The Love Experiment Read online

  Relaxed and friendly where Jack was intense, fun where Jack was reserved, ambitious but not to a fault, and secure in his choices where Jack was conflicted. Artie was the control group. He proved the experiment worked, that thirty-six questions answered honestly and an unnerving stare-off contest could create intimacy.

  But they weren’t enough to make you fall in love.

  They both wrote their impressions from the exercise, and the story was scheduled to appear, while Derelie learned the basics of throwing a punch at the gym, Spin taught her how to drink beer like a pro journalist and lunch with Annie became a regular thing.

  She bought a new plant for the window ledge in her shoebox apartment and remembered how to grocery shop for one. The city seemed louder, dirtier, faster, though that couldn’t be real. There were no more or less stars in the sky than there had been when she was with Jack, it’s just that he’d stopped her from feeling the need to note their absence.

  She didn’t call Jack. He didn’t text her. His name got taken off the internal email and messenger systems. Stories he’d written were slowly on their way to a digital archive and his dinkus no longer appeared anywhere.

  There was little satisfaction that hers did.

  None of that made it easier to forget how alive she’d felt when Jack’s guard had come crashing down, when he’d teased her, made her laugh, let her into his life and shown he cared for her. At night, she hugged the red pillow she’d bought for his couch as if that might make not having his arms to fall into, his lips to tempt her feel less tragic. That pillow soaked up tears as well, not over Jack, over the fact Ernest had most definitely forgotten her forever.

  That was the lie she told herself.

  It didn’t help.

  On top of it all, she missed cuddling Martha.

  She could only be grateful she hadn’t given Jack her ugly tears, because he wouldn’t have known what to do with them.

  She fitted in the city now, knew its rhythm and grind, felt secure at work despite regretting she could be a news headline. “Ten Easy Ways to be a Loser at Love.” Her heart might hurt, but that’s what living a bigger life was about: operating beyond your comfort zone, stretching yourself and overcoming obstacles, buying nice clothes, thinking outside the box, dumping yoga because you really hated the peaceful resistance of it, having straight teeth and not needing your aligner anymore, eating all the ice cream in the world and feeling sorry for yourself.

  The one thing she was proud of was that nothing about losing Jack made her want to tuck her tail under, ditch the city and head for the familiarity of home. She was home, even if it was less cozy, less exciting than it had been when it included Jack.

  And that was her new normal until her email delivered an unexpected story. It was headlined: You Won’t Believe What Happened When I Did a Love Experiment.

  That made her want put to her fledgling punching skills to use. You couldn’t get on with getting over a person if he was going to show up suddenly in your inbox.

  She didn’t have to read it.

  But he’d clickbaited her.

  It started:

  Recently I had an epiphany. It happened fittingly at church and it hit me like a power-packed right cross.

  She knew what that meant. Jack had been putting his fists to use.

  It will seem like a small thing when I tell you about it. It seems ridiculous when you know my life’s work has been about helping others who had no voice to help themselves.

  The bastard had written this ready to drop into a feature again. The last time he’d done that, she’d met his Jesus jeans and Martha. She’d surprised him into answering questions and they’d kissed without pretending it wasn’t for the sheer pleasure of it. But she’d asked him a final question and he’d answered it. He didn’t love her, and what she’d thought was real was a lie and there was nothing more to say.

  My name is Jackson Haley. I’m an investigative reporter. I like to ask questions and hunt for the answers. I’m owned by a large, rambunctious, freedom-seeking cat. I’m addicted to clove cigarettes. They’re going to kill me and I’m trying to give them up. I’m currently unemployed and as a consequence of not knowing how to be loved, I lost the love of my life.

  Except maybe that. She was helpless not to read on.

  It started with an experiment and considerable masculine posturing. The idea was to test out a questionnaire designed to develop intimacy. The theory being that thirty-six questions could kickstart a relationship and lead to love. I wasn’t a willing participant.

  Since I spend my time writing about crime, nefarious practices and wrongdoing, call me a cynic about love. My partner in this exercise called me other names, some not suitable to print, and she was right. She was also generous and clever and wise and heroic and, Jesus toast, I was attracted to her from the moment we met, falling for her by question two (Would you like to be famous?) and in love with her by question five (When did you last sing to yourself?).

  And by the time we talked about our greatest hopes and fears, she was in love with me.

  We answered thirty-six questions, looked deeply into each other’s eyes and had an emotional reaction, and then we strayed outside the boundaries of the lab to kiss, and it was chemical, and the rest as they say is swoon.

  [Insert swoon meme visual, gif or video link here]

  Apart from that editorial instruction, which was presumptuous and so very Jack, Derelie was unshakably engaged in the story, eyeballs locked, attention loaded.

  But then I messed it up. I ran into some career challenges, in that my career fell off a cliff and I was too much of a man, which is to say, stupid, to ask for help. I became the guy who makes decisions for other people on the basis of what works best for himself. I told the love of my life she was better off without me and I put conditions on how I loved her in return.

