After a few clicks, Jack threw himself down next me. He took a picture and then fiddled with his phone for a bit. My phone chimed. Group chat.
All our friends were receiving a photo. Of us, he and I, in the honeymoon suite.—on the orgy bed smiling into the mirror on the ceiling. And it was captioned:
Jack: We haven’t killed each other yet. Stay tuned for more details.
Immediately the group chat started chiming.
Lissie: Stop the presses. What?
Duke: Aww, that’s so cute. Did you elope?
April: Charles won’t text; he thinks it’s a fake. Tell me it’s not a fake. This is all I want.
“Ugh, Jack. Did you see what you started?” I jumped up and took some more photos. “Now I have to do damage control.”
Mona: Please, all of you stop. We just got stuck in the snow coming back from taking Maria to my parent’s house. This was the only room at the motel. I thought you’d like it. Here, look at the hot tub.
I sent the photo of the hot tub, and they responded with glee.
“Jack, you’re the photographer; you show them the room. You’ll do a better job.” I forced him up off the enormous bed and made him go around and document the totally cheesy room, but after I ordered some late night snacks for us, he made me pose in various spots to highlight the drama. It was hilarious and broke the tension of our long, silent ride. The relief I felt to not be at odds was extreme. I tried not to think about it.
Maya: Oh Mona I think you look like a model in those photos.
Mona: Don’t you believe it. It’s just because Jack is such a good photographer.
Jack looked up suddenly. “You think I’m a good photographer?”
“Of course. You’re a brilliant photographer. I hate how great a photographer you are. It makes it much harder to hate you.”
The room got heavy. Even the ridiculous disco ball spreading sparks of rainbows all throughout the room didn’t feel so funny anymore.
“Do you?” he asked, his voice soft, barely audible. “Do you hate me?”
My heart caught in my throat. I wanted to reach out to him on the other side of that giant bed, but I couldn’t. I swallowed the emotion back down and shook my head. “I don’t. I don’t hate you. I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how I felt about him. I felt myself yearn towards him, though he was six feet away.
“So then, we are friends after all.” There was a slight smile on his face and a warmth to his tone of voice that felt intimate and sent a near shiver down my spine.
I could only blink at him and nod.
The smile spread and dazzled me. “Maybe we can promise not to be like cats and dogs all the time then?”
This time I shook my head. “I cannot promise not to dunk on you. You’re such an easy target.” I grinned and he shook his head and laughed.
He bit his lip as he looked at me, a motion that shot a sizzle of desire through my core, and I remembered that we were sharing a room, sharing a bed. Oh, no. Oh, no. He was right. This was a bad idea. He was still looking at me, and the weight of the room changed again and started to burn.
My phone chimed. That dratted group chat. Or maybe it was providential. An interruption just when I needed it. “I’m putting an end to this. We have a long day tomorrow. I’ll tell them we’ll give them new updates before we leave. I’m just going to turn in, if you want to take a shower. I’ll take mine in the morning.”
He stood up. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” He looked relieved. Or he looked like he was trying to be relieved. But he shuffled off to the bedroom while I told all our friends to shut it and put on my pajamas, nice cozy unsexy flannel pajamas since I’d packed for my parents house and they refused to waste energy heating the house when we could just wear flannel. Now, I was blessing them because otherwise, I wore tiny tanks and shorts to bed. I needed not to have any bare skin showing when I was in bed with the beautiful specimen that was Jack Hamilton.
The shower went on in the bathroom, and I knew Jack was in there, naked. My eyes cut to the giant heart shaped hot tub and from there, my imagination took over.
“Stop,” I scolded myself. “You idiot. Stop thinking like that.” But my traitorous mind wouldn’t. We weren’t enemies anymore, but we were barely friends. I ruthlessly pushed my thoughts back down and climbed into the gigantic bed. The water was still running in the bathroom, but now, Jack was singing, loudly and off key. I giggled.
He wasn’t supposed to be cute. I pulled the blankets up around my chin and thought momentarily how even though our relationship was fraught with antagonism and we had only just begun to be friendly, I felt perfectly comfortable going to sleep with him. I mean yes, I wouldn’t mind running my tongue over his abs, but aside from that, I trusted him. That said something very important about how we could be going forward.
I sighed happily and listened to Jack sing in the shower.
Then I was waking up with my face tucked into Jack’s chest and my legs tangled up with his. His bare back was firm and warm under my fingertips, and he held me tight to him with an arm around my waist.
I reeled with the rightness of being in his arms, of touching his skin. How long did I lay there? A minute? Two? Fifteen?
It took forever to make myself break away, lifting his arm from my waist and sliding all the way to the other edge of the bed to roll onto the floor. Had I moved from my side across the vast expanse of the giant mattress to be in his arms? I knew I had. I didn’t remember doing it, but I knew it had been me. And I knew that meant my body was telling me something about my feelings for Jack that I personally wasn’t ready to deal with.
Jack didn’t wake during my extraction, so I rummaged in my overnight bag and grabbed a change of clothes before heading to the bathroom, which was just as garish as the bedroom. There was a giant fake marble statue of a griffin next to the toilet. I took a picture to show to the group chat, even if Jack’s picture would have been different. I took a selfie next to it, with my eyes crossed and my tongue sticking out because I was an object of folly.
The shower washed off none of my foolishness.
When I got out, Jack was up and ready. We had breakfast and finished driving back to Brooklyn. Jack began singing the praises of the ugly, green car, saying that it was steady and stable in the snow and might have saved our lives.
I mocked him, which he seemed to enjoy, all the while knowing that I had lost something on that trip.
And I was afraid it was my heart.
Chapter Six: Jack
Spring had blossomed. It was hard to remember only two weeks ago, Mona and I had gotten caught in a blizzard. Now all that cold and snow had melted away, and the trees were covered with tiny white flowers that smelled like honey. Everything was green and full of hope.
I could not stop thinking of Mona, and had, in fact, been unable to get her out of my mind since I woke up with her in the middle of the night with her wrapped around me. I could no longer pretend that I hadn’t fallen in love with her, despite her prickly ways, weird habits, and insistence on starting fights with me. In fact, I had to admit that maybe the way she pushed at me, always pushed at me, was part of why I’d fallen for her. She would never let me treat her badly. She demanded respect, and the truth is, I respected her, her big heart, her open mind, and her commitment to being better, to overcoming her own flaws. She left me in awe.