When I can breathe again, I try to move, but Jack’s body on top of me keeps me down. I shift around beneath him. I even say, “C’mon,” trying to get him off me. Seriously, I want to get up and run a marathon or ski down a mountain or go out for a Hail Mary on fourth and long. I’m THAT pumped. “Fuckin' A, man, get off me.”
Using his arms, he levers his torso off me and looks at me. “You curse a lot.”
“So?” I say, trying to get up for real this time, but he’s still pinning my thighs, immobilizing my strongest asset.
“It's lazy to curse all the time. Can't you think of anything smarter to say? And a better way to say it?”
“Hey,” I retort. “I was on the speech and debate team in college. I even took first place in my very first competition.”
“So, I’m right. It
is
just laziness.” He pulls himself off me.
“I guess it
is
lazy,” I concede, pulling up my panties and leggings. “But I like to spend my energy on
other
things.”
Jack zips himself up. “I thought you didn’t want to be average anymore.”
My head whips up as I’m fumbling with the jumpsuit around my ankles. I just alluded to what we—and he said—
“
Average
?” I choke out.
“Anyone can curse.”
Average
? AVERAGE?
We just HAD SEX and he called me
average
. I’m going to…going to…die, I think. But not in front of him. “That’s what makes this country great,” I note as I straighten up, zipping myself back together again. “Anyone can curse however much they want. Fuckin' liberty.”
Jack turns away from me. Without another word, he goes over to gather his parachute.
I bend down to gather up mine. “Why do you even care about my freaking language?”
“It’s just another thing about you that annoys the hell out of me.”
“Dude, you came to me with the offer, even
after
you knew I annoyed you, so suck it up.” I walk toward him, feeling buffered by the mess of parachute in my arms. “What were we testing today, anyway?”
“A camera in my helmet. A lot of consumers complain that helmet cameras wobble, so we’ve been working on stabilizing—”
“You fuckhead! That’s not beginner gear! You made me jump just so you could laugh at me! You are SUCH A DICK!”
“And
you’re
a bitch.” He folds his parachute with flag-like precision. “But I guess you think that’s okay now that you have all that money.”
“What? How am I a bitch?”
“For one, you just called me a fuckhead. And a dick. All for giving you what you wanted.”
“
Giving me what I wanted
?”
“You
said
you wanted to do scary stuff!”
Good God, he's already completely forgotten that we just had sex. Really average, forgettable sex.
Jack comes at me and tries to take my chute from me, but I yank it back.
“What the fuck?” he demands, trying to take the parachute off me.
I shove the whole mess at him. “Why do you have to be so mean?”
He doesn’t answer as he untangles the carnation and magenta mass of material.
I tighten my jaw. “You are such—”
“Who paid your hospital bills?” he asks, cutting me off.
This question throws me, so I answer it. “They did. Burger Barn.”
“
Other
than the however many millions of dollars they settled on you?”
I refuse to feel shame or embarrassment over my settlement. “Yes.” I barely open my mouth to grind out the word.
“What else did they give you? Pay your living expenses while you were in the coma? Your parents’? Keith’s?”
“Yes!” I shout. “Their restaurant fell on my car! With me in it! Don’t you get it?”
“What I get is that they paid for their mistake, long before they even made the settlement.”
“Mistake? Is that what you call it?”
“That’s what it
was
. What do your millions have to do with what happened?”
I grab one end of the parachute to help him straighten it out. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this jerk take care of me. “How is this even your business?” I ask. “And anyway, does it really matter who has the evil money, me or them?”
He just looks at me a few seconds. “I think it does.”
“Why?”
He walks toward me, then takes the ends of the chute I’m holding.
“Why did they even have that much money lying around to give you?” Jack demands. “Why don’t they use their billions to pay their workers a decent wage? There’s so much money in the world and it’s in all the wrong places. In the hands of the wrong people.”
“But my hands are good hands.” I actually look down at my splayed palms. “I’m going to do something good with that money. Something that counts.”
“That’s why you’re working at HEYA?”
“It’s a start.”
“I don’t suppose you’re doing that because you feel guilty for having the money in the first place?”
“No.”
