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I pursed my lips. This felt oddly vulnerable, but instead of walking to my room, I nodded.
“Let me grab my phone. I like to play word games while I watch movies.”
She raised an eyebrow, but all the same, she took her finished jewelry back upstairs as I went to make sure I had a phone charger at the ready. The games I liked to play drained my battery immensely. It was always better to play them plugged in, if I could help it.
When I went out to the living room, Jade had set up a large table in the living room beside the arm of the couch. It appeared to be the same table I had stored in the pantry when I had first seen it. When she opened the top of it to reveal a felt pad for her to work on, I now realized why she was so mad that it had ended up in the pantry. This was where she did all her beading.
If food had gotten onto that felt pad, it might have ended badly for the jewelry she had in there. I didn’t think she had moved it with beads in there, but I could have been wrong.
“If you get any food, it has to stayoffthis table,” Jade warned me. “This is a beading table. It’s not meant for food, and I have seen food stain my glass beads before. Understand?”
“I understand, Jade.”
With that, we turned on a comedy that we had both seen a million times. What intrigued me the most was that she was able to recite the lines, in the right intonations, as she was beading. It seemed she had done this before, and she had suggested this because it was something that could put us both at ease.
I turned to my phone. It had actually died during dinner, so I was out of luck for now. Instead of fussing about it, I plugged it into the cord I kept out here and put it on the armrest of the chair. Then, I turned to watch the movie. Except, I had aclearer view of what Jade was doing to make her jewelry than the television.
I really needed to rearrange the furniture in here one day soon.
“How long have you been beading, Jade? In general?” I asked as the curiosity overtook me.
Her hands moved as if she had done this a thousand times. It was perhaps a good thing I could recognize the expertise, but I had to know what the answer was.
“I’ve been consistently beading for… I’d say about ten years,” she admitted. “I made extra money in nursing school this way. Not a lot, since I didn’t have consistent inventory, but enough that I was able to at least afford textbooks with the profits most semesters. After nursing school, I decided to try and make a better business out of it to pay off my debts. It worked.”
“That’s quite resourceful of you,” I said.
Jade nodded, not once looking up from the work she was doing. It looked like she was working on a pair of earrings, judging by the size of the felt in her hands that she was sewing the beads to. She picked the beads up on a sewing needle from the felt on the table, which I thought was a genius way to do it so long as she didn’t draw blood with the needle.
I turned my attention back to the movie. She was clearly deeply involved in her work, and I didn’t want to be the reason she couldn’t finish at least one pair of earrings tonight to add to the bag of jewelry she was going to be selling for the fundraiser.
Instead of paying attention to the movie, or to my game, I found myself continually glancing over at Jade. Something about her mesmerized me.
Chapter eighteen
Eighteen: Jade
Even though I got the feeling that this is not how he preferred to make his friends, I appreciated that Jesse was attempting to get to know me through what I did to make money. It may not have been the same as saving people in a fire, but it was my thing. Just as fighting fires and running elsewhere when he wasn’t on shift were his.
“So, I don’t do this very often, but you look like the kind of man who is utterly lost on what to give a woman,” I said. I didn’t know how else I was going to do this, and I knew that if Ididn’tsay something, the idea that he had a girlfriend was going to destroy me. I had to know. “If you want, I could make you a bracelet to give to a special someone.”
“Oh, um…” Jesse’s face flushed a little.
I raised an eyebrow. That was honestly not the kind of response I had expected. Instead, I had expected him to either get on my case about assuming things about him, or for him to stay silent. For him to mutter, hem, and haw at me was new. Unusual. I appreciated it.
“I’m not dating anyone currently,” he finally said.
I felt an unbidden smile start to warm my face.
“And I don’t plan to do so for a long while. But thank you for the offer.”
I felt vaguely disappointed.
His voice took a gentle tone this time. Whomever had last dated him must have seen the kind of man he was when he wasn’t all angry at the world, and I wondered if I was starting to see beneath that exterior gruffness. This wasn’t a man who was determined to make the world go away. Instead, Jesse Delaney appeared to be shielding himself. From what, I didn’t know.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“Oh. I’m sorry if I touched a nerve.”
