The kiss lasted the right amount of time, and not long enough at all.
My hands made their way around his neck and his settled on my waist, firm and strong. Our mouths parted briefly, his warmth breath mingling with mine, his tongue against my teeth, his fingers grazing the patch of skin above the top of my jeans that was revealed as I rose up on my toes. And then we broke apart, both of us startled that it had happened at all.
"Jack," I said as I opened my eyes.
"Chloe." Jack kept his hands in place on my hips, partially in contact with my skin. "I ... I need to tell you something."
A chill went through me though I was still warm from the kiss. I took a step back. "You have a girlfriend."
"What? No. No." He ran his hand through his hair. "I don't have a girlfriend."
My heart was racing. "You're married?"
His eyes went wild. "No."
"What then?"
"I should've told you right away in the diner, but—" Jack's phone rang in his pocket, a snippet of a song I couldn't immediately place from a musical. "I need to get this—that's my mom calling."
"Of course." I stepped away, my mind whirring. If he wasn't with someone else, what could it possibly be? He was gay? No, that didn't make sense. He was dying? No, that was—
"Mom?"
Mamma Mia! That's what the song was.
I walked down the bridge, not wanting to intrude on his privacy. I could still make out the tone of his voice, and it sounded like anguish. His mother was calling with bad news, worse news than Jack already knew. I had a flashback to that awful moment when I was told Sara was dead, that I was never going to see her again. We weren't going to do any of the things we planned, silly and small, big, and important. It wasn't a feeling I wished on anyone. I shivered in the sunshine and wrapped my arms around myself, a poor substitute for Jack's embrace.
"Chloe," Jack said, coming up behind me moments later.
He was pale, his eyes troubled. "Are you okay?"
"I have to go. My mom, it's bad. She might not ... That was my dad calling."
"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to show me around the park. I feel terrible."
"It's not your fault, neither of us knew. But I have to go. I'm so sorry." He reached out and hugged me quickly, then released me. "I have to go."
I met his gaze. "Don't think about me. Go."
Jack bent his head to mine and kissed me, his lips a light brush against mine. "Today has been great," he said, and then he was gone.
After Jack left, I wandered around the park for an hour, thinking over our day together, trying not to linger on whatever it was that Jack wanted to tell me. Mostly, I tried to enjoy the sunshine and the feeling of possibility. Because that's what Jack represented, I decided—potential.
I only let it go that far. I wasn't thinking that I'd met my future husband. I was too jaded for that, and no matter how many rom-coms I read and recommended, that wasn't going to change. I knew how easily possibility could turn to disappointment, could fade into indifference, could melt into nothing.
But, oh, the hope that it would be different this time! That's what love starts with, isn't it? The wish that this is your person? Someone to have and to hold through good times and bad, through sickness and health, till death did you part. There's something to those ancient words—a promise, a dream, and maybe, for some people, a reality.
Not for my parents, but for Kit's. For Jack's. I believed it could happen for me. Maybe not like in the movies, on a crowded street where we'd run to each other in a moment of realization, but in a series of days like the one we'd just had, where I felt a sense of synthesis. Could Jack turn out to be a worthless jerk? Of course he could. Whatever it was that he hadn't said could reframe the entire day, but it didn't feel that way.
And then it was late, the sun thinking of setting. I walked to the subway and when I got off at my stop my phone was ringing. Kit.
"You haven't turned that tracker thing off, have you?"
"I will, I will."
"Uh-huh." I stopped outside my local bodega. I was still full from the meal with Jack, but I knew that would wear off in an hour, and I was out of provisions. "How was your day?"
"Eh. We were shopping for furniture."
"For the new apartment?" Kit and John were moving to a two-bedroom in Harlem that had me drooling over the massive increase in space. Real estate wasn't the main reason to be with another person, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes get turned on by Zillow listings.
"Two weeks till moving day."
"You've hired movers, yes?"
"What? You don't want to schlep our stuff up and down a million stairs?"
"I do not. Has he proposed yet?"
"You sound like Lian."
"I assume you're going to tell me before Lian when he does."
"Maybe I'll propose to him."
I eyed a box of stale-looking donuts through the crowded window. I already had to run to work off the meal I'd had with Jack. What was another thousand calories, give or take? "There's zero chance of that happening."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you made me enact proposal scenarios a million times when we were kids?"
"I forgot about that. You were so good at getting down on one knee."
"I had to after Ken's leg snapped off. Anyway, I don't think that's the hard part."
"I know." Kit sighed. "Honestly, I think I'm nervous about it."
I eyed the donuts again, their powdered sugar calling to me. "Screw it."
"What?"
"Sorry, that was my internal monologue about whether I was going to buy donuts."
"Yes, obviously."
"You're right." I pulled open the door, the bell tinkling above me. I breathed in the musty smell and picked up a rickety basket. The first time I'd gone in there, I'd been too scared to buy anything, used to the pristine Kroger's near my old apartment. Kit had told me I was being a snob and to get over myself. She was (mostly) right. Ninety percent of the food was perfectly edible. It was just a matter of knowing which ninety percent. "Why are you nervous about John proposing? Are you thinking of saying no?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"It's scary to think of something like that being decided. Like, am I never going to fall in love again? Never going to sleep with another person? For the rest of my life?"
"Sounds like heaven."
"You only say that because you're single."
"I don't think that's true." I scooped the donuts into my basket then walked down the nearest narrow aisle. This is how I grocery shopped, no lists or planning, just snagging what caught my eye in the moment.
"You're not single?"
"Well..."
"Wait, you're not still with Jack, are you?"
"No."
