. Brown rice and chicken casserole. About as easy as a man could hope for, with the added advantage of being delicious. Double bonus.
“Nah. It’s been a slow week.”
“Just you and the woods.” It sounded like heaven, though Jason would probably bring a book for when the fish weren’t biting. His father liked to stare off into space and disappear into the back of his mind. When Jason had asked why, his father had said that years of working on the factory floor meant all he wanted in life was silence.
“Me, the woods and the mosquitos. At least the mosquitos are biting.”
“Yeah.”
A long silence with periodic breaks of objects being moved around stretched out between them as Jason grabbed the package of chicken thighs from the fridge and dug around in the vegetable drawer for a bag of baby carrots. His parents were easier to talk to when he managed to catch them both in the same room. But their retail jobs meant they were often working in the evenings, and neither of them understood the purpose of weekends any longer, except to go to church, so Jason had taken to calling randomly and hoping he’d catch them both.
When his father was fishing and answered the phone, their conversations were more shared silences than cozy chat. Jason always made sure to have something else he was working on when he called his dad.
“Job good?” his dad asked.
“Sure. It’s steady.” Both his parents had had great hopes that he would go to college and “study something important.” His dad had been laid off from factory to factory to factory until now, working at a sporting goods store. They’d hoped college would give Jason the chance to work with less risk of layoffs.
Jason had tried college, but he wanted a job where he made things, and engineering hadn’t been the right fit, despite comments from his professors when he dropped out that he was “wasting his talent.” He hadn’t gotten a job where he made things, exactly, but he liked the variety of people he interacted with during the day. And he liked being the man people called when the smartest person in a room of smart people said, “I don’t know how we fix this. Let’s call Jason.”
Throughout the course of his day, he worked with his hands, learned things, got book recommendations and had about as much risk of being laid off as the engineers at the tech companies in the buildings near him. Engineers who worked long hours and brought work home with them.
When Jason’s workday was done, he was done with work and had time to meet friends, read, and putter around in his yard. And that time mattered to him more than all the prestige in the world.
“Humph,” was all his dad ever had to say when he asked about his job and Jason answered that it was good. The decision Jason had made still rankled his father.
“And dating?”
“Still doing it.” Jason tucked the phone under his arm so he could open the package of chicken thighs and lay the pieces on top of the rice.
“Still going from girl to girl to girl.” His dad didn’t approve of Jason’s dating style, either.
“I’ve got a dating buddy from work. I think she’ll help me work through my options. She’s smart. An economist.” He chuckled. “I swear, she’s got a math idea to apply to any situation, including dating. She told me that the right person would be the one I liked best after dating 37 percent of the women I thought I would ever be able to date in my life.”
“What? Why can’t you meet someone nice, take her out to dinner a couple times and settle down? Why does it have to be the right person? Why can’t it be a good woman?”
Jason washed his hands quickly before turning both to his dad’s question and the rest of his dinner. “We all want what you and Mom have.”
From miscarriages to layoffs, no matter how tough times had gotten when he was a kid, his parents had found comfort in each other. His childhood had been full of hugs, pats on the back and supportive “we’ll be okay” language. His parents still held hands. He didn’t know if they still had sex, but the fact that they had been sexually compatible wasn’t something they had been able to hide in a small house with thin walls, even though he realized as an adult that they had tried.
There was rustling on the other end of the line. Then a big sigh out of his dad before he said, “Your mom and I love each other very much. My life would be—” he paused “—less, if she had not agreed to marry me. But I didn’t love her when we got married, and I doubt she loved me.”
Jason stopped dumping carrots onto his chicken and rice and stared at the dish for several long seconds before responding. “But Mom says that she met you and knew instantly that you were the man she was going to marry.”
How was that not spark? Love at first sight? They had gotten married two months after they met. Had his mom married a stranger and hoped for the best?
His dad snorted. “That’s because I was better than her other options, not because I was anything special. She was twenty-five and still living at home. All her friends were married. Her parents were a pain in the ass.”
It was Jason’s turn to snort. His grandparents loved to give him presents, but they seemed to feel like their biggest gift was their “wisdom.” His dad’s phrasing was more succinct.
“Your mom wanted out of her house,” his dad continued. “I wasn’t horrible. It’s how everyone else I knew got married in those days. It’s how my parents got married. And it’s how your mother’s parents got married.”
