The Love Experiment Page 24

  He kept his back to the door, kept half the room between them. “I don’t want to fight. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  “I don’t want you to go.” The words were out even as he knew they were redundant. She would go because he’d finally shown her the side of him that was ugly, the side he’d tried to hide by avoiding the experiment and then cheating it. The part of him that was too hard to love.

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “What do you want? Maybe you could shout at me. Go crazy, I deserve it.” And then she’d leave him and he’d regret it forever.

  “I don’t want to shout at you. You already feel bad enough. I’m hungry, I’m warming the pizza.”

  She wanted pizza? That didn’t make sense. He put his bag down, but stayed where he was. His phone rang and he let it go through to his message bank. Nothing was more urgent than trying to understand this.

  “The best part of my day was watching you kick ass with Madden, knowing you wanted to be in my arms, and your texts. Everything else was shitty.”

  She lowered her eyes and smiled. He could smell the pizza and his stomach growled. Martha sauntered in, sprawled in the patch of floor between them and proceeded to clean her face like she did after she’d eaten.

  Derelie shrugged. “She was still hungry.”

  Martha would vomit later and he’d have to clean up after her. There was no one to clean up after him. “You should take the pizza with you.”

  “Why would I...oh, Jack.” Derelie stepped over Martha and put her hands to his chest. “You had a bad day, you lost your temper and stomped around. No one got hurt. I’m not going to stop loving you because you act like a dick sometimes.”

  Had he not had the door at his back he’d have been on the floor. His whole life had taught him people close to you would turn away if you were difficult.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  She brought her hands up to his shoulders. “I knew you could be a dick before I let you see me naked.”

  “You’re not leaving me.”

  “Over feeding Martha? Think I’ll stay.”

  It wasn’t about Martha. Why didn’t she see that?

  “Question. Would you rather stand with your back against the door or eat pizza?” She took his hand. “Answer.” She waited and, when he didn’t respond, said, “The answer, for a lifetime of kisses and staring into each other’s eyes, is—pizza.”

  He let her lead him into the kitchen, put a plate in front of him and served him a slice of pie. When Martha started yakking, he followed her around the apartment, watched her vomit up chunks of undigested slop then cleaned up after her. He didn’t check his phone until he’d given Derelie a ration of kisses, and stared into her eyes for the sheer amazement that she’d stayed.

  When he did, it was to discover Henri Costa was in New York, he had what Jack needed and he wanted to meet.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Derelie spent the night alone in Jack’s bed because Martha abandoned the bedroom to sleep on the empty pizza box and Jack took the last flight out to New York to chase his story.

  He wasn’t around to see her firefighters duke it out with her penguins for top spot in the most-read list. Phil was. He sent an email, two words: Good job. It made her buzz with pride. Not long ago she’d have printed that out and taped it to the wall above her bed, but she hadn’t slept in her own bed for weeks and didn’t intend to start again.

  After work she went back to her apartment to pick up mail and her brown boots, and to search for a missing blue glove. She needed to give notice. She couldn’t find the glove. Why did she always seem to lose only the left hand ones?

  Would you rather lose one glove of each pair you buy or witness your lover blow his cool once in a while? She’d choose a frosty left hand for all of winter in preference to missing out on any time with Jack, even when he was coiled tight enough to snap.

  The only thing that worried her was how he’d reacted after their spat. As if a cold pizza and an argument was a much bigger deal, as if it had been enough for her to pack a bag and leave. He’d been quiet afterward, withdrawn but not distant, if his make-it-up-to-her kisses were anything to go by. It was something to talk about when he got home.

  A very dead peace lily hit the trash but the job of completely emptying the refrigerator could wait—she had time to make the late yoga class and no fear of running into God’s gift to yoga since she no longer cared what he thought, was slightly embarrassed she ever had.

  Back at Jack’s place with Martha and a tub of frozen mango yogurt she’d earned by virtuous sweat and life-affirming contortion, she sat on the couch and checked the time. An hour until the print deadline. She itched to call Jack, but he hadn’t responded to texts and he was obviously busy and she didn’t want to be that girlfriend who was annoying.

  Calling home was a useful distraction.

  “Has he seen you ugly cry yet?” Mom asked.

  “No, but we had our first argument as a couple last night.”

  “Oh, you have to have those, honey.”

  “I know.” Mom and Dad had argued about dumb things all her life, like who moved the car, whose turn it was to unstack the dishwasher, but she knew they were happy together. “He’s uptight about a big story and a tough deadline and he got delayed coming home and the pizza was cold and Martha was being annoying, so he thought I hadn’t fed her and he got angry with me.”

  “And you told him right where he could put that tantrum.”

  “I did, but he already knew. He went out for a minute to cool off and when he got back it was as if he was frightened about how I’d react.”

  “How did you react?”

  “Hugged him and gave him pizza. He didn’t have a great family life, left on his own a lot. His parents are surgeons and he always came second to their careers. I guess he thought he didn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

  Saying that aloud made it obvious. Jack reacted as if he genuinely thought she’d leave him over a blowup that had nothing to do with how they felt about each other.

  “You okay, honey?” You couldn’t hide in silence on FaceTime.