  As you might imagine, she had little incentive not to agree with my ugly stubborn heart and moved out of my life without a backward glance. Told you she was smart.

  I didn’t know a home until she was in my life, and no one told me the immensity of that would rock my world. I cratered it by asking her to leave.

  It took thirty-six questions to find her and only one to let her go.

  Oh, Jack.

  Maybe we weren’t meant to be. She is a dog person, after all. She has no reason to give me a second chance.

  I’ll admit I’m rattled. That’s how I felt when faced with the experiment. I didn’t think I had much other than my work that would interest anyone else. I didn’t want to share the details of my life in case they proved a disappointment. I didn’t have anything to lose then, and still reluctance was the foot I led with. I have a whole new vision of what my life could be now, and rattled is too simple a word to express how that makes me feel. My crisis of the heart is more terrifying than my career crisis ever could be.

  I’m not usually a quitter. In fact, I’ve had more than five minutes of fame based on fighting for people who’ve been disadvantaged. This time I’m fighting for me. I’ve got a question to ask this wonderful woman, and depending on what she says I might get a second chance at love.

  What? It ended there. A cliffhanger. There had to be more. She scrolled and there was nothing until his email signature, above which was the line:

  You Won’t Believe What Happens When She Meets Him at Their Picnic Spot in the Park Today at Five. (Text Y/N to confirm.)

  She stared at the screen. She wasn’t meeting him in the park today. She wasn’t cutting out early so he could pull this elaborate stunt. She didn’t fight for Jack because it wasn’t her job to teach him how to be loved. He had to want what she could give or she would burn herself out on him.

  He was a cat person. He’d dumped her, insulted her, made a fool of her. It’d been fun while it lasted, but all good things come to a clichéd end and no
amount of being clever and cute could make her forget that. Besides, she was busy. She wasn’t open to being manipulated like this. Clickbait while you were at your desk looking at a screen was one thing, exploring it in real life made no sense.

  It was safer, more considered to stay right where she was.

  And if she’d followed that advice she’d still be in Orderly, home of the white squirrel, and the Orderly Daily Mail, where the most exciting thing that’d happened to her was a drunken entanglement with a barbwire fence and a sordid affair with a probably married salesman.

  She picked up her phone, opened Jack’s number, typed in one letter and pressed send.

  An hour later she walked into the park with no idea what to say if Jack asked her to come back to him, because not only had he been quick and brutal in ending their relationship, if he was going to move to New York or Washington or the moon, it made no sense to follow him when she was doing well in Chicago. She couldn’t trust him enough for that.

  She’d only texted Y because she wanted to see him again, wish him luck without the anger of their parting. Kiss him one last time in memory of the way his kisses had made her feel.

  But then the dog happened.

  Jack stood under their tree in the park with a dog that looked a lot like Ernest. A tan and white hound who took one look at her and nearly pulled Jack’s arm off trying to get to her and then almost pushed her over when he did.

  He jumped and squirmed and whined and licked and wriggled and put his paws and his back all over her, shedding fur and slobbering. It couldn’t be. She grabbed his collar to check his tag, and he smashed his nose under her chin, making her bite her tongue. It was Ernest, all the way from Orderly, and he did remember her. He remembered her so damn hard he stung her shins with his whipping tail.

  She pressed her face into his coat. “What are you doing here, Ernie?” He barked when she said his name. “Did you miss me, boy? I missed you so much. I thought you forgot me. I thought you didn’t love me anymore.” That was met with more excited whining and a big wet lick to her cheek. “You’re such a good boy. My good boy.”

  She looked up to see what her other boy was doing while her hands were full of Ernest’s ecstasy.

  Jack kept a respectable distance, stood watching, wearing jeans and a white business shirt with the collar undone, with his hands in the pockets of his beaten leather coat. He wore a new pair of glasses that would’ve made him look as Old Hollywood glamorous as the last pair had if his face wasn’t scraped and his eyes weren’t sunk in dark bruises.

  That was evidence of his epiphany at the Church of the Cocked Fist.

  And Ernest was proof he’d been to Orderly, found out where she grew up and met her parents. That couldn’t have gone well. It was possible the black eyes didn’t come from church.

  “You met my parents?”

  “They said to say hello.” She motioned to his eyes and he said, “Courtesy of St. Longinus. Your dad thought it was bad form to hit a guy who was already hurt.”

  She almost smiled at that. She almost did an Ernest and rushed Jack, slobbered all over him. “Why is Ernest here?” Ernest barked and slumped against her, his head lolling on her thigh.

  “Because I’m a coward and I could use all the help I can get.”

  “You’re using my dog as leverage.” And her insult as a peace offering. Jack wasn’t a coward, but he might not have a tolerance for love.

  He took a couple of steps toward her and put his hand to Ernest’s head. “I tried using my cat and that got me nowhere.”

