Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(6)
As if Jack can feel the cold wind blowing off my heart, his eyes rise to where I’m fuming in the doorway. It’s now I remember I look like a . . . what did she call me? . . . a wet goat. I can see my bangs curling up oddly around my brows, and the rest of my hair is a damp mass pressing down like a muggy bog on my shoulders.
He lifts a taunting eyebrow as if to say Do you need something?
Oh, that damn expression. I’ve had to see it since Jackson and I attended the same private college just outside Rome, Kentucky. We got off on the wrong foot immediately. As the story goes, it was our first day, and I was already running late after waking up to a flat tire. I was hurrying to English Composition 101, and when I turned the corner, I was barreled into by Jack, who had been looking down at his phone while practically jogging with a coffee. The lid popped off and the drink drenched my shirt.
Jack had the audacity to try and spin the moment into some kind of meet-cute, flashing his charming smile and offering to take me out for a coffee after class to make up for it. But (A) I was fresh out of a breakup that had destroyed me and left me with zero desire to interact with anyone in possession of a penis, and (B) showing up late to class and with a huge coffee stain was what my nightmares were made of. I remember saying something to him along the lines of You think hitting on me is an appropriate apology for dumping coffee all over me?
As it turned out, we were headed to the same class. We stumbled inside and both made a beeline for the last available seat near the front, and we fought over it. The bickering match started in a heated whisper (where he said he would offer the seat to me but wouldn’t want to risk me thinking he was hitting on me) and escalated to a crescendo that disrupted the entire class, earning us both a glare from the professor and a sharp retort about how this was college, and if we were going to act like children, we should return to high school. I was humiliated.
The absolute worst of it, though, is that Jack immediately smiled at the professor, apologized, and then cracked a joke about how we had heard that the lectures were so incredible we were willing to fight to get a good seat. The professor ate it up hook, line, and sinker. He waved us off, then told Jack to take the seat and pointed to one in the back for me.
The rest is history.
Jack and I competed our way through college, and since we were after the same degree, we had frustratingly similar course schedules. Everywhere I turned, Jack seemed to be there with a smile and self-deprecating jokes that earned him the love of everyone in the room. Even when I got a job at the smoothie shop by campus, I walked in on my first day only to find Jack already behind the counter wearing the Go Bananas hat. He got the manager job a few weeks later because the customers loved him, whereas I got complaints for being too rude when they’d ask me to remake a smoothie (that was made perfectly the first time but really they were just gaming the system for a free smoothie).
Everything became an opportunity to beat the other person, from jobs, to grades, to friend groups—everything all the way down to parking spaces. Anyone unlucky enough to share the same air as us had to endure our constant bickering and power grabs. The last straw for me was when Jack managed to get placed at Rome Elementary for his student teaching. I had been begging to be placed in my hometown public school but was instead sent to a private school a few towns over. I know he somehow managed to snag it just to spite me. Because admittedly Jack is better at one thing than me: getting people to like him.
And after graduation, I thought I was finally free of Jackson when he took a teaching job in his hometown of Evansville, Indiana, while I got my dream job at Rome Elementary like I had always planned. That is, until three years ago when Bart apparently remembered him from his student teaching days and reached out to him because he was in desperate need of another second-grade teacher. Jack transferred from the private school in Evansville where he had been working to Rome Elementary—accepting the position in the same grade as me without realizing I ended up teaching here. It’s like we’re cursed to walk adjacent in this life no matter how much we despise each other.
And today, he’s in my damn seat.
The worst part, though? I seem to be the slightest bit . . . relieved to see him.
His smirk edges up as I walk with sure strides to my table.
“Good morning, Emily,” says Jackson with an extra special glint in his eerie, golden-brown eyes that tells me he does not, in fact, wish a good morning for me. He wishes a stain on my favorite jeans. A letter informing me of jury duty. A downpour when I don’t have an umbrella.
His fiancée must have stayed with him for so long because he’s attractive, right? Because yes, the man is admittedly very, very good-looking. I’m not even going to say the predictable thing and claim it’s annoying. Frankly, giving me something nice to look at while he frustrates the snot out of me is the least he can do.
But there’s something new about him today: Jack is wearing glasses. Circular brass frames that I wish I could say looked dorky on him. Instead, they’re giving Clark Kent a run for his money. His cunning eyes lock with mine from behind those lenses and he dares me to make fun of them. I’d never take such low-hanging fruit. Instead, I cut right to the point.
“Why are you here, Jackson?” I glance over his table, note his open laptop, a hardback journal of some sort, and then of course the supple leather laptop bag taking up space in the otherwise empty seat.
“I’m here for coffee, because that’s generally what a person is after when they go to a coffee shop,” he says, sinking into that infuriating trademark grin of his. It’s nearly impossible to describe it accurately. It’s more of a tilt of his mouth than a real smile. It’s the look of a man who is full of secrets and mischief but will never let you in on them because he enjoys watching you squirm more. It’s the grin he gave me when he won Teacher of the Year over me two years in a row.