I believed that he wanted to be harmless to me. But mostly because Jacob was harmless to everyone.
He watched me for a long moment. Probably to make sure I was okay. But it felt like I was trapped in some hypnotic trance and I couldn’t look away. I could see the flecks in his eyes. Feel his breath just tickle my face. He was one small lean from being able to kiss me.
I couldn’t imagine how Amy’d had his love and devotion and didn’t do everything to keep him. Didn’t want it, or see it for the precious thing that it was.
I looked away and broke the spell. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I sniffed. “It’s super invasive.”
“I’m sure. I don’t care.”
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Okay. Here we go.
I picked up his phone and went to his search history. Most of the first page was Googling Wakan. I smiled when I saw that he’d Googled every single place I told him to before coming.
Before the Wakan searches he had a long history of searches for…sofas?
I looked up at him. “You’re shopping for a sofa?”
“Yeah,” he said, sitting against the headboard. “I actually wanted to show you. See what you thought.”
He peered over at his search history and tapped on one. A navy-blue sofa came up. “That one. What do you think?”
“Why are you getting a sofa?”
“To replace the recliners like you said.”
“You’re replacing your chairs because I came over one time and casually said you should have a sofa?”
“I want to have the kind of living room you like.”
My face went soft.
He was making plans for me?
Permanent, furniture-type plans—and we were just friends. Nick wouldn’t even commit to having dinner with my mom when she came to town. Probably because he’d had one foot out the door for the last half of our marriage. I wasn’t on his long-term agenda. And Jacob was over here like, “I’ve known you for two months, you might come over again, which sofa do you want?” It made me laugh a little.
“I like it,” I said. “But you don’t want to go sit on it first? What if it’s all hard?”
“If I go, will you come?”
“You want me to come?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “We’ll go sit on sofas.”
He smiled and I went back to his phone while he looked at mine.
He was being awfully quiet.
I couldn’t honestly remember what I’d Googled in the last week. Nothing scandalous. I think there was a long jaunt where I was researching menstrual cups. But I refused to be embarrassed by period products and Jacob couldn’t care less. I don’t know a doctor who would. And even if there was something humiliating in there, I kind of wanted him to see it. I wanted him to see all my ugly parts and my dirty secrets. Like, here’s all my neurotic shit. Here’s me on a two a.m. rabbit hole, Googling psychic mediums after I saw a TikTok that said one solved an unsolved murder in Alabama. And look! Instead of going to bed after, I searched for some little plastic dicks I wanted to put on the light switches in Benny’s room as a prank. What do you think of that? Is it weird enough for you?
It’s like I wanted to see if he still wanted me around after he knew me. The unscripted me. The real me. The messy me.
Maybe because at some point Nick knew me like this, and he decided he preferred someone else.
I remembered when I’d looked at Nick’s search history, when I’d hacked his laptop and finally saw what he’d been doing after the lid was blown off of his double life. It was like a timeline of deception, a detailed account of every lie he’d told.
Here he was Googling to figure out which five-star hotel was closest to his office so he could fuck Kelly on thousand-thread-count sheets on his lunch break. Here’s him searching for flower shops to send bouquets that weren’t for me. Oh, and here’s Nick searching for first-class flights to Cancún while I was asleep next to him in bed. He was getting them for a romantic vacation with his girlfriend that he was planning to tell me was a work trip.
When we flew places, he flew us coach.
You know what I didn’t see in Nick’s search results? Not a single search result for pregnancy. Or parenthood. Or cribs or car seats or baby names…
Anyway.
Jacob’s phone was a very different search history experience.
I liked seeing what Jacob did when no one was watching because it was exactly what he said he did. Down to the Google search for the nursery he said he was going to check for rosebushes for his yard and the IMDB for actors on Schitt’s Creek and the Chuck & Don’s website for treats for Lieutenant Dan.
Jacob was who he said he was. All the time. And to me, men were never who they said they were. But this one, by all accounts, sort of was.
And it scared the absolute shit out of me.
I think I would have felt better if his search history was just Andrew Tate quotes and six hours a day of Pornhub because then I wouldn’t feel like I had to keep looking for the catch-22. I wouldn’t have to continue to be braced for the big letdown when Jacob Maddox showed me his true colors. I could just go, “Ah. There it is.” And then my heart would start making the building blocks again for the wall I liked to keep around it.
I think, subconsciously, that was what I was hoping for. I wanted him to disappoint me. I wanted to get past the fa?ade that everyone shows the rest of the world and see who he really was unscripted.
But the plan had backfired. Because I was in love with Jacob unscripted.
I loved that every time we’d gone out to eat over the last week, he’d Googled the menu so he’d know what to order when we got there. I loved that he’d Googled El Salvador and then the little town I’d told him my mom was from. I loved that the day we took the twins to the park and Carter said he wanted him to wear raccoon socks, Jacob had gone on a multi-site crusade for them. I loved that he Googled plants. I loved it. It made me want to climb him for having this wholesome hobby that wasn’t boning someone else.
I loved it.
I loved him.
And then I froze where I sat.
Oh my God…I loved him.
But how could I not? He was the most lovable man alive. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Jacob’s life who didn’t love him.
But I loved, loved him. Not in a friendship way. Not in an admiration way. In an if-you-weren’t-in-love-with-someone-else, I’d-take-achance-on-you way. An I’d-give-you-everything way.
But he was in love with someone else. And just yesterday they’d been whisper-fighting in a room full of taxidermy animals, and she’d left her lipstick on his collar and her perfume on his shirt. She’d sent him home shaken and sad because she still had the power over him to do that.
So I should just stop thinking about it. Because me loving him didn’t matter as long as he loved her.
I handed him his phone back. “Here.”
He gave me my phone back too. “I have to know, did you go with the DivaCup?”
“Ha. Do you wish we would have stuck with the mullet questions?”
He shook his head. “No. I like your super invasive, completely inappropriate get-to-know-you activities.”