  She wished Jack was here now and she could explain to him that knowing how insecure he was about them hurt more than his clickbait crack. “I only now realized how much Jack deserves to be loved and how little he understands that.” And how much she would love him to make up for what he’d missed out on.

  They talked about Jack’s shoulders and forearms next, in detail, and she got news from home and neither of them mentioned Ernest, and it was easier not to be sad about him forgetting her when the call ended, because Martha had made a surprise attack on her abandoned bowl of frozen yogurt and Derelie made the surprise discovery that cats get brain freeze.

  Martha’s tongue darted out and she took a bunch of quick licks of the melting yogurt before Derelie could snatch the bowl away. Martha’s mouth opened, her pink tongue stuck out and she stayed that way, her head cocked, her eyes wide, her ears flattened as her big body made like furry iceberg.

  “That’ll teach you.” Derelie could hardly get the words out for laughing. Ernest loved ice cream, but he’d never suffered brain freeze. “You’re a freak, Martha.”

  Martha came back to life, retracting her tongue, passing a paw over her mouth in disgust and retreating to a place of safety under Jack’s desk, where she gave Derelie narrow-eyed, cruel-hearted, “you’ll get yours” looks.

  As if on cue her cell rang—the ringtone she’d installed for Jack. Not quite the Oscar Mayer jingle, but a close approximation. He didn’t know about it yet. He’d pretend to be annoyed. “Hey, where are you?”

  “I’m standing behind a pillar at the Plaza watching Bob Bix and a dozen of the other doctors we suspect of being crooked drinking to
p-shelf liquor and patting each other on the back.”

  “It’s like when we watched Bix have dinner with Noakes and Whelan.”

  “They’re here too.”

  “You’re going to get your proof, but oh my God, Jack. Can you make the deadline?”

  “No, but I’ve got enough to convince Madden to give me until Monday. I talked him into pulling the mismanagement story. I’ll have to spend the weekend working on this. I’m going to get Bix. I’m going to get all of them.”

  “I’m so happy for you.”

  “I have to cut out. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  “I love you.” She’d tell him till he believed it in his bones.

  He made a sound that told him she’d taken him by surprise. “You’re sure it’s not just part of a fucked up experiment?”

  “If it is, I’m your forever lab rat.”

  The next sound he made might as well have been the audio that went with brain freeze. “Last night—”

  “If you apologize again I’ll get mad at you.” He would hear in her voice she was joking.

  “The way I feel about you scares the hell out of me.”

  “That’s what all the lab rats say. Tell me you love me and go catch the bad guys.”

  He told her he loved her in a tone deep with emotion, crackling with heat and wicked with the promise of one crazy good reunion.

  He didn’t make Friday’s editorial meeting but she sensed the moment he arrived in the office. She had no legitimate excuse to go to him and he didn’t spend long at his desk, disappearing into meeting rooms with Phil and the lawyer. It was difficult to concentrate on her own work.

  “I guess you’d already know about Haley’s scoop, some fraud story,” said Eunice, mid-afternoon.

  “What did you hear?” Oh yeah, she needed to work on her nonchalance. Almost leaping across the workstation partition at Eunice didn’t help with the “what’s it to me” attitude she was meant to be projecting.

  “Was in the elevator with Berkelow and one of the lawyers. Sounded big. Why are you smiling like that? It’s creepy.”

  Derelie rolled her lips to get rid of the overly enthusiastic smile. “Everyone loves a scoop.”

  “Not if it pushes your own story off the front page.”

  What did it mean if frolicking penguins or oily firemen could push a genuine news story off the front page and out of prime website real estate? It wasn’t the day to ruminate on that. There was green tea to reject in favor of coffee, because she’d never really enjoyed it, and deadlines to meet.

  And on the way to the break room there was Jack, appearing unexpectedly at the end of the corridor, on his way back from where she was going, with a steaming cup in his hand. He looked distracted, eyes down on his cell screen. There was no one else around, though the noise of the office was their soundtrack, and not a lot but hot coffee stopping her from running to meet him and throwing herself in his arms.

  She slowed her stride and let him draw closer, until they were almost at the point of passing each other. He looked up to check his progress and broke into a smile that squeezed her heart. That sudden joy was for her, a visual echo of what her own face must be doing. Another two steps each and they were face to face, but the corridor was no longer empty, people behind Jack, laughter behind her.

  He pocketed his cell and shifted his cup to the hand farthest from her, his eyes up briefly to whoever was going to interrupt them. “Anything interesting happen in the editorial meeting?”

  Everything interesting was happened here, in a service corridor that led to rooms where people did ordinary, everyday, unmemorable things. They used the bathroom, they washed their hands, and dithered over clothing, hair, teeth and makeup because nothing rang, beeped or screamed for attention there. They poured coffee and searched for the cookies that were plentiful this morning when their willpower was stronger but gone now when they were desperate for a pick-me-up.

  This corridor was for slices of downtime, for essential pit stops and stalling like her breath did. Everything in her body went on high alert because Jack was here, stealing her attention, robbing her of the willpower to walk on, close enough to touch, to smell the sweet cloves from his smokes, but wired to detonate her career in ways neither of them wanted.

