Still dazed, Jess said, “He said it might happen again.”
“Well, hallelujah!” Laila responded with enthusiasm.
Jess wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened here tonight, but she was pretty sure a few choruses of hallelujahs were definitely in order.
What she didn’t know was what on earth could possibly happen next. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any more surprising than that kiss.
5
Kissing Jess had been everything Will had expected it to be and then some. Not even in his very vivid imagination had he expected such an immediate and total sensation of something being right, something finally, at long last, being exactly as it should be. And that scared him to death.
He was smart enough to know that he’d caught Jess completely off guard. Her emotions had been running high. She’d been a little drunk as well, and he’d taken advantage of the situation. It was a simple matter to turn one kind of passion into another. Any psychology textbook could have told him that. It didn’t mean Jess’s opinion of him had suddenly shifted. It certainly didn’t guarantee she’d turn her back on years of dismissing him and suddenly see him as boyfriend material.
But despite his very stern reminders to remain cautious, he couldn’t help thinking that just maybe the dazed look in her eyes had told another story. He hoped it meant she’d suddenly seen him in a new light. Maybe the kiss had been the start of something, after all.
Or not. As he waffled back and forth, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know which way things were truly leaning. Not just yet, anyway.
Stop with the analyzing, he told himself. Right now he wanted to bask in the sensations that kiss had aroused in him. He didn’t want to do what was instinctive to him and analyze it to death, or to risk running into Jess and having her shatter his fragile hope that their relationship might be on a whole new footing.
In a move clearly designed to avoid any chance encounters, he hunkered down in his office during the day and in his condo at night. Despite the obvious reasons for his behavior, he managed to convince himself that he was behind on his case notes, that he needed to catch up on the business of running Lunch by the Bay. Deep in denial, he even made a case for telling himself that he wasn’t hiding out, not from his own emotions and certainly not from Jess.
Still, after several days of not following his usual routine or answering phone calls from his friends, he wasn’t all that surprised to answer his door one night and find Mack on his doorstep.
“You’ve skipped lunch for three days running,” Mack said, looking him up and down. “You haven’t called me or Jake back.”
“You can’t have been too worried, given how long it took you to come and check on me,” Will noted.
Mack merely frowned at the comment. “You don’t look sick, so what’s going on?”
“I got behind on my paperwork,” Will told him.
Mack didn’t look as if he believed him, but he was already wandering around the apartment with a distracted expression that told Will something else entirely had brought him over here tonight.
“Is something on your mind?” Will asked him.
“Not really,” Mack said. “You have any beer in this place?”
“Always,” Will responded, barely concealing his amusement. Since they’d been of legal age and he’d had his own place, he’d always kept beer on hand for Jake and Mack. “Help yourself.”
“You want one?”
Will shook his head. “I’m good.”
Mack returned with his beer, but he still didn’t sit. He continued to pace, pausing only to stare out the window at the sliver of a view Will had of the bay. When he sighed heavily, Will couldn’t stand it any longer.
“How’s Susie?” Will asked, feeling his way.
Mack shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“What do you mean, you guess? Haven’t you seen her?”
“Yesterday,” Mack said. “She was fine, then. I haven’t spoken to her today.”
Will knew all about being patient when one of his clients was dancing around a tough issue, but in his personal life he tended to be more direct. He hated watching Mack working so hard not to say whatever was on his mind.
“You know,” he began, “we could play twenty questions for a while and eventually I’d hit on whatever’s bugging you, but it would be easier if you’d just tell me.”
Mack stood across the room, his back to Will, still staring out the window. “Susie asked me something yesterday that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.”
“Something about your relationship?”
“No, we were talking about newspapers, you know, the way they’re struggling, that kind of thing.”
“Okay,” Will said slowly, still not following. “And?”
“She asked me what I’d do if I ever lost my job as a columnist for the paper in Baltimore.”
Will stared at him. “You think your job’s on the line?” he asked, startled. No wonder Mack looked shaken.
Mack’s column was one of the most popular in the paper, as far as Will knew. The guy’s picture was plastered all over bus benches in Baltimore, for heaven’s sake.
Mack had gone from being a celebrated local athlete to writing about sports in a town that loved its teams. He was as much of a celebrity now as he had been on the gridiron during his all-too-brief professional career. It was one of the reasons he was such an eligible bachelor and why Will and Jake both thought it was so astounding that he’d given up all those fawning women in exchange for a relationship with Susie that he refused to define.
“My job’s secure,” Mack said, though he still looked troubled. “At least for now. But I can’t deny that the business is changing.” He turned and faced Will. “What the hell would I do if I lost it?”
“You’d find something else,” Will said confidently. “Remember when you blew out your knee and ended your football career? You
