This pair is frustrating, confusing, and unlike any of my other assignments. I have come to expect a certain order in the forming of a relationship—connection, friendship, affection, then intimacy. Now I understand why Danit warned us in training never to assume anything with humans.
Since their encounter on Friday, there has been no contact between Myrtle and Jaquinn until tonight. They made breakfast together on Saturday morning, exchanged numbers, and parted with a kiss as Myrtle ran off to the studio. Since then, nothing. It confused Myrtle; she is quite accustomed to being pursued, and wondered why she hadn’t been in this case. This, of course, was exactly what Jaquinn wanted.
Tonight, Jaquinn’s friend Edward had invited several of his acquaintance to come over to his home and “hang out”.[1] Myrtle, on receiving the invitation, guessed correctly that Jaquinn would be there and was one of the first to arrive.
“Hey,” she said, coming into the room to find him sitting at one end of the sofa. “I been wondering if you fell off the face of the planet, Jack.”
“It’s Jaquinn. Nope; still gravity-bound.” He grinned at her and offered her a beer.
She didn’t take it, standing in front of him with arms folded. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“To make you want to call me,” he answered.
The honesty made her eyebrows go up, but a smile began to appear on her mouth. “Playing hard to get? Isn’t that my job?”
“What is this, the nineteen-fifties?” Jaquinn cracked open the beer that he had offered and took a swig from it. “Why do I have to do all the work? You’re a woman who knows what she wants—come and get it.”
She swiped the beer from his hand. “Maybe I will.” Falling onto the couch, she stretched out along its length, putting her back against the arm and her feet in his lap. “So what have you been up to?”
He told her, talking about his new job with the local newspaper. “They’re still giving me fluff pieces, of course, but I’ll do my time. I want to get to the hard stuff as soon as I can, though.”
“What’s wrong with a little fluff?” Myrtle wanted to know. “Isn’t there enough death and destruction out there? Give me weddings and classifieds and blowout sales at the thrift shop any day.”
That last made Jaquinn look up with a smile. “You read the newspaper?”
Myrtle shrugged, hiding her mouth behind her beer bottle. “I might have noticed a familiar name in the byline.” She lowered the beer and glared at Jaquinn. “You’re an awful writer.”
“I had three inches to work with!”
“Now, don’t be modest,” she murmured, eyeing his lap.
Jaquinn laughed so uproariously at that that everyone in the room, who had been tactfully ignoring the two for the past half hour, stared at them. Delighted, Jaquinn crawled across the couch and gave Myrtle a firm kiss. “Myrtle Mills, despite sounding like you belong in a comic book,[2] you are an amazing woman,” he told her. “Will you let me take you out to dinner tomorrow night?”
“Don’t you diss comic books, or I’ll say no,” she told him.
But Jaquinn knew as well as I did that there was no danger of that. They arranged the date right then and there, assisted in their decision-making by the contributions of their friends, and when Jaquinn left that night, Myrtle went with him, back to his place this time.
I left them flirtatiously bickering over the lack of furnishings in his new apartment. They have already been confirmed as lovers, but it is my hope that they will soon be friends, too.
[1] This is a slang term; no one was actually hanging from anything.
[2] A book in which the story is told by unrealistic drawings of people and situations. Usually either humorous or extremely dramatic and extended over long periods of time.