The Love Experiment Page 21

  By the weekend, it was no clearer if he had a viable exposé on Keepsafe. All he wanted to do was clear his head of the frustration of weeks of work that might turn out to go nowhere. Spending the weekend uninterrupted with Derelie was the perfect antidote.

  He kicked it off by surprising her with a ticket to take a yoga class under the sky dome at the planetarium. It was yoga and stars, even if they weren’t real ones. He’d wanted it to feel like a reward for the week she’d had and the amount of waiting around for him she’d done. It didn’t work out like that. The reward was all his. She virtually jumped him in the café where he’d waited with the day’s papers and his email and social feeds.

  She hugged him from behind his chair. “That was awesome.”

  Hands up to run over her forearms. “I’m glad you liked it.” It’d been worth the favor he owed to get her a ticket.

  “It was this incredible sensory experience. Total dark room but lit from above with constellations, so unexpected and beautiful.”

  Like the woman whose hand he brought to his lips, whose company he craved.

  She ducked around him to meet his eyes. “And sold out months in advance.”

  Sometimes there were benefits to being the Defender of the City. And there was delight in playing tourist, showing Derelie his Chicago, including fried plantain sandwiches, and helping her move more of her stuff to his place. If she never had to see the dealer on the corner, it would be too soon for him.

  There were benefits to being part of the congregation of the Church of the Cocked Fist, not only for access to its members in their professional capacities, but in knowing about a key under a certain flowerpot. On Sunday, he snuck Derelie into the old garage where they committed sacrilege in the pit, trading practice punches for kisses and body blocks for near-naked wrestling.

  Without Barney lurking with a camera, they didn’t need to be restrained. Jack let Derelie pin him on the floor, hold him down with her knees aligned along his hips and her hand in his hair. “I win,” she crowed, snatching at his shoulders when he dug his heels into the floor and bucked. He was the planet’s happiest loser.

  “What do you want for your prize?” The hand at his zipper gave him his answer. “Here?”

  She took his glasses off and placed them on the floor behind his head. “Don’t pretend that’s not why we came.” She got the zipper down and her hand on him. There was no pretending when a woman did that to you.

  “Padded walls.” It was exactly why he’d brought her here.

  She made her eyes roll back and forth. “Like an insane asylum in a scary movie.”

  Insane about her. “Are you still scared about us?” Whether she knew it or not, she was the one in control here. He was holding on to her with everything he had, but if she bucked him off it would be what he deserved.

  She ran her knuckles lightly over him, added her lips and teeth at his throat. “You don’t scare me, Jackson Haley.”

  “I want to worship you against the wall.” Did that shock her?

  “I’ve wanted that since dinner at Elaine’s.”

  He groaned, because that was his motivation too. Knowing a woman wanted you to fuck her against a wall lent him superhuman strength. He got them off the floor in a clinch, backed her up against the padding and kissed her till her knees went soft. Clothing was a goddamn nuisance, not needing a rubber was inspiration. Wrapping her legs around his hips, easing her down on him was divinity.

  “Ah, Jack.”

  He had to still, the sensation of their fit too intense. Her back and head were protected. He didn’t have to worry about hurting her when he slammed into her, and he would. “Okay?”

  “So good.”

  He took her mouth, tangled tongues, feeling her in the follicles of his hair and the soles of his feet. She moaned, loud in his ears, ringing in the vast space. He loved that abandon in her. It was a gift. The way she surrendered even as she came at him for her own piece of the action, gripping his face in her hands, using her thighs to ride him.

  When he bent his knees and flexed his hips to withdraw, to renter, to do it again and again, bouncing her back into the padding, they were both vocal, incoherently; a conversation like the combat in their bodies: taking, giving, striking, receiving.

  “Can you come this way?” He had her shoulders pinned to the wall, his hands under her thighs.

  “I want to.”

  He groaned. “I know you do. Use your hand.”

  She used her eyes first; it was almost the end of him. Swapped heavy lids for a wide clear focus, aimed directly at him. He’d never been so grateful for being shortsighted. No barrier between their gazes, nothing hidden, everything given. How had he lived so long without knowing there was this?

  “Jack.” She might’ve said more, her mouth opening, her breath short, but his control was shot. He pushed her hand aside and got a thumb to her clit and sent her shaking and crying into her release, taking his own in tight, hard thrusts and spilling into her heat.

  They might have slept on the mat after that, but he knew Barney would be unhappy about this and he didn’t want to actively annoy the man.

  A week with Derelie and he still felt that lost, found, patched sensation. It couldn’t be this easy to fall into something this good. If he had to thank an experiment for that, he would. But the questionnaire didn’t give any hints of what you were supposed to do if you got beyond intimacy. That had to be what this was. An overwhelming desire not to be parted from her, to know she was near, to hear her voice and see her smile. To know he could touch her in the most casual way and understand her in the most solemn. To feel in the core of his being that his own happiness was brought to life by hers.

  He didn’t know what to do about feeling that way. What to call it except love.