He picks up both chutes, barely acknowledging me.
“Don’t you get it?” I demand. “You’ve talked to me. You’ve seen how I live, heard how I used to live. How can you not understand that I’m trying to fix my life?”
He still says nothing, acknowledges nothing.
“Jack—”
“Here comes the jeep.”
I look toward the horizon and see a yellow range rover. I turn back to Jack but he looks so... flinty, like anything I say will just spark right off him and ricochet back to burn me in the eye. I can tell he doesn’t think my piddly life is worthy of so much money.
“Besides,” I blurt, “what’s wrong with doing things out of guilt?”
He looks up at me. “I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
“I’m serious.”
He turns around and walks toward the approaching truck, as if he’s going to meet it half way. “I
know
.”
I talk to his back. “I mean it. What’s wrong with trying to do good things because you feel guilty? If you’ve messed up, and you can never fix what you screwed up in the first place, why not do good things and live a better life because you’re sorry and you don’t want to mess up again?”
He turns to me, his stare boring into me like that earbug in
Wrath of Khan
. “Money can’t fix things like that. It can cause pain, but it can’t take it away like a goddamn Swiffer.”
“A. Money can fix a lot of things. B. How do you know what a Swiffer is?”
“I own a house,” he says. “And I clean it when it gets dirty.”
My forehead bunches up. “You don’t have a maid? I thought everyone in L.A.—”
“I’m only one guy and I can clean up after myself,” he says. “And guess what else? I do my own laundry.”
I know I should try to come up with some witty retort, but I’m so befuddled at the thought of Jack measuring out fabric softener that I honestly can’t speak.
* * * * *
When Jack drops me back at my place less than an hour later, I’m starving. I figure he must be, too. “How ‘bout something to eat?” I can tell he’s going to say No. Maybe No Way. “I’ve got some fried chicken that Dolly brought over last night.”
Jack opens his mouth as if he’s about to diss me. Then he looks at me. “Wait. I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I’m
trying
,” I tell him. “But it’s fried chicken, made by a woman who grew up in Alabama. And besides, she gave it to me as a present, and I don’t want to be rude.”
Jack juts his jaw, thinking. “Genuine Southern Fried Chicken?” He says it with such reverence.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Fair enough. I’m in.”
We both race out of the truck then charge through the front door. But on the way to the kitchen, I stop. The answering machine is blinking at me.
Weird.
Very few people have my number. Pretty much just Jack. And Jack is right here.
Jack sees me walk cautiously up to the machine. “It’s a pretty new, untested invention,” he says, “but I’m almost positive it won’t bite you.”
I just stare down at the blinking light. “You’re here,” I say, trying to explain my confusion. “No one else has my number. I mean, I put it on the paperwork at HEYA, but...”
Jack comes up to me. “Do you think they’ve found you?” There’s such concern in his voice, concern that the big, bad media might be out to take embarrassing pictures of me again, that I feel like a wimp.
I tear my eyes from the hypnotic light and look at him. “I doubt anyone’s even looking,” I say on a laugh. “I guess I’ve just gotten used to my little cocoon.”
“Lisa, you just jumped out of a plane. You can push the button.”
“Of course I can,” I chirp back quickly. “It’s probably just Lupe.” I keep smiling at him and nodding, until I realize I actually have to push the damn thing.
So I put my finger on the button, close my eyes, and press.
Beeeeep
.
“Hi,” Manny’s voice greets. Wasn’t that nice of him to agree to do this for me? “Leave a message.
Ruff ruff! Arf
!” I like that I was even able to get Aaron and Christian to harmonize at the end of the greeting. It makes the message really say, “I’m a tough guy with big dogs, so back off!”
The message begins. “Cripes, Lisa.”
Good God, it’s Maggot-Face. Her voice is in my house. Yuuuuck.
“Are you trying to sound like Tattoo from
Fantasy Island
? Because I can tell it’s you. That’s really lame. Anyway, after Paris, Rick and I got married in Italy, so I just wanted to let you know. We’re registered at Pottery Barn, Brookstone and Nordstrom, plus you can find a list of our favorite boutiques at maggieandrickinsomuchlove.com. Bye.”