"Fill me in."
"It was great ..." I told her everything that had happened while I wandered up and down the aisles collecting cereal, milk, and spinach that could potentially have E. Coli, but I needed something green. It felt like the conversations Kit and I used to have in high school that would go on for so long my ear would be hot from being pressed against the receiver.
"Sounds like a great day," Kit said when I finished telling her about the kiss and how Jack had to go. "I never thought of Jack as a museum kind of guy. I like it."
"It was great." I started to empty my cart onto the counter at the cash. I felt an annoyed tap on my shoulder. There was a red-faced woman in her sixties behind me in a ratty fur coat and a ton of yellow gold jewelry clanging on her wrists. "Yes?"
"You cut the line."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."
Her lips were in a thin red line. "I'm sure you were too distracted recounting 'the best date ever'."
I shrank away from her. "Please go ahead of me."
"I wouldn't dream of it. Go back to your conversation. We're all riveted." She waved her hands at the two other people in the store, who were doing their best to look anywhere but at us. "What was Jack going to tell you?"
"Hold on, Kit," I said into the phone. I pushed my items along the counter to the cashier who was trying hard not to laugh. He rang my things up quickly and handed me my bag as I paid.
I hustled to the front door. "I'm back."
"What was that all about?"
"Apparently, my story is amusing to lonely sixty-year-old ladies in fur coats in April."
"Whatever, ignore her."
I glanced back at the cash. The woman threw me an angry look over her shoulder.
"She asked a good question, though. What do you think he was about to tell you?"
"No idea." I stepped back onto the street and walked toward my apartment.
"Should I give you a list?" Kit loved lists, pro-con, to-do, not to-do. I of the no-grocery-list-ever, did not.
"Trust me, I've already thought of everything."
"He's married? If he is, I'm going to H.R."
"For what? Dating your friend under false pretenses isn't a work offence."
"It is to me."
"He said he wasn't. No wife. No girlfriend." I stopped in front of my building, an unremarkable new build that was five stories and had little charm. Generations of TV shows about unrealistic New York apartments had made the let down hard when I realized this was the best I could do. But I felt like I was too old for roommates, even if Kit was available, which she wasn't.
"Maybe he's wanted for a murder." Why didn't Kit sound like she was joking?
I walked up my front steps. "Ha. Ha."
"Sorry. You know my obsession with Forensic Files."
"Kit, you work with this guy. Does it seem like he could have a dead body in his freezer?"
She paused. "No. I don't think so."
"Well, that's reassuring. Remember, you were the one who suggested I date him." I got the front door open, then went inside, taking the stairs because the elevator was small and scary.
"Maybe he's about to leave for an around the world trip that will separate you for a year? I would love the plant in his cube. He's got one of those moon cactuses, you know those color—"
"Kit." One floor up, I felt winded. I was running the next day for sure.
"Sorry. You seem blasé about it."
"I'm not. But he's at the hospital with his mother and I have to cut him, and me, some slack. Otherwise, I'm going to go crazy."
"You're right. Though my email just came back online. So maybe it was a false alarm?"
I felt queasy. Her email was back up. Jack had gone to work but hadn't texted me. No, I was being silly. It had only been a couple of hours since we'd parted. Did I truly expect him to text me already? And maybe the email had gone back online without his intervention. Maybe he was able to work on it from the hospital. There were a million possibilities that weren't an insult.
"I hope so, for his sake and his mom's." I rounded the corner to the final flight to my third-floor apartment, right smack in the middle of the building for maximum noise from all directions.
"It's funny. Jack never talks about that stuff at work. I didn't know his mother was sick."
"It's not really work talk."
"Or he really likes you."
I unlocked my front door and entered. I put my bag of groceries down on the grey tile floor. "Maybe!"
I heard a noise through the phone, a voice in the background. "John's back from his basketball game. I should go."
"Talk to you tomorrow."
"Of course."
"Turn off that find my friends thing!"
"Love you!"
We hung up and I walked into my living room/kitchen/dining room/office. The apartment I had in Cincy was four times as big and half the rent, but I'd made it feel like home. I'd taken on project after project until my apartment felt cozy and maximized every square inch of space.
I checked my phone. Nada from Jack. Should I text him? Surely, a short text letting him know that I hoped his mom was okay would be fine? Wasn't it the decent thing to do?
If I thought about it too long, I'd talk myself out of it or do something way stupider like call. I tapped out a text.
Thank you again for today. I hope your mom is okay. Fingers crossed for you and your family.
I reviewed it to make sure there were no typos, then hit send.
I watched for the delivered sign, and then there was a reply bubble. Three dots moving. I didn't have to wait long for his response.
???
I checked my text thread, assuming I'd texted the wrong person, which happened more times than I could count. But it was the right one for Jack. What could that ??? mean? Was it a typo? Did he already forget who I was?
I didn't have to wait long to find out.
I just realized you never got my earlier text cancelling, Jack wrote. Our servers have been down, and I've been in the basement all day working to fix the problem without service. I'm so sorry I missed our brunch. Can I make it up to you?
I dropped the phone to the floor. I'm so sorry I missed our brunch? What?
I stooped and picked up my phone. The glass had partially shattered, spider webbing over Jack's text.
Is this a joke? I wrote, feeling desperate.
Not sure I get your meaning. I thought I'd written you this am to tell you I couldn't make it, but it seems that text didn't go through. Just realized now. Sorry about that. A pause, then: Why did you ask about my mother?
I almost dropped my phone again.
Shit. Shit.
This wasn't a joke. Jack didn't make brunch. I didn't spend the day with him.
So who the hell was he?