From the Jump(47)

“I need Chinese food,” he says, fumbling at his pocket for his phone but giving up before he pulls it out. “Moo goo gai pan and shrimp fried rice.”

My stomach growls audibly.

“Does Chinese work for you?” he asks.

I hesitate before nodding. If we split the delivery charge, it shouldn’t be too expensive.

He mounts another search and rescue mission for the phone and finds success this time.

“Do you have a go-to order?” he asks. “Or do you want me to pull up the menu?”

“Egg drop soup,” I say, averting my eyes. Perfect body aspirations aside, it is a Tuesday night and vacation is over. At some point, I have to begin atoning for my sins. Especially now that I’ve fired my personal trainer. Even my flowy vacation skirts are starting to fit a little too tightly.

To my relief, Deiss says nothing, merely placing the order online. I realize he’s likely paid for it with a credit card number saved in his phone, which causes me to panic. I’ll have to pay him back with what’s left from Mac’s hundred-dollar bill. The good news is that I still have most of it. The bad news is that Mac’s not likely to get repaid for a while.

I assume Deiss is going to leave the floor once the food is on its way, but instead he stays where he is. He lifts his hand and tucks it beneath his head, exposing a line of taut tanned skin above the waist of his jeans. I only peek at it for long enough to mentally measure the indention of the grooves that point an arrow southward.

“Are you staying in tonight?” I don’t plan to ask the question, and I regret it the moment it comes out of my mouth. It probably sounds needy. Or, worse, like I don’t want him here. Really, I just want to know if I’ll spend the night listening for the sound of his return.

“At least until the food arrives.” His head falls toward me, his cheek hovering above the wooden slats of the floor. “Do you have more laundry, or are you going out?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to do for entertainment on a Tuesday night,” I admit, distracted by the closeness of our positions on the floor. With his full attention on me, it suddenly feels like we’re cuddled up together instead of lying three feet apart.

His eyes sharpen with interest at my confession. “What do you normally do?”

“Work. Then gym. By the time I get home, it’s usually close to nine, so I just shower and read in bed for a while until I’m ready to go to sleep.” I say it like I’m proud of my discipline, rather than embarrassed by this evidence of the treadmill life he commented on that night in the bar. Still, I brace myself for his judgment, or at least a grin. Deiss probably considers schedules beneath him. He doesn’t even seem to eat at normal mealtimes. He just floats through the day, doing whatever he feels like.

“Does your gym have a branch around here?” he asks, surprising me.

“It’s not a chain. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already canceled my membership. I did it the day I went on ‘personal leave without pay.’?” I smile wryly. “Because I was worried about money. I had no idea then how much more worried I would get.”

He grimaces sympathetically, then his brow lifts. “I thought gyms were like a gang. Don’t they own you for life?”

The truth in his question makes me laugh. “I’ve been going there for years, so I aged out of my contract a long time ago. But what I really had on my side was the greater part of a bottle of Baileys, a sugar high, and a drunken coworker cheering me on. I was not someone who was going to take no for an answer.”

“Are you ever?” He says it flippantly, but it brings to mind all the noes I’ve absorbed over the years. No indulgences, said the mirror. No mistakes, warned the experts. No, you’re not enough, said all the men who made and broke promises to my mom and me.

“I suppose not,” I say to the sky blue wall past his cheek.

“And dates?” His lip curls gorgeously when my head jerks back toward him. “I know you go on lots of those. How do they fit into your schedule?”

My eyes narrow as I search him for signs of mockery, but he gazes back at me with the easy attention of someone merely making conversation. Slowly, I relax, turning onto my side and lifting my hand to my shoulder to prop up my head. “They’re for the weekends.”

“Never during the week?”

“Weeknight dates mean the man isn’t that into you. Unless it’s a committed relationship, women should hold out for the primetime nights.”

Deiss looks intrigued by the insight. “But what about someone like me, who puts on shows for work on Saturday nights?”

“You’re proof of the point,” I say confidently. “Notice how you’ve just managed to ignore the existence of Fridays. You want to pretend that you can’t ask a woman out on a weekend, but really you don’t want to. Because you don’t take women seriously. You’re never that interested in them.”

“I take women seriously.” Deiss manages to sound adamant without a hint of defensiveness.

“But you don’t want one of them to be your girlfriend.” I say this equally adamantly, and he flips over on his side to mirror my position.

“True,” he says, shrugging his shoulder.

I knew this. Still, his confirmation settles in my stomach like the dried-out carrots I was choking down earlier. I’ve always accepted the fact that Deiss doesn’t care about much, but I hate the idea that he doesn’t care about anything. Except music, of course. Always music. Someone else’s emotions poured out in song. Never his—possibly, disappointingly, because he doesn’t have any.