Shane’s eyebrows shot up. He flicked his auburn mop to the side. “Being there for somebody else makes you stronger. I would have thought you might have figured that out with your mother.” He pocketed the receipt with the scrawled phone number and stood.
Jack rose with him. Any ‘there’ in which he was ‘being’ carried with it the risk of mayhem. Even now, Frozen Sal had shuffled closer and had her nose pressed up against the glass. He wrapped the untouched half of his bagel in a napkin. “Not in this case.” He picked up the to-go cup, still half-full, and followed Shane out of the coffee shop. “She deserves better things.”
Shane let the door fall shut behind him, probably on purpose. “She thinks you are ‘better things’, dumbass.”
Jack turned his shoulder to catch the door before it closed all the way. “She does?”
Frozen Sal jumped out at him as soon as he and Shane left the overhang. Shane sidestepped her neatly, but Jack stopped. “We all have such fun when everybody plays together,” she said.
Jack shoved the uneaten half of the bagel into her hands, hoping she’d take the hint.
“A new game begins.” She patted his arm. “Might as well play for keeps, son.” As he stared down into Frozen Sal’s watery eyes, he wondered if she weren’t wily-smart instead of plain crazy. Lin could have run off and left him in Starla’s backyard, but she didn’t. No, she left before I woke up and confirmed the crazy.
Shane gave him one of those, ‘Thank God I don’t live downtown’ looks. “That was a hell of a birthday present you got last night.” Jack winced at how close Shane’s words were to absolute truth. And how much Shane still didn’t know. “I can’t believe you let it get away.” He huffed. “I miss my wingman Jack Winters, who knew what a good thing looked like and knew how to keep it.”
Jack snorted. He turned around, walking backwards while the distance between him and Shane widened. “If that were true, I’d still have a wife.”
“Who said your wife was a good thing?”
“And my dog,” he called out as Shane turned away.
“I never liked your wife much.” Shane tossed it over his shoulder. “But shame about the dog.”
~*~
The clatter of his keys on the counter sounded no different from every other time he’d returned home after an outing. But the stark and absolute silence that followed now felt hollow. He sighed. The run and the time with Shane had definitely cleared his head.
For the first time in a long time, his mind wasn’t focused on freelance work, or careful avoidance of the weirdness that plagued him. Instead, he wondered how the rules had changed since he’d last been single.
What next step walked the fine line between pushy and disconnected for contacting a woman you wanted to see again to find out how soon you could make that happen? At one time, these things sort of just came to him, but he didn’t need the mirror to tell him that the rules were different at forty than they’d been at twenty-five.
He should call her. He made it a point when he was single to call after an enjoyable night, sometimes shocking the ladies he’d been with. He still remembered that it was Bailey’s oldest brother Owen—the closest thing Jack had to a male role model as the kid of a single mother—and his sage advice about women. Treat your girlfriends like you’d want your mother’s boyfriend to treat her. At the time, Jack hadn’t wanted to think about his mother having a boyfriend, but good lord, the advice stuck, and for the rest of his single life, every woman he dated got a walk or drive home, a morning after phone call, and flowers on a regular basis if they continued to date.
In fact, his treatment of women was one of the key things that broke down Nancy’s walls. You know what you want, Jack, and you’re not afraid to work for it. The same thing had attracted him to Nancy, because once upon a time, he used to have Plans.
He didn’t want to think of Nancy right now, especially after Shane had busted his chops so hard over losing touch. Thinking about Nancy meant thinking about where it all went wrong. Trying to pinpoint when the gulf opened up between the woman he thought he fell in love with to the stranger he shared a bedroom with eight years later. Trying to ascertain how much to blame himself for the relationship’s failure.
He shook his head as he chucked the coffee cup—now filled with an icy, milky lump flecked with coffee grounds—into the trash can, wishing he could exorcise the ghosts of failed relationships along with it. In spite of the caffeine jolt, he had to smother a huge yawn with the back of his hand, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually pulled an all-nighter for any reason, let alone a fun one. Even his usual race to finish a shower before the pipes froze failed to perk him up.
It was only when he walked into the sleeping area and caught a whiff of femininity that his train of thought derailed. The bed was still mussed and she’d forgot one of her stockings. He remembered his shirt was gone, too. Woo-hoo, she took my shirt! That had to still be a good sign, right?
If he were still twenty-five and single, he’d have known all the little codes and hints. He’d have paid attention last night, seeking hints in the inflections in her voice—was she interested in staying around in the morning, or was the night all she needed? He couldn’t remember how he knew back then. The end of him and Nancy left him second-guessing a lot of what he believed he’d known.
Of course, back then, he had his own plans. To see that girl again, to keep things casual with this one. So what was his plan with Lin? He pulled his phone out. If she’d been anyone else, he’d have called, asked after her morning. Fifteen years ago, he’d have been direct. When can I see you again? Or I had a great time, we’ll talk again soon.
Somewhere in the anterior of his mind, he recognized her as the same Lin who’d been privy to his romantic escapades before his marriage, who shared dry commentary with Bailey on his batting average, and his “smooth moves” with getting women to go out with him. That same place in his brain worried that she’d see through him somehow, now that she was on the receiving end. With her, things were different. He wanted things to be different.
