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That has a deck but no backyard
A bow but no arrows
A wheel but is not a car
A beam but is not a light
A stern but is not serious
Jason and I were sitting in an English pub near our hotel room having a bite and decompressing from the day. Jason had been right; I had found a slight lift in the paper quarter and when I peeled it back it had the next riddle inside.
We were both stumped on what it could be and had decided to find a place, sit down and try and figure it out. We both had wanted to get out of the touristy section of Monterey and had headed back towards our hotel. Before we even got to it, we found a quaint pub that was in the basement of a building. I could hear the laughter of the crowd and it seemed like the perfect place to hang out and figure out what was next.
I didn’t ask Jason where he wanted to sit but had immediately gone up to the bar. Jason had followed and if he had been hoping for a more intimate or quiet setting, he didn’t say. It was a small space with a square bar in the middle with booths lining the sides. There were a few televisions hanging along the wall along with the typical neon signs of the beers on tap. It reminded me that no matter how many different cities I had been to, there were many things that were still the same. Pubs being one of them.
The bartender, a burly man with red hair by the name of Mark, immediately came up to us and asked for our order. Jason asked for a rusty nail and I ordered a Guinness. It took him a minute to pour my drink but I didn’t mind. I never tired of seeing a bartender pour a proper Guinness.
“I should have known you would like the dark beer,” Jason said as he sipped his drink.
“And I never would have taken you for a rusty nail kind of guy.”
“I don’t drink often but when I do, I want to have a drink. Plus, my grandfather, on my mother’s side, drank them all the time. He had them at every family function and when I drink it, it makes me think of him.”
“That is sweet. Interesting but sweet.”
“Why interesting?” Jason asked and turned his chair towards me.
His blue eyes held my gaze and I felt as if he was taunting me a bit, but that he honestly wanted to know what I had to say. His look made me think that I and what I would say were the most interesting things he had ever heard. Watching him looking at me, I felt that way.
There had been something growing and changing between Jason and me the entire day. It wasn’t anything concrete but it was more subtle. I had always been attracted to him but we usually couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without wanting to kill the other. That hadn’t happened at all today. He didn’t annoy me as much as he once did and I could tell he liked talking and being around me. It wasn’t something I ever would have thought we could do but I could see us becoming friends. It even made me think that he and I might find a way to work together on the show.
Working with Jason, seeing how it could be if we did the show made me reconsider leaving. Not that I had made a decision one way or the other, but if I decided to, I didn’t think it would be such a bad thing to work with Jason. Sure, he was still uptight and had to have everything right, including his collar or how he drank his coffee. But after hearing a bit about his upbringing I could understand it. His mother couldn’t have been more different than his father and she raised him to make sure that he was never like him.
I wanted to tell her that she had failed. Kevin had been kind, funny, witty, insightful, and concerned about others and making sure they were okay. Those were all traits that Jason had too and I knew he got them from his father. He had a lot of his mother in him too but he was also his own man, one I was finding more and more attractive as the day went on.
There were times that he would look at me and my breath would catch. It wasn’t as outlandish as when he had been in my house but it was still there. I had never mixed business with pleasure and it would be catastrophic to start with Jason. Still, as I looked at him and saw how he looked at me, I knew if I wasn’t careful, I would do something I would regret.
We were both grieving a man we adored. One who helped to shape who we were. We were on an emotional journey and it would make sense that we would want to cling to someone who could understand what we were going through and possibly help get us to the other side. I told myself it was because of the circumstances that I was thinking and feeling the way I was, but then Jason would look at me a certain way and I knew I was just deluding myself. He was attracted to me too.
“Most people drink to forget, o get their mind off of something. It seems only right that you would use drinking to get your mind on something.”
“Seems right?” he asked.
“That you would do things the exact opposite that anyone else would,” I said.
“Me? You think I do the opposite thing than most? Talk about pot calling the kettle black,” he said with a laugh and took a drink.
He had a good laugh; it was deep and strangely sexy. I immediately thought about what it would be like to hear it if we were in bed together and I wondered if he was fun in bed.
“Okay, now it’s your turn to explain,” I said and crossed my legs.
As I did, Jason’s eyes fell to my dress as it opened slightly, his eyes slowly looked up, caressing my legs, my breasts, my neck and then my lips. I felt his eyes on me as if they were his hands. Not for the first time, I longed for him to touch me. He didn’t speak for a minute but when he did his voice was a little hoarse.
“You didn’t go the more traditional route most people do, you didn’t go college, and you don’t seem to be like most women who are looking for a man or someone to take care of them. You drink Guinness and speak your mind.”
“Are you saying most women don’t speak their mind or shouldn’t?”
Jason laughed nervously. “I knew I was going to be in trouble as soon as I opened my mouth. I try to compliment you and say you aren’t traditional and, in the process, I insult all of womankind. Something you didn’t like, so I am screwed either way.”
