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‘Mm.’ Jack always looks at ease, wherever he is. The opposite to chaotic rainy, dog-charity-advert me. The way one shoulder is thrown back a little, how he rubs the edge of his stubbly jaw, with a thumb and finger, shoulders always square and open. ‘It was regarding your .?.?. technical problem.’
‘Technical problem,’ I repeat. ‘Polite way of putting it.’
‘There aren’t many,’ he carries on, ‘but this one particular post – a couple of people had the whole email draft thing happen to them. Something similar, anyway.’
‘Jesus,really?’ And that makes me feel a little better. To know there are other people out there, that might have felt the way I did in the boardroom that morning. I wonder if they’re walking around with Nokia bricks, standing in the rain waiting for exe’s exes. Maybe we could start a sad little club.
Jack nods. ‘And I know you didn’t want to go down the wholehowroute, keep the whole thing dragging out, but I’ve forwarded the posts to my coder nerd mate, anyway.’
‘Oh. Well. Thank you,’ I say, as a low, bubbling sizzle of something cold being lowered into hot oil comes from the kitchen’s hatch behind me. ‘I’m just trying to .?.?. move on. Right it all, instead. Control what I can control.’
Jack gives a tiny tilt of his head to one side. ‘You said sorry,’ he states, with a shrug. ‘And the cakes yesterday. They didn’t deserve the cakes.’
‘Steve saidgood morningto me after the cakes,’ I tell him. ‘Although he ignored me just now .?.?.’
‘Millie, Steve spends his working day tweeting creepy stuff to Cheryl Cole or whatever her name is, and reviewing IPAs. He should be .?.?. I don’t know, in azoo.’
I burst out laughing, and Jack chuckles, then clamps his straight teeth together, likemaybehe shouldn’t have said that.
‘Comforting stuff to hear about the head of IT,’ I comment. ‘And from the operations manager no less .?.?.’
‘Chief of Staff, too, now, thank you, Millie,’ he says, smiling slowly, a little crescent-shaped dimple prodding his cheek beneath stubble. ‘Well. That’s until they invent something else and add that on, too. But hopefully I’d have left again by then.’
‘Chief of staffdoessound a bit made up.’
‘And that’s because it is,’ replies Jack, like he’s dropping a well-known fact. ‘Just made up one day by another person. Another human being. Like most things. Most things in life are just .?.?. made up.’
‘Arethey?’
‘Yup,’ he says simply with a shrug. ‘You name it.’
‘So, what, like .?.?.’ I scan the café, as the Nan Waitress dumps a balled-up napkin in a large, barrel of a bin. ‘A .?.?. bin.’
Jack cocks his head, a rain-damp lock of his hair, the colour of wet sand, dangling over his eyes. ‘Made up,’ he says, swiping it away. ‘Someone went, “We need somewhere to keep our rubbish so we don’t live like pigs,” and they made a box, called it a bin, and now we’re like oh, well, we’vegotto have abin.?.?.’
‘Is this a way of telling me you .?.?. don’t havea bin?’
‘No,’ he replies, meeting my eyes. ‘I’m pretty prolific on the bin front, Millie. One in every room.’ And his mouth twitches.
And whyoh why did that make my stomach turn over? Hunger pangs? It must be. There is no situation on earth where discussing bins feels hot, but with Jack, it .?.?. somehow does? It’s the ease. The sparkle in his eye, the way he knows exactly who he is.
Oh, what am I doing? Getting a crush on the man who is essentially my boss?
My sexy dream email strides into my brain and says,Er, you already had a crush.
Silence expands between us now, and distant, hushed arguing comes from the kitchen. Jack pulls out his work phone, which is vibrating, and he taps away, his serious work face back on, and the tiniest of sinking feelings slumps in my chest, as I take in his face. The mouth that’s always pouty at rest, the shadow of stubble, the three small, almost-invisible flecks of freckles on his left cheekbone. Because – well, I wish I wasn’tthisperson, I suppose. The woman who has publicly made a bit of a mess of her life. Weddings and relationships called off, colleagues gossiping, parents worriedly texting, friends posting about her on TikTok. The woman who was too scared to go into a café so chose to get soaked in the street, despite having a people-facing role to fulfil for another four and a half hours, and is now here, with a handsome man, who has actually been briefed about her at work like a plumbing problem, and who feels a bit sorry for, so has taken her to lunch. How did it all go from quiet and under-the-radar to weird and complicated? How didIget so weird and complicated? One big email glitch, I suppose, is the logical answer, but then, whydidI have so many drafts? How did I get here? From .?.?. there.
‘Do you think I’m out of my mind?’ tumbles from my lips, as if the words have wrestled their way out of my mouth to gasp for air.
Jack’s thumb pauses on his phone screen, his eyes flicking up to meet mine. He says nothing.
‘You know.’ I lower my voice. ‘Writing the emails, yes, but, hiding behind Gary Lineker. Chloe. Thecakes.?.?.’
Jack watches me for a second with those intense, hazel eyes, then says, simply, ‘No. I don’t think you’re out of your mind. Not at all. But I do think you’re dragging yourself through the mud unnecessarily.’
‘You do .?.?.’
He nods, just once.