  She shouldn’t want Jack to be touching her instead of her dog. “I appreciate you bringing Ernest and writing another installment of the love experiment story, but it’s all too late. I did the experiment with Artie.”

  He blinked hard, his head jerking up. “Did you fall in love with him in thirty-six questions?”

  “You don’t get to ask that.” He took that with a sharp nod. “You can read the story with everyone else next week. Why am I here, Jack?”

  “Because I have a last question for you and I wanted to get the conditions right before I asked it. It’s not perfect, but there are trees and some early stars, and you can pretend not to hear the city. I think Ernest scared all the birds away, but he’s here at least and I’m staking my reputation as an investigative reporter on him being part of your perfect day.”

  Jack’s question was going to shake her safety and challenge her caution. Her limbic system was on red alert, breaking news all over her body, fear and desire and excitement and anger and pleasure and wanting, so much wanting.

  “I love you. I didn’t stop loving you when I pushed you away. I didn’t understand how much you could ask of love, how much you could receive.”

  His question was going to wreck her in a way his story had made her resolve fray.

  “I quit on us because I was afraid to lean on you and forgot the first thing I learned about you.”

  That she was a rookie and not cut out for the “if it bleeds, it leads” of journalism. That she was too green for the rough and tough, an imposter in the city.

  “Your strength.”

  She looked down at Ernest, at Jack’s hand resting on his head. He’d made her feel small and worthless when he pushed her away. He made hope tremble in her now.

  “From the first day you stood up for yourself and the love experiment, I knew you had grit, and look at what you’ve done since then.”

  Professionally, she’d kicked ass. She put her hand on Ernest’s back. Personally, she’d been cut back, sold out. “I lost you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Jack slid his fingers over hers. Ernest used their movements to lie at their feet. “I had to find myself before I could keep you.”

  “What does that mean?” Other than the terrifying painful, expectant thudding of her heart.

  “I’m staying in the city. I’ve found a way to keep working and the Courier is going to defend me from Keepsafe.”

  “I’m glad,” and she didn’t disguise it, letting him see her smile. “But I didn’t love you for the work you did or your face on the TV, or the money you have in the bank.”

  “I didn’t understand that. No one has ever loved me for being me. I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I wanted you to shine. I didn’t want you to be a footnote in anyone’s life.”

  She put her hand to the collar of Jack’s coat. If he was wearing a tag she’d check it. She’d want to read on it that his name was Jackson Haley and his home was with Derelie Honeywell and anyone who found him should return him to her immediately. There’d be a reward.

  “Ask your question.” She already had her answer. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she’d come back to him. Yes, to Ernest and Martha, and working life out together.

  “Will you do a new experiment with me?”

  She tugged on his collar till he brought his face close, and he pulled her into his body heat. Their eyes locked. His said he missed her, he needed her, he loved her and her answer terrified him.

  “On one condition.”

  “Name it.” He kissed those words against her temple and it would be too easy to forget what she had to say, except they’d be nothing together without it.

  “Trust me to love you.”

  He let go a long-held sigh. Held for minutes, days, weeks, years. “My most perfect day is the one where Derelie Honeywell agrees to be with me while I work out who Jackson Haley is when he’s in love, where we never stop asking questions and giving answers, where we disagree as thoroughly as we make up.” He put a hand to her hair and smoothed it. “Derelie Honeywell, will you do the love experiment with me for the rest of our lives?”

  A lifetime of investigating each other, a lifetime of moments too good to look away from, too interesting not to share, repeat and share again. Every metric through the roof and no b
uyouts. A lifetime of cats and dogs and hugs and kisses and making each other laugh and cry, no matter where they lived or worked. This was Jack embracing his whole life. This was Derelie’s big adventure, her new place in the wider world.

  “Yes. Yes.” Front page exclusive, hold the presses, add the visuals, assign a URL, load the page. “Yes.”

  Stars in each other’s skies, sunlight on each other’s hopes and dreams, passion pure like birdsong, love as clean as fresh air and laughter like an overexcited hound.

  Who knew you could get to love in thirty-six questions and grab it forever with one more?

  You’ll never believe what happens when two estranged lovers meet in the park, but it was swoon-worthy clickbait and hard news wrapped together, and they lived happily ever after.

  * * * * *

  About the Thirty-Six Questions

  The thirty-six questions that can make you fall in love with anyone (according to the New York Times) began life as an appendix in an academic paper by psychologist Arthur Aron and others in 1997 called The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.

  Participants were told to work their way through the questions in order, each answering all thirty-six questions, over a period of an hour. Six months later, two of the original participants were married to each other.

  Others who’ve recorded their experiences with the thirty-six questions included a four-minute session of staring into their partner’s eyes without speaking. It’s colloquially known as a stare off.

  The original paper included the following instruction from the authors:

  “This is a study of interpersonal closeness, and your task, which we think will be quite enjoyable, is to simply get close to your partner.”