* * *
THIS TIME, WHEN I rang the bell, Jack swung the door wide open right away.
He was dressed, he was clean-shaven, he was blindingly good-looking … and as soon as he saw me, he let his eyes sweep down to my boots and back up in a slow nod of appreciation. Then he reached out, hooked his fingers into the fabric tie around my waist, and pulled me into his entranceway—swinging the door closed behind us.
He had a look on his face like he was about to kiss me into oblivion.
But that’s when I lifted a finger and said, “Can I just check something with you?”
Jack had a certain momentum. But he paused. “Sure.”
“The last time we did this,” I said. “You stopped me at the door and told me that you never liked me. That you’d been faking everything the entire time.”
“I remember.”
“So, as long as we’re having a do-over,” I said. “Can I just get you to confirm that you were lying about faking?”
Jack frowned. “Don’t you know that already?”
“I mean, yes. I do. But that moment really kind of firebombed the quadrant of my brain that we’ll just call ‘my worst fears about myself.’ So. As long as we’re rewriting the story … can we fix that part?”
Jack nodded, like Of course.
He met my eyes. “I was really nervous about the date. Did I tell you that? We’d been living together for weeks, so I shouldn’t have been. But I was. I’d ordered takeout for delivery, so when the doorbell rang, I just answered it. But it wasn’t the food. It was Wilbur. With a gun. And he was a lot more terrifying than anybody named Wilbur should ever be.”
Agreed.
“He was wild-eyed,” Jack went on. “Breathing fast and manic-seeming, like anything could happen at any second. I thought he might well be on drugs. I knew for sure he was pointing a pistol at my chest. I remember having a hard time letting the idea of the date go. I remember thinking, Now’s really not a good time. I tried to talk him into giving me the gun. He asked me a thousand questions without ever explaining anything. And just as I was thinking, What would Hannah do right now? and trying to remember exactly how you’d flipped me that time, you rang the bell.”
Jack sighed.
He went on. “Wilbur went on high alert. He wanted to know who it was, and then he looked through the peephole and saw you, and he said, ‘It’s a woman in a slinky dress.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘Okay. Who’s it gonna be?’
“I asked what that meant, and he said, ‘Who should I kill? You? Or her?’
“So I said, ‘Me. Of course. Obviously.’
“‘You didn’t even think about it,’ Wilbur said, like he was disappointed.
“So I said, ‘There’s nothing to think about.’
“‘You want to die?’ Wilbur asked.
“‘No,’ I said. ‘But between the two of us, it’s no contest.’
“‘I can’t believe you’re picking yourself,’ Wilbur said.
“‘Well I’m sure as shit not picking her.’
“‘Okay, then,’ Wilbur said. ‘Get her out of here.’
“I reached for the door, but then Wilbur added: ‘And do it right. If she figures out something’s up and calls the cops, I guarantee you I’ll kill us all.’
“‘I believe you,’ I said. And I did. So I opened the door and I did the only thing I could think of to make you leave and not come back.”
I looked into Jack’s eyes. “You acted like you didn’t like me.”
Jack nodded. “Didn’t take all those improv classes for nothing.”
“Why didn’t you use the code word?”
Jack gave me a look. “Um. Because I didn’t want my last words to be ‘ladybug’？”
“Seriously, though.”
“Seriously? Why would I have done that?”
“So I’d know something was up.”
“The point was for you not to know.”
“You realize I do this for a living? I was way more qualified than you to handle Wilbur321. There were ten different ways I could have disarmed him.”
“I didn’t think about that.”
“Obviously.”
“I just wanted you not to die. I really, really,” Jack said, stepping closer, “didn’t want you to die.”
I appreciated that. I did. “Thank you.”
“So I acted my heart out.”