“Come on, there are some people in your generation who married out of love.” He watched his share of classic movies with his mom and grandmother. It’s not like they never talked about love or pretended like it didn’t exist. He got that those were movies and movies weren’t reality—but they wouldn’t make up the idea of marrying for love out of thin air.
“Maybe that’s how they did it in big cities, but courting in rural North Carolina wasn’t any different for me than it was for my mom and dad. Except I didn’t have to borrow a car from my parents. Your mom and I love each other because we want to and because we work hard to make it happen.”
“Work?” Their love looked effortless. More effortless than his dinner, which was rice with chicken and baby carrots baked in the oven. Nothing was easier than this dinner, except—he’d always thought—his parents’ relationship.
“We both try not to annoy the other person, and we try to ignore it when the other person annoys us. Harder than any job I’ve ever had. But pays more than any job I’ve ever had, too.” His dad paused and Jason could imagine him, cocking his head and
nodding a little, maybe with a shrug. The same look and body movements that had been present in every lecture and helpful chat of Jason’s childhood. “So there’s that.”
“Why haven’t you told me any of this before?” The conversation meant he was looking at his childhood from an entirely different angle. Like, before, every time he looked back at being a kid, he was actually looking through an old window, so he thought he was seeing everything, but hidden imperfections in the glass meant he was missing important details.
Now he was standing inside the same room and completely disoriented.
“I didn’t think you were stupid enough to believe in love at first sight. Life isn’t a Disney movie.”
“But you’re saying I could marry anyone and, if I worked hard enough, be happy.”
Dammit. He’d been so caught up in what his father had been saying that he’d forgotten to get the butter out of the fridge. And set the kettle for boiling water.
“No. I didn’t say that. I said the kind of relationship your mom and I have takes work and time. But she couldn’t have had it with any of those bozos she was dating. I didn’t meet another woman I could have had it with, either. Maybe she exists, but I don’t care. I’m good where I am.”
I’m good where I am. His dad’s words echoed what that date, Allison, had said, that he was always looking over the horizon for something more. For something bigger and better. But maybe bigger and better was right in front of him and he was too lazy to reach for it.
“If I ask Mom about this, is she going to tell me the same thing?”
“She probably wouldn’t say bozos or stupid.”
Jason laughed. “Of course not.” His mom was always polite. He’d only ever heard her say, “Bless their hearts,” a couple times.
“Is that why you’re not married yet? Because you’re waiting for love at first sight?” The disbelief in his dad’s voice was clear, including the implication that, as far as his dad was concerned, he might as well be waiting for a rainbow to appear over the woman who was his one true love. For angels to sing from on high, and the hand of God to come down and touch them both.
His parents were religious people and had raised him to go to church every Sunday. But they were both too practical to look for signs from God.
“I guess,” was all Jason said in response.
“Well stop.”
“Thanks a lot, Dad.”
“Son, you want a nicer lecture, call your mom.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” He stood, taking care with how he measured out the butter and added salt and pepper to his dinner. The world may look the same as it had before he’d called his dad, but it was different down to its core. Hell, food might taste different now. “I’ll let you get back to fishing. Hope they start biting.”
“Eh. It’s getting dark,” his dad said, like that mattered. His dad didn’t care if he caught anything while out fishing. “Are you coming for dinner on Sunday?”
“No. I have a date.”
“Give her a chance, son.”
“I always do, Dad,” Jason said, no longer sure if that was true.
They hung up, and Jason looked around his kitchen wondering what the hell he was going to do now.
* * *
THE BAR WAS slow on Sunday afternoon. No surprise. The Triangle area of North Carolina didn’t always feel like it was part of the South, but it was. People still went to Bible study on Wednesday night and church on Sunday, followed by family dinner.
Jason looked back at his date, Felicity. She was cute, with a bit of an elfin look about her. Curly blond hair. A pert nose. Cute was a start, right? A start to what his father said, of finding a nice girl and letting sparks come. He knew love at first sight wasn’t really a thing, but his dad was a smart guy. Waiting for sparks seemed reasonable.
It had worked for his parents.
He turned back to smile at the bartender and order two beers, plus something easy to snack on. After church, he’d spent the afternoon mowing his lawn and hadn’t really eaten much for lunch. He’d need dinner after this, but didn’t want to commit to such a long date with Felicity until...until sparks, he realized.
Maybe he hadn’t been listening to his father as well as he thought. And maybe Allison had been right, that he wasn’t willing to give women long enough of a chance.
And while he was thinking about people who were right...