  “Nothing interesting happened.” Except her whole life was somehow rammed into this stuttering moment where the office, the job, the city, her decision to build a bigger life, fell away and there was nothing but what she could be with Jack.

  That laughter was right behind her now and the mailroom trolley was lumbering its way toward Jack.

  “Good to know,” he said, weight shifting as he moved to pass by, his arm brushing hers, the back of his hand grazing over the back of hers, eyes warm behind their frames licking softly over her face and then going blank to meet the world again. She turned her hand and he did too, their fingertips glancing before he stepped clear.

  Derelie reeled in his wake, looking at the floor to hide her expression. Anyone could tell she was love struck.

  From behind, “Hi, Jack.”

  “Tomas, Samar.” Jack’s voice, strong with a side of amusement.

  From in front, “Did you drop something?”

  Eyes up on the mailroom guy. “A button, I thought.” She patted her shirtfront. “No, no. It’s fine.” She stepped around the trolley and went to the break room, face hot and blood hotter.

  When she got back to her desk there was a text from Jack. You’re the headline in my heart.

  She responded, Derelie Loves Jack. Verily, merrily. No clickbait. She put hearts at both ends of the phrases.

  He came back with, Sub head: Jack Can’t Believe His Luck.

  And then she got an email from Phil. See me.

  She knew her way to Phil’s office well now. Knew to wait in his doorway until he motioned for her to enter. Knew not to bother sitting in one of his guest chairs because it was more efficient not to.

  He motioned; she stepped inside his glass-walled office. “Do the love story with Artie Chan.”

  “Ah, okay. I almost have it with Jack.” Almost, nearly, maybe. She grimaced. They were words she’d tried to eliminate from her vocabulary when dealing with Phil, because they were hesitant and cautious, and the only word Phil wanted to hear was yes and its variations—got it, exclusive, most clickable.

  Phil looked up from his screen. He didn’t look annoyed. “I should never have pushed Haley on that. It was a dick move. Don’t bother him about it. I’m sorry I wasted your time. Start again with Artie. Get video. Get marketing involved.”

  The signal to noise ratio in what Phil, a man of as few words as possible, said, fixed her to the spot in close to the same way she’d been a magnet stuck on Jack in the corridor. “Did you—?”

  “Yeah, don’t get used to it. Apologies give me gas.”

  “I’ll do the love experiment with Artie.”

  “And don’t...” Phil made a crude gesture for what he didn’t want her doing with Artie. “Now get out.”

  Phil was never going to be her favorite person, but he’d given her a chance and there was no malice behind his brusqueness. She knew who he was now, a big old porch dog, lots of bark, would growl at you if you got out of line, best left alone to do what he enjoyed, snooze in the sun, only Phil’s version of snoozing was putting out a daily newspaper. If you respected him, waited for the right moment, he’d roll over and let you pat his belly, and so long as you didn’t sleep with him, he’d be as loyal a friend as you could ever need.

  And despite her affection for Martha, Derelie had always been a dog person.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for lacking imagination. Henry Ford went broke trying to sell cars. Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime. Albert Einstein was
a miserable student, but famous for his genius.

  Bob Bix would become infamous overnight for ripping off millions of honest American accident victims when Jack’s story ran.

  Two hours before press time, Sunday night, and Roscoe couldn’t stop grinning. “Keepsafe will still come at us, but we’re ready. Eh, it’ll mostly be posturing.” He rubbed his hands together. Legal posturing was Friday Night Football for Roscoe. “You have the whole money trail direct to Bix’s own pocket. He’ll be jobless by lunchtime.”

  “We’ll need the next day’s follow-up story, and what do we do about your source?” asked Madden. “Is he profile potential?”

  Henri Costa had a rough week since that last meet up. His supervisor discovered the same statistical problem Henri had first picked up on and brought to Jack, but instead of being in Bix’s pocket and a threat as Henri feared, he’d enabled Henri to get access to the information Jack needed. All Henri wanted now was his old, secure, not very exciting job in a company that treated policyholders fairly.

  “No. He’s keen to stick to his anonymity.” Madden grunted, and Jack understood why; whistleblower stories made good copy. “But we’ve got a dozen juicy case studies with victims that will make Bix and his cronies look like the pieces of shit they are.”

  “Right, we’re done then.” Madden pointed at Jack. “Get some sleep, you’ve got a long day Monday.”

  Another one, but this time he’d be telling the story, not working on it. Breakfast radio, newsbreaks during the day and a TV spot in the evening.

  “The case studies are Berkelow’s work.” He wanted to make sure she got credit for her contribution.

  Madden acknowledged that with a nod, and ten minutes later Jack was on the street making his way home. He needed to iron a week’s worth of shirts. He needed to drop into bed and not fall asleep while Derelie was talking to him. He was still unsure what he’d done to earn her forgiveness and acceptance. It gave him emotional vertigo every time she said she loved him, and she’d said it often since the night he’d been foul with her, but instead of being reassuring, it made him uncomfortable, like he was part of an experiment that could only end in creating a disease, not finding a cure.