Beeeep
.
When the message ends, my breathing pumps so hard it makes this echoey, raspy sound. I’m pretty sure there’s also fire coming out of my ears.
“Your sister, I take it?”
“I HATE KEITH!”
“Lisa.” Jack’s voice is quiet, so I ignore him.
Huff, heeee, huff, heeee
-
“Lisa,” he says again.
Huff, huff, huff, huff
-
“Lisa?”
I turn to look at him, so mad that I don’t even care that tears gush down my face.
Jack lifts his hands and allows them to hover, one above each of my shoulders for a few seconds, before he sighs, and lowers them so he’s touching me. “You know, Lisa, marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
I fling his hands from my shoulders. “I know that! Is that what you think? That I’m mad at Keith because he didn’t marry me? Well, seeing that he didn’t even love me I’d say it’s a pretty good thing that he didn’t marry me!”
“Lisa….”
“That
bastard
is giving out my phone number!”
Jack snaps out of shoulder-to-lean-on mode. “What?”
I stride across the living room, kicking empty moving boxes. “When I first moved in, I called Keith.” I turn back to Jack. “It was stupid, I know. I was lonely and depressed and I had a box of his stuff . What a lame excuse! Like what? He’s going to want his Deep Blue Something CD back? I wasn’t even thinking about caller ID. Then
he
called
me
a few days later to tell me to trash the stuff. That's when I realized he had my number.”
“Maybe he won’t—”
“Don’t you get it?” I throw myself down on the couch and look up at him. “My family called Keith, and he gave them my number. None of them were supposed to have it. This is my castle. My island. My Helena.” I sit panting.
“Helena?” Jack echoes.
“The island. Napoléon?”
“You mean
Saint
Helena?”
“I don’t care. Whatever. I don’t want my family here. They’re talking behind my back to work their way in.”
Jack sits next to me as I slump against the back of the couch.
“They don’t even like me,” I say, “but they won’t leave me alone. Why can’t they just leave me alone?”
“Because you’re the runt.”
“Excuse me?”
“Everyone has a role in a family.” His hand moves toward my head, lingers, then musses my hair like I’m a kid. “Regardless of who you become or how you grow, your family sees you in your role. You’re the runt, the one everyone else gangs up on. That’s not going to change just because you’ve become a millionaire.” He pauses. “And made them all millionaires, too.”
I turn my head to look at him. “You know about that?”
“I figured it out.”
“They were so intent on getting that money,” I say. A shaky sob rattles out of me, catching me off guard. “Just hours after I woke up.”
I see a muscle in Jack’s jaw jump, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to hear my pathetic story and I don’t want to tell it.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s just that, I don’t want them in my life anymore.”
“They’re your family. It won’t be so easy to shake them off.”
“So?” I challenge. “I don’t HAVE to include them in my life if I don't want to.”
“So, tell them that. Confront them. Make them understand exactly where you stand.”
I bolt up from the couch and turn to stand over him. “Confront them? Am I hearing right?
You’re
giving me advice about how to handle my family? Are you
kidding
me? You with the mother made of snots and snails?”
Jack stands to face me. “Lisa, you’re the one who wants me to make you braver.”
“I’m not scared of my family!”
“Bull.” He doesn’t raise his voice or even blink. “Everyone’s scared of their family.”
I close my mouth. Really? Is that true? Everyone? Even Mags? And Mom? And Jack?
“Well,” I finally say, “that’s not the kind of courage I’m after. Not from you anyway.” I flounce away from him into the kitchen.
“Yes, it is.”
The stony resolution of his voice stops me in my tracks. I hear him walking up behind me. “It’s all the same, Lisa. The courage it takes to jump out of a plane isn’t so different from the courage it takes to tell your family who you really are.”
I turn to him. “How profound, Jack. Really. I’m touched by your sensitivity. But there’s a difference between physical courage and emotional courage.”
“Not really,” he says, standing there with each hand on opposite sides of the doorjamb into the kitchen.
So here I stand, practically enveloped in Jack’s wingspan. Suddenly, I remember we had sex a little over an hour ago. But that’s just so impossible.