“Oof,” Jack said that night as Morticia jumped onto his lap the moment he sat back from his plate. She’d been stalking him since his first bite, waiting for him to finish. “There’s still a certain amount of cognitive dissonance involved in a cat this big.” He scooched around until he and his feline admirer were comfy.
“Most cats are big, aren’t they? It’s house cats that are the outliers.” She picked up the remote. “I should take a picture of you. Did I or did I not once read an interview in which you said pets are for people with low self-esteem?”
“That sounds like something I’d say.”
“Does it sound like something you think?” She wasn’t sure why she was asking. Why did she care whether Jack was an animal person?
He didn’t answer, which she took as assent. Morticia let out an extraloud purr, which from her came out sounding like a sewing machine.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s like they can sense your indifference and are attracted to it.” Edward shared Morticia’s enthusiasm for Jack, leaping joyfully at his feet as they took off on their walks. Edward was too sensitive forThe Last of Us, though, and hid in Blair’s bedroom once the TV got turned on, otherwise he’d probably be competing for real estate on Jack’s lap.
“So that’s a wrap on season one,” Blair said as she clicked off the TV after the show was over. “Did you hate it?”
“I didn’t hate it. I felt it could have been tightened a bit, but that third episode about the life of those doomsday prepper men could have been a stage play—an award-winning stage play.”
“Right?” She’d loved that one, too. “It did win Emmys and other awards.”
“I have to say”—Jack stroked the purring machine in his lap, inspiring her to turn up the volume—“there might be something to the passive consumption of other people’s narratives. At night, anyway, after a day spent actively struggling to produce your own narrative.”
“What do you usually do at night?”
“Write. Try to write.” He paused. “Not write.”
She smiled. That was what she meant about him being nonhypocritical. He judged himself as harshly as—more harshly than—he judged others.
“OK, so say you’re not writing some evening. What would you do then?”
“Read.”
She rolled her eyes. “You should tryThe Bear.”
“I’ve read aboutThe Bear.”
Right, because that was the kind of showThe New Yorkerwrote about without any condescension. “OK, let’s take a break from mushroom zombies and do the first season ofThe Bearnext. It’s your kind of show.”
Wait. Had she overstepped by presuming he would want to continue their TV watching?
She didn’t want to give it up. It had turned into a lifeline. A bit of human contact on her turf that felt safe.
“How is it my kind of show?”
“It’s super intense and sometimes stressful and the main character is way up in his own head.”
“Thanks a lot.”
She wasn’t doing a good job selling this. “But also extremely compelling and of the highest quality.”
He snorted. “Thanks, but I think this interlude of TV is going to be a one-off for me. I should get back to trying to write in the evenings.”
Darn. “MaybeIshould try writing in the evenings.” Blair sat up straight and looked around. Where hadthatcome from? That was a thought that had literally never entered Blair’s head before.
“You should,” Jack said mildly. “You clearly have a sense of what works or doesn’t, just based on your analysis of this show.”
“I do?”
He shrugged. “I’m no screenwriter, but seems so. You should write a new script forGreen Light.”
“Oh my gosh, no. I can’t do that. That wasn’t what I meant.”