For one thing, none of the other girlfriends ever had to walk through unreal places to come home with him. None of them had come face to face with impossible creatures when he’d brought them home. None of them had seen him at his lowest.
His careful punch-list of “smooth moves” evaporated. He stroked the face of the phone awake and delivered a two-thumbed summary of everything he was afraid to ask.
Good morning! If you’re not too busy, let’s: 1.) Talk about the Thing We’re Not Talking About, 2.) Have more fun not talking about the Thing We’re Not Talking About, 3.) Thing? What Thing? 4.) Never let Bailey talk us into doing shots again, or 5.) Thank each other for a great time and move on.
He hovered over the “Send” button. A text? Really? Too chicken to call her?
Hell, yes, he was chicken. He was chicken because it mattered. She mattered. His thumb came down on the “Send” icon. The text made a little whooshing sound that could have been the last air escaping from his deflating dignity, or just a cutesy sound effect. He set the phone down and a flash of silver caught his eye and he knelt to examine it.
Lin’s snowflake earring had fallen onto the floor in front of the dresser. He reached for it. Last night, he’d been attracted by the shiny—that was nothing new. His fingers fumbled. The earring skittered further underneath the dresser.
Suppressing a sigh, he got down on hands and knees, conscious of the line between relatively clean floor and dust bunny country. He’d been lured by the shiny before. He lowered his head and peered into the shadows beneath the dresser.
The silver and crystal gleamed in the gloom. He stretched his arm out and grimaced as his knuckles scraped the bottom of the dresser. A mysterious smile, the way she walked, the timbre of a woman’s laugh. An air of confidence, or sweet shyness, or a giving nature—all of them had convinced him in the past to take a leap, approach her, try his luck at getting to know her.
He
banged his knuckles again, this time on the underside of the drawer. He’d gotten shot down more than a few times, too. Even with youth in his corner. Nancy’d been a pursuit. A challenge, although it felt douche-y to think that way now.
He stretched his arm. His forearm ran into the edge of the dresser and he reached his limit. He squinted. He could just about touch the points of the snowflake with his middle finger, but when it came to getting the thing out, all he could do was flail his hand over the dusty floor while the crystal-pointed jewelry spun just out of reach.
In the end, he pulled the earring out only by jamming his forearm up against the edge of the dresser front, stabbing his finger down until the crystal points dug into his flesh, and dragging it forward.
He dragged his grimy, scraped arm out from under the dresser, clinging to its shiny prize.
Sudden exhaustion swept over him and he flopped down on the bed, the earring clenched in his hand. He really should call Lin. Come to think of it, Starla was owed a phone call, too, if only to thank her for the invite to the party. How long had it been since he’d had social engagements? Before Nancy had left, when it became too hard to maintain the facade of the perfect power couple in front of a group of mostly Nancy’s friends and business contacts.
Last night could have been a real trial. Instead, his friends had chosen to celebrate his presence—even Shane. And the afterward—even after eight years of marriage, he’d known instinctively that exposing Nancy to the Oddlings would have been a train wreck. Lin, however, had climbed into the engine compartment and blown the steam whistle, so to speak.
His eyes fluttered closed and he breathed out a huge sigh in the quiet. He wanted Lin in his life. He wanted all his friends back in his life. So if there was a way to make that happen, he had little choice but to find it.
~*~
Starla showed up at the tea house far too quickly to have come from her house.
“Oh, I decided to do some last-minute mall shopping.” Starla’s nonchalant expression revealed nothing as she sat down across from Lin.
“You hate the mall. Even when it’s not impossible to find a parking space.”
“But I love my best friend, who lives close by and whom I knew would want to pick up her car right away.” Starla eyed her sidewise. “And spill the gory details of her night of debauchery to her old married friend.”
Ken chose that moment to wander by with another tea cup for Starla, and two culturally-inappropriate biscotti. Lin rubbed her temple, hiding her blush with one hand, because Ken failed to hide his smirk a moment later when he added more scalding water to her own pot. She added the waiter to the trolley driver and her fellow early-morning riders to the list of people she was sure were silently judging her.
Lin fished out a chunk of half-melted ice from her water glass and dropped it into her cup. She tried not to think about Jack’s peculiar cold abilities and how handy it would be to have someone instantly cool down hot tea. Or hot skin. She took another chip of ice and held this one between her fingers. The frozen water stung her hand after a minute and she wondered why Jack’s touch could freeze, but not sting. She popped the ice chip into her mouth and crunched down. No asking those kinds of questions. They led to other questions, and—the melting ice on her tongue tingled—experiments. She straightened and brought the cooled mug to her lips while Starla fidgeted.
“Just tell me if you two did it before or after you left my house last night.”
She choked. Tea splashed out of her mug onto the table. “Jesus, Starla, be a little more crass, will you?”
Starla swiped at the spilled tea with a napkin. “I’m not being crass. I’m just—” she sighed dramatically, “—resigned to living vicariously through my friends, since my own marriage is so very stable.”
