Page 44 of ClickBack

Jarrett: All that for some paperwork? What do I get when you actually miss me?

I picture him saying it, then waiting to see whether I’ll laugh. I am getting better at remembering his face without needing the whole evening to come with it.

Me: Enjoy your brother’s game.

Jarrett: Planning on it.

There is work waiting, and I do it. Later, between reports, I open Instagram and look him up. I tell myself curiosity is allowed. So is finding out whether the man I have been kissing has made a public habit of being terrible.

His page offers basketball, endorsements, training footage, and a golf ball disappearing into trees beneath the caption I meant to do that. I laugh at that one. Then I think of him across the breakfast table.

Instagram isn’t my world.

I can see what he meant. There is nothing here about the care he took adjusting the bath or the terrible joke he made while finding me clothes. The page has its uses. Getting to know him will evidently require continuing to speak to him.

I close it without following. I have done enough looking for one workday.

Rae sends the dinner time with a request that I not arrive early enough to rearrange her kitchen. I tell her that eliminates my reason for coming. She replies with a photograph of Zion holding up twelve fingers, achieved with help from somebody just outside the frame.

At five, I collect his flourless chocolate cake from the bakery in Skippack. I have not made peace with the fact that he requests this particular cake every year and then abandons it for cupcakes. I carry it carefully anyway.

Three messages arrive while I am still parked.

Zi Zi: GiGi are we watching the game at dinner? 12 about to close them out

Zi Zi: also I made a birthday list. mom hasn’t seen it

Zi Zi: strategically

I set the cake on the passenger seat before answering.

Me: Explain strategically.

Zi Zi: I show you first. then I know what’s realistic before I waste an idea on Mom

I laugh alone in the car. There is a boy in there who has watched the women in his family negotiate and drawn all the wrong conclusions about whom he can persuade.

Me: Send it. No promises.

His answer comes immediately. So does Rae’s.

Rae: Mom, why is he sending you a spreadsheet instead of setting the table?

Me: At least he labeled it.

I put the phone in my bag and start the car. The cake shifts slightly when I turn out of the lot. I steady the box at the next stop and find myself thinking about Jarrett’s mother, somewhere in Texas, waiting to see what her son will do tonight. I know very little about her. But I know she’s probably early.

Chapter 8

Jarrett

My mother has sent three messages by the time we leave the San Antonio airport. The first asks when we land. The second says she has found the ticket email. The third says never mind, that was last year.

I call her from the car.

“I have it now,” she says instead of hello.

“Good to hear your voice, too.”