Nah, he thought, hiding his chuckle. There was no way Marsie was right about her algorithm. While she wasn’t waiting for true love, his dad would agree that her way wouldn’t work any better. Marsie wasn’t thinking about the work and investment necessary to create a happy, long-term relationship.
Maybe they were both screwed. Wasn’t that a depressing thought?
The bartender pushed two beers across the wood. Jason wrapped his hands around them and navigated his way back to his table.
“Your beer,” he said, setting his date’s drink in front of her. “Snacks will be up shortly.”
“Thanks.” Her voice was a little high-pitched. Nothing he couldn’t learn to live with. Right. That was part of not judging a date immediately. Deciding what he could learn to live with.
“So how’s online dating going for you?” After an uncountable number of dates, he’d realized that people either talked about all the cool places they’d traveled to, tried to make their work sound as interesting as possible, or compared online-dating horror stories.
Talking about dating was often the most interesting choice. Jason liked dating. He liked people. But no doubt about it—people were crazy and dating meant you met some crazy ones.
“Oh, good,” she said with several energetic nods. “Good. There are lots of nice men in the area.”
“No horror stories?”
“Oh, not yet. And I’m sure I won’t really have horror stories. I mean, people are generally as nice as you give them credit for. If you’re nice first, people will generally be nice in return.”
She’d said “nice” four times in the past thirty seconds. The optimism was, well, nice, but was turning bland quickly. Like the fat ringlets surrounding her face, Felicity might be all roundness and no interesting sharp corners.
“That’s...nice.” He couldn’t help himself. And he wasn’t even trying to make fun of her.
“Any horror stories for you?” she asked, her voice starting high and getting higher at the end of her question.
“No.” He’d had unpleasant dates and dates he’d laughed about with his friends, but with this round-eyed, round-cheeked and ringleted woman staring at him from across the table, he couldn’t say anything other than, “The women were all nice.”
There was no way Felicity would find any of the stories funny.
They stared at each other, silence rising from the table like black smoke.
“I brought you some water,” the waitress said, setting two glasses in front of them. “I’ll be right back out with your food.”
“That’s nice,” his date said in response, and Jason nearly choked on his beer.
“So do you like to travel?” he asked, setting his glass down. If she said travel was nice, he was likely to spew beer through his nose. Better not to risk it.
“Oh, I do.” More nodding. “I don’t get to do it very often, but when I do, it’s nice.”
His dad had told him to pick a nice girl and settle down. With Felicity finding everything in the world nice, he wondered if his dad had given him the worst advice in the world—and if God was trolling him. Marsie would probably have some statistical explanation—a percentage of the people in the world who say nice and how often they say it correlated to their eating habits or something. Maybe how often they went to the doctor. She studied health care, after all.
The waitress picked that moment to bring their snacks by. He’d eith
er ordered a lot of snacks or this bar was more generous than most. Unless he was rude and got up and left right now, they would be here for a while. It would take them two hours at least to get through the pile of tater tots, not to mention the spring rolls and stuffed mushrooms.
God, he had been hungry. He should have just committed to dinner.
At least Felicity could report to her friends that the date had been nice. Jason reached for a fry and settled his mind to a boring hour. “So tell me about all the nice places you’ve been to.”
He was never going to listen to his father’s advice again.
He couldn’t wait to tell Marsie.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MARSIE SIGHED AS she sat at her dining-room table and signed into the dating site. Poking around at pictures and descriptions of men hadn’t been fun when she’d started—and it hadn’t gotten more fun with time. The fun part had been creating the algorithm to find the perfect match. Applying the perfect match was a chore, especially because the more she looked and scored the men according to what she was looking for, the fewer men seemed to be available.
Of course, the algorithm was supposed to weed men out. It was supposed to make it easier to pick from the dude on the right and the dude on the left. But she hadn’t thought it would mean almost no men would be available. And that’s what it was looking like right now.
She clicked around at some promising pictures, made a couple notes on the spreadsheet next to her and, for one particularly good-looking guy, fudged the numbers a bit so that he would get a higher score.
In the beginning the lack of options had seemed okay. She wasn’t looking for fifteen perfectly fine men; she was looking for the one perfect man. She only needed one. One wasn’t too much to ask.
Was it?
She checked the time on her laptop. She had a date with Trevor in two hours. Their third date. He would probably expect at least a kiss. Which, actually, was reasonable. If she liked him, she would want at least a kiss. But the thought of kissing him, of putting on a cute bra and digging out a matching pair of panties, had her looking right back at the long list and pictures of other men.
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