Lin pursed her lips. “Calling bullshit on that one.” She huffed. “Don’t tell me for a minute you’d trade what you have for what the rest of us don’t.”
Starla set her own mug down. “You’re right, I wouldn’t.” She shot Lin a look. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be insanely curious when my friends disappear after some very peculiar behavior.”
“What peculiar behavior? I wasn’t peculiar.” Her behavior had been the least peculiar thing about the entire night. Part of her wanted to spill every bizarre detail to her best friend, while the smart part told her that talking scarecrows and tales of making it from the outer burbs to downtown in twelve minutes were downright crazy talk. Especially the part about making it downtown in twelve minutes.
Starla slapped her hand down. “Not you. Jack. He did a body shot out of your cleavage, girl! Right in front of everybody!”
The sound of the shot glass thunking down on the deck railing still sent a shiver into her midsection. Even with all the stuff that happened afterward, the sensations laser-etched themselves in her mind. The way Jack’s hair tickled her neck. The way his tongue felt against her skin as he lapped up the drops of vodka. Her lips curved up with no prompting of her own.
Starla raised an eyebrow. “So I take it things got better from there?”
Better if you count taking a shortcut through youkai country ‘better’.
“Come on. Tell me everything. Spare no details. Like I said, I have to live vicariously.”
Lin sighed. She wasn’t sure if it was a dreamy sigh or an exasperated one. “Let’s just say…we made a little magic.”
“Oooo, that sounds so delicious. Was it kinky magic?”
I don’t know if you’d call it kinky, but it was definitely…out of this world. “I have no complaints. Let’s leave it at that.”
Starla’s eyebrow stayed fixed in its lofty position somewhere up under her bangs. “So.” She rested her chin on her hand. ”Why are you having tea with me and not breakfast with him?”
~*~
Hours later, Jack opened his eyes to the setting sun…and chaos.
Bleary-eyed, he stared at the full-on tribe of Chillsprites strewn through his apartment as if a gremlin-bomb had gone off. They were everywhere—little brown bodies draped over the back of his couch, perched on the coffee table, jumping off the backs of the chairs. One perched in his office chair over by the workstation while two others spun the chair around and around, emitting squeals of dizzy delight in time with the squeakings of the chair.
“What the fuck!”
The chaos cut off into heavy silence as the Chillsprites froze to a man. Thing. Creature. A dozen pairs of bulging eyes in potato-lumpy heads turned towards him while Jack remained frozen in his own state of shock.
In the sudden quiet, the office chair overbalanced and crashed to the floor and the Chillsprite in it slunk out from underneath it. “Majesty!”
He recognized it—or at least, he thought he did. The same Chillsprite woke him up yesterday morning after having cut his hair. The critter had raided his office supply drawer. It threaded his colored paperclips through its lumpy ears for earrings.
The rest of the Chillsprites fell to their knobby little knees and bowed. In the midst of their scuttlings, the ventilation system kicked on and Jack felt cool air swirl around his bare ass and remembered he was completely naked. His jaw worked, but no sound came out. He needn’t have worried, though—the Chillsprites were falling all over each other to see whose head could go the lowest.
When his voicebox still wouldn’t work after three tries, he gave it up and bolted for the bedroom. He would have dived under the covers if he believed it might help, but he was only so good at fooling himself. Instead, he dived into the underwear drawer. Clothes. Clothes would definitely help.
“Majesty?” One raspy squeak came from the floor near the screen. He turned and spotted his hairstylist peeping around the edge.
It—or maybe she—squeaked when he met its eyes and lowered its head. “Majesty is in play! Majesty must have entourage! Chillsprite tribe are the first to serve Majesty!”
First? First? Oh God— Nope. Not gonna do it. Jack kept his lips pressed shut in a hard line w
hile he pulled on a pair of faded corduroys and zipped up. A weird sort of calm settled over him as he caught another glimpse of Lin’s earring.
The calm continued as he reached out and palmed the jewelry—just in case the Stylist got any ideas about upgrading her earrings. On the other side of the screen and the bookcases, muttering began and swelled, much like a concert hall before the symphony started playing.
He sighed. It was a deep sigh, the kind that takes all the energy out of a man. The kind that said he was resigned to a fate not of his choosing. “Okay, lay it on me.” He didn’t bother looking for his shirt. Might as well get this over with, he thought as he emerged back into the living space.
But after having rounded the screen, it was all he could do to not run right back in and really dive under the covers this time. “Where the hell did you all come from?”
The crowd of critters in his living room had doubled in size, and multiplied in Oddness. The Chillsprites now shared space with taller creatures, blue-skinned with soft white fluff capping their skulls that resembled sleek, feral children, if those children had been training for an Ironman triathlon. And unlike the Chillsprites, the new critters appeared to have sex traits. Not all of which they covered.
Of course, “sharing space” might be a generous, if inaccurate term. The new tribe of Oddlings were more in number, and had ganged up on the Chillsprites, rolling around in blue and brown tangled masses over his couch. The smaller Chillsprites held their own, spindly bodies belied an endurance that Jack could see just from thirty seconds’ worth of battle royale. “Hey!”
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 12