Blair:Do you write longhand on legal pads?
Jack:I do not.
Blair:Is your favorite mug at least an interesting color?
Jack:It’s blue.
Blair:What makes it better than other mugs?
Jack:For one thing, it’s a normal size. Have you noticed the extreme mug inflation that characterizes our times?
Blair:I can’t say I have.
Jack:Mugs have grown obnoxiously large. And I’m not talking about travel mugs. Just normal, ceramic mugs. They look like they belong in Wonderland.
Blair:And here you strike me as the kind of person who drinks a lot of coffee.
Jack:I do drink a lot of coffee, but I like it to be hot. I’d rather drink three normal-size cups over the course of a morning than one Wonderland-size cup.
She didn’t know what to say next. This was what it was like with Jack. They texted fast and furiously and then… she was out of things to say. She reminded herself of Esme’s assertion that texting was a mode of communication that didn’t require a salutation or a closing.
She should have brought her own laptop so she could get some work done. She settled for opening the Kindle app on her phone and pulling up the manuscript she was supposed to be considering for Books with Blair, even though she’d pretty much already decided it wasn’t for her.
The next few months were certainly going to be interesting.
“Blair?”
Blair jumped, and her phone clattered to the floor.
The man in front of her stooped to pick it up, his backpack and small rolling suitcase confirming that he was indeed the literary genius she had invited to move in with her.
He straightened. He looked like his author picture, which in her experience was rare. Most authors she’d met in person bore only a passing resemblance to the images on their books and websites, which tended to have been taken many years and pounds ago—a fact she noted with neutrality and not judgment. She herself had only recently quit with the cosmetic dermatology stuff, and honestly, she was still struggling with confronting what she actually looked like.
But Jack. He had medium-length sandy-blond hair that flopped to one side, blue-gray eyes, and a couple days’ worth of stubble. He was wearing jeans and a faded black T-shirt, and he had a black-and-red plaid flannel shirt slung over one arm.
She should not be so taken aback by his appearance, given that she’d “met” him on that Zoom call. But Jack Branksome in the flesh was… something.
He took a step toward her, holding her phone out.
She had been worried about things being awkward between them. She wasn’t helping on that front, standing there dumbstruck by… what? The fact that he looked like he was supposed to? It was her turn to speak.
“Jack, hi.” She accepted the phone from him, taking care that their hands didn’t touch. “Why didn’t you—”
Why didn’t you text and tell me you were en route?
Why did you ambush me?
How, though, could she be ambushed by someone she was expressly waiting for?
Shefeltambushed, was the thing. She felt in no way ready for whatever was about to happen.
“What are you reading?” he asked when her aborted sentence wasn’t followed by anything.
“What?”
He nodded at her phone, which she was still holding face up and which was still open to her book.
A reasonable question from someone whose relationship with her had heretofore mostly revolved around books.