  It was a sucker punch, and he’d voluntarily walk into that blow repeatedly.

  He’d have liked to have found a more romantic way, a more considered way to declare it, but it happened in the pet food section of the market.

  The woman was young, colored pieces in her hair, skintight athletic wear. “Are you Jackson Haley? You’re him, aren’t you?” She had a voice for shouting at kids across a football field. “Oh, I’m such a fan.”

  “Thank you.” He said it softly, hoping to encourage her to turn it down a notch; they were attracting attention, an older couple had stopped to watch.

  “You have a cat.” He had a tuna-and-rice concoction in his hand. “How precious. I’d have taken you for a dog person. Can I take a selfie with you?” She rummaged in her bag. “No one will believe it. Jackson Haley buying cat food. Me and Jackson Haley.”

  “I, ah, really, I’m in a hurry.”

  His special fan had her cell phone. There was a time when he’d reacted badly to people pulling unseen items from bags in front of him, but this would be a social media hit inside five minutes and that always made the Courier’s marketing team happy, and since he hadn’t delivered on the love experiment story yet, this was a goodwill gesture.

  “Come on. My name is Ginny.” She pushed alongside him, leaned in. “Put your arm around me and say pizza.” She took a shot, checked it. “No good. Try again.” She lifted her cell.

  “Hi. Can I take that photo for you?” Sweet rescue. Derelie had a basketful of fruit and vegetables she put down at her feet and a proprietorial look in her eye.

  Ginny bristled and threw an arm across Jack to block Derelie. “Whoever you are, you can wait your turn.”

  He should’ve stepped away but he was frozen food, looking at Derelie, trying to thaw. “She’s my—” What? More than a colleague, more than a friend. “Derelie is the woman I love.”

  Ginny tugged on his arm. “I just want a photo for the laugh. I don’t want to steal you. You’re not that famous or that good looking.”

  He let Ginny under hi
s arm again. He smiled for her selfie, but he was looking at the woman he loved the whole time and the amused expression on her face made him antsy.

  “She just wanted a photo,” Derelie said, watching Ginny leave.

  “That’s what you took from that fiasco.”

  “Interesting hair, needs her eyes tested. You are that good looking.”

  He was coming unstuck here in front of the Whiskas and the Fancy Feast. “Derelie.”

  She turned to face him and stepped closer. “I’m the woman you love.”

  “I’m desperately sorry that got said here, now, like that.” He was a writer, a broadcaster, and he’d fumbled the most important declaration of his life.

  “I’m not.”

  He put his fingers under his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “It should’ve been said when we were alone and I was holding you and looking into your spooky eyes and you’d know I meant it.”

  “Instead I get the cat food special backdrop, two for one deal.”

  He was mortified. “You came to bail me out.” You could slice him, dice him, puree him into cat food.

  “Shucks. It was nothing.”

  He’d never known how much he needed rescuing until Derelie and her questions opened up his life, until he thought about the meaning behind the Oscar Mayer jingle and why it had stuck around in his earworm collection all this time. Christ, he couldn’t be this lucky to be loved by her.

  He picked up the basket, added the cat food. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They held hands on the way home, like they’d done all weekend. It was childish, like the jingle, like being a grown man but aching to be loved. No one had held his hand for a very long time; he’d never wanted to hold anyone’s hand. He didn’t want to let Derelie’s go. He held it while he pressed her up against his apartment door, with Martha yowling and pawing the door on the other side. He held it while he kissed her, whispered into her mouth words that’d sounded so bumbled, so loudly wrongly declared and so right at the same time.

  “I love you.”

  “It’s a cliché, and Jackson Haley doesn’t do clichés.”

  She had the edge here. The power to make him bleed. “It’s a fact and I’m the defender of truth.”

  There was a loud thump from inside the apartment. Derelie’s eyes were stars and planets and all their mysteries and logic, but maybe too distant for him to reach, until she said, “I love you too.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jack said he loved her in a million ways to go with the words whispered into her skin, and Derelie said it back, thrilled and terrified, her insides twirling about like an excited puppy discovering its tail for the first time. She’d been the cool one in the pet food section, but now she might wet herself with excitement if she wasn’t careful.

  This was real. There was no way to misinterpret the way Jack looked at her, touched her, found a way for her to practice yoga under the stars.

  “I want you to meet my parents.” She said it before she’d thought that through. It was a big deal. He might not be into that. She had no desire to meet his. “If you want, and I mean on the phone.” Home was a day’s travel away and they hadn’t made it inside his apartment.

  “Only if we get in before Martha punches a way out.”

  Judging from the complaints, Martha was one pissed pussycat. As soon as Jack cracked the door she tried to push her way out. He used the grocery bag as a shin level shield and scooped her up with one hand so Derelie could get in without the cat getting out.

  “You know how to spoil a moment,” Jack said, holding a purring Martha dangling in outstretched arms. “Drama queen. How am I supposed to convince Derelie to move in if you’re going to carry on like you’re possessed?”

  “Did you just ask me to move in with you?”

