I started by taking all those down. The teal paint I’d insisted on when I was fourteen had faded around them from twenty years of sun. All the spots looked horrible, but I didn’t have time to paint. I wanted to buy a new bedspread, but I didn’t have time for that either.
I stood back and looked at my pathetic room and realized how it would look to him. It was embarrassing. It was sad.
I tossed the posters in the trash and gave up.
My cell phone pinged as I flopped onto my bed.
Jacob: What’s the dinner plan for tomorrow night?
Me: I don’t know. We can just order DoorDash or something.
…Jacob is typing…
Jacob: I need more information than that.
I called him. He answered immediately.
“What do you have in mind?” I said without saying hello.
“I don’t really care. I just like knowing what we’re eating.”
I bet this was his anxiety. He probably felt better when he knew what to prepare for. I filed that away.
“Very well,” I said. “What about Taco Bell.”
He groaned. “Do we have to?”
“What? Why not? It’s been ages since I’ve had Taco Bell. Nick used to surprise me with it on his way home. He’d bring it with flowers.”
“Taco Bell? This was his idea of a romantic evening? Everyone getting diarrhea?”
“I happen to like Taco Bell. And just so you know, there is no greater show of love than someone bringing you food without being told. A man who brings you food without you asking is thoughtful and considerate. He’s a natural nurturer, he’s taking care of you. It’s extremely telling. Even if it is Taco Bell.”
“He sounds nice.”
“He’s an asshole.”
He let out a laugh.
“What do you get from there?” he asked, a chuckle still in his voice.
I shrugged. “A chalupa and two Taco Supremes with fire sauce.”
“Those tacos are objectively the worst tacos ever created.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants, Jacob.”
There was a smile in the pause. “May I make a counteroffer?” he asked.
“You may.”
“Juicy Lucy’s. I’ll pick it up. By the time I get to your place, the cheese will be cool enough to eat.”
This was a key consideration when eating a Juicy Lucy. It was a burger with scalding cheese stuffed inside the patty. They took forever to cool down.
“This could work,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll send you the menu. What else are we going to do?”
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, an ancient brass and faux wood fan directly overhead. “I don’t know. Watch TV? It’s going to be very casual. I’m going to be in my pajamas. I will not be wearing makeup or a bra, so don’t come overdressed. You can bring Lieutenant Dan if you want, the cat isn’t afraid of dogs.”
“All right.”
“I need to warn you, my house is very ugly.”
“Noted,” he said. “Where do I park?”
“In front of the garage behind the small car stall.”
“Okay. You’re not upset I’m not bringing the diarrhea food, right?”
“I am very upset. But whenever I’m mad at you, just pull the kidney card.”
He laughed and we hung up.
Then a minute later he sent me a picture of Lieutenant Dan. His tongue was lolled out and he looked like he was smiling. I grinned. I replied with a blurry photo of Cooter streaking through the hallway in one of his rare daytime appearances since the move. He still hid most of the time.
Jacob sent a cat heart-eye emoji. That was the last I heard from him for the night.
The next day Jacob and I were the only two attendings on the ER floor, which meant we couldn’t take our lunches together since there was nobody to babysit the residents. He did however leave me a letter around noon, next to my charting computer, taped to a brown paper bag.
Dearest Briana,
There is no accounting for your poor taste. But the heart wants what the heart wants.
Sincerely,
Jacob
I opened the bag. It was Taco Bell.
I barked out a laugh and looked up to see him across the ER watching me with a smile. I blew him a kiss and he pretended to catch it—a very uncharacteristically playful move by Jacob standards. It cracked me up. Several nurses and a few patients made awwwwwww noises.
We were doing a wonderful job looking like we were in love. Everyone was eating this up.
I left him a note on his computer after I took my break.
If I’m in the bathroom later while you’re over, just know that I died eating what I love. And also that you are an enabler.
Regards,
Briana
He’d even gotten me fire sauce.
Chapter 21
Jacob
Once I knew we were eating Juicy Lucy’s, I carefully planned when I’d have to leave to get the food to get to her house on time. I Google Mapped it. I didn’t want to show up early in case she wasn’t ready for me. If I did get there early, I planned to wait in my car until it was time—but not in her driveway. Down the street somewhere. If I waited in her driveway, she might see me pull up and then it would stress her out that I was outside, even though I hadn’t knocked—and thinking that I was stressing her out would stress me out.
But in the end, I ended up showing up late because my very last patient vomited all over me.
It pushed my entire plan back by twenty-seven minutes. I was twenty-seven minutes late. This made me flustered, so I was anxious when I pulled up in front of her house, even though I’d texted and told her what happened and she didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t there yet.
When I knocked at almost eight o’clock, my anxiety was at a low hum. But when she opened the door, it quieted down and then disappeared with a blip.
She was in black fleece skull pajama bottoms and a navy shirt that said Everything Is Terrible on it. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and, as promised, there was no bra.
It was hard to feel anxious when the situation is so informal. And I was starting to realize it was hard to feel anxious around her in general. Most of the time when I did, it was in the lead-up to seeing her, not the actual spending time with her, and it was my own overthinking that got me there.
Speaking of overthinking…
There was something I kept going back to from the other night at my parents’ house. She’d said she really looked forward to our letters. I wondered if she just made that up for the story. Because I had looked forward to those letters. A lot.
I think it mattered to me so much because those were before the news about my kidney. How she felt about the letters wasn’t because of what I was doing for Benny, it was just between us. Unadulterated by gratitude.
There wouldn’t be anything that was untouched by that now. Now I wouldn’t know if anything she was saying or doing was because we were pretending or she was just feeling indebted to me.
I wished I could navigate it better and know what was what.
Had she really liked the letters? If she wasn’t trying to make our relationship look authentic, would I even be here tonight? Would we have talked on the phone like last night? How much bonus time was I getting from her because of our fake dating, because she felt obligated?