  “Technically, I asked Martha to quit being a hellcat so you don’t run a mile when I ask you to move in.” He stooped to put Martha to the floor. “How do you feel about moving in?”

  “You mean more than a few hangers in your closet?”

  “I mean half the closet.”

  His place was bigger than her shoebox and in a better neighborhood and it had Martha. This was a bigger deal than waving to her parents on FaceTime.

  “My hellcat and I would love to have you here, if you can put up with us.”

  The hellcat had knocked over the bag of groceries and was head and front paws inside it, butt up, shaggy britches to the fore and tail waving a question mark.

  “I get that it might be too soon and it might not be what you want, but you’re here nearly every night, so I thought it made sense.”

  “I need to think about it.” It’s what a rational, sensible adult who grew up in a town called Orderly would say. This was all so new and fast.

  Jack rescued the groceries, and she said, “Yes.”

  He double-blinked. “Yes?”

  Adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm deserted her in one wild drop, but it was still, yes. “I need to sit down.” She planted herself on his couch. She was in love with Jack. She’d been in love with him since question seventeen when he talked about his granddad. It’s just that she hadn’t known what to call this feeling that made her want to cleave to his side.

  “What if it wears off?” she said. “This fizzy thing I feel about you.”

  “It’s not wearing off for a long time. Not for me.” He sat beside her, but was astute enough not to touch her. If he touched her she might cry. “Because it’s strong. Because you showed me what was missing in my life by filling it. Because everything I am is richer for being with you.”

  Pretty words. Easy to say for someone who made a life working with them.

  “I’ve had a shitty week, Derelie. My Keepsafe story is falling apart. It’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, thousands of dollars invested by the Courier in time and other costs. A week like this, I’d have been living at the church, taking any fight Barney would let me have, begging every favor to get in the pit. But I knew you were here waiting for me, and the last thing I wanted to do was feel pain.”

  What he’d done was wrap her in his arms and ask about her day, to tease her about her morning hair and strategize about their staggered arrival at the office.

  “It’s still yes, the biggest, loudest yes, but my head is spinning.”

  He took her hand and brought it to his chest. “There’s no hurry. We’re not on a deadline. I wanted you to know where I was with this. No second-guessing. I want to be with you.”

  She turned her body into his, still a puppy wanting to sniff him all over, wriggle into his hands, to revel in this moment. “When did you know you loved me?” She rubbed her hands over his shoulders, slid her knee over his thighs and watched his eyes behind his frames go bright.

  “You knocked me sideways the day we met.” When he’d thought she was a cub reporter on an internship. “You sassed the heck out of me and I didn’t expect it. Kept thinking about you.” Was it any one answer to any one question or the way she still sassed him? He took his glasses off and set them aside, dragged her closer, a hand on her thigh, an arm around her back, interlocking them. “But I knew I was in deep with you—” he kissed the side of her mouth “—when you changed the kitty litter when I was off chasing bad guys.”

  “Ahh.”

  He took the rest of that complaint by kissing it away and weathering the thump she aimed at his chest without flinching. He kissed her so well, so intently, mounting a thorough investigation of her mouth that she climbed over him, and humor turned to need and need to hands under clothing, and it was some time later they were interrupted by Martha, squeaky dragon between her teeth, jumping onto the arm of the couch.

  Jack took Martha’s dragon and tossed it into the bedroom. He didn’t look at the cat as she tore after it, he held Derelie tight to him
. “I don’t know when I fell in love with you. You crept up on me, but I know that’s what I’m feeling and it just gets better, because you feel it too.”

  She could forgive him for the kitty litter quip after that. “What about at work?” It was difficult pretending Jack didn’t mean more to her than a colleague. “Phil told me not to fuck anyone.” Artie was anyone. “Or to keep it a secret if I did.”

  Martha was back with the dragon. Jack threw it again. “We don’t owe the Courier our private lives.”

  She stared after Martha, the cat who played fetch. “I don’t want to give Phil any extra reason to think I can’t do my job.”

  “He doesn’t think that.”

  She sighed. It sure felt like it. He’d either shot down or been uninspired about every story she’d proposed in the editorial meetings.

  Martha was back with the toy. Jack ignored her, though from the couch arm she batted at his arm. “Madden is a smart man. He didn’t promote you because he thought you’d fail. I don’t think you’ll fail. You’re the only one of us who’s worried about that.”

  “You’re biased.” Surprisingly, delightfully one eyed about her.

  “No bias in journalism.” Jack mock threw Martha’s dragon, but she was too clever to chase nothing, one up on Ernest and something Derelie still had to learn. “Once upon a time, at least.” He threw the dragon for real and Martha chased it all the harder for having been denied, fur padded feet sliding on the hardwood, tail pointing straight up with a curl at the tip.

  “Have you ever been in love before?” That should’ve been an experiment question. The toy had gotten wedged between Jack’s dresser and the wall and Martha was having trouble reaching it, trying one paw then the other, different angles of attack, flattening herself out on the floor.