Read Online November Surprise by Laurel Osterkamp - Free Book Online
Authors: Laurel Osterkamp
Ads: Link
blonde and skinny, wearing jeans
and a blue short-sleeved shirt over a grey long-sleeved one. He makes his way
towards the table where I’ve been sitting for the last twenty-five minutes, and
he gives me a sheepish grin.
“I got lost,” he says, and he sits down across from me.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Not everyone has a cell phone, Lucy.”
“I thought you did.”
“Nope. Just Petra.”
Petra is Jack’s wife, but she’s back home in Iowa. Jack is
here researching restaurants, because he wants to open one of his own in Des
Moines.
Jack looks around, assessing the room. For a moment I think
he’s going to say something disparaging about my choice of bars, and I’m
preparing my response of how Liquor Lyle’s is the hip place right now, and if he wasn’t from a backward place
like Des Moines he would get that. But he starts in on a different subject.
“Minneapolis is crazy with all these one way streets,” he
says. “And they all have one and a half lanes. You barely have room to pass
someone, so you get stuck behind a bus or someone making a left turn, and it
takes you twenty minutes to make it half a mile down the street, then you
forget where you were supposed to turn…”
“Uh huh,” I murmur. Defending the traffic in Minneapolis is
about as interesting as waiting for him to arrive was.
“How are you, Lucy?”
I had been looking down at some initials carved in the
table. But at Jack’s question my head snaps up. He is one of those friends I
can instantly pick up with from where we last left off. Time doesn’t go by with
him; we’ll always be eighteen, and it will always be just the other day that we
were hanging out. Such a question should be unnecessary.
He sees what must be the shocked look on my face and
responds.
“I only ask because you look a little tense.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, like you could use a shoulder rub, or something.”
Any other guy and I would take that as a come on. But Jack
is completely devoted to Petra, and he and I are so platonic it’s hard to
remember a time that we kissed on the lips. He’s like my brother. A brother I
keep secrets from.
There’s what I did this evening, before coming here –
I can never tell Jack because he’s way too good to do such a thing. But there’s
another secret too, the one I’ve kept for over a year, involving a crush and a
hookup with his older brother, Monty. I couldn’t resist his charms, and I don’t
regret our night together. I never told Jack; it would just be a weird and awkward
sort of confession to make.
But keeping secrets from Jack feels about as natural as
Dolly the sheep, and like her, the secrets seem to clone themselves and
multiply.
I roll my shoulders and stretch my neck again. This time
there’s a tiny little pop, but it’s not nearly satisfying enough. “Work has
been stressful,” I tell him. Maybe I can sort
of confess to what is going on. “One of my coworkers is crazy. I’m worried
that if I turn my back on her, she’ll come up from behind and stab me.”
Jack scrunches his face and resists laughing. He’d better
not laugh. “Why?” he asks.
“Like I said, she’s crazy. She wants to turn everything into
a competition.”
A line forms at Jack’s temple, reflecting his effort to take
what I’ve just said seriously. I get why this might be funny; my short stature,
skinny frame and baby face cause me to be mistaken for a sixteen-year-old all
the time, and my personality is closer to Tori Spelling’s on 90210 than it is to Heather Locklear’s
on Melrose Place . It must be hard to
imagine me in a catfight with anyone.
To his credit, Jack keeps a straight face. “It must be
tough, working in the cut-throat field of community organization.”
“Ha, ha. Smart aleck.”
Jack has heard many a story about how I work for the
neighborhood revitalization program here in Minneapolis. My responsibilities
mostly include organizing afterschool programs and youth events. It’s not
exactly
and a blue short-sleeved shirt over a grey long-sleeved one. He makes his way
towards the table where I’ve been sitting for the last twenty-five minutes, and
he gives me a sheepish grin.
“I got lost,” he says, and he sits down across from me.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Not everyone has a cell phone, Lucy.”
“I thought you did.”
“Nope. Just Petra.”
Petra is Jack’s wife, but she’s back home in Iowa. Jack is
here researching restaurants, because he wants to open one of his own in Des
Moines.
Jack looks around, assessing the room. For a moment I think
he’s going to say something disparaging about my choice of bars, and I’m
preparing my response of how Liquor Lyle’s is the hip place right now, and if he wasn’t from a backward place
like Des Moines he would get that. But he starts in on a different subject.
“Minneapolis is crazy with all these one way streets,” he
says. “And they all have one and a half lanes. You barely have room to pass
someone, so you get stuck behind a bus or someone making a left turn, and it
takes you twenty minutes to make it half a mile down the street, then you
forget where you were supposed to turn…”
“Uh huh,” I murmur. Defending the traffic in Minneapolis is
about as interesting as waiting for him to arrive was.
“How are you, Lucy?”
I had been looking down at some initials carved in the
table. But at Jack’s question my head snaps up. He is one of those friends I
can instantly pick up with from where we last left off. Time doesn’t go by with
him; we’ll always be eighteen, and it will always be just the other day that we
were hanging out. Such a question should be unnecessary.
He sees what must be the shocked look on my face and
responds.
“I only ask because you look a little tense.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, like you could use a shoulder rub, or something.”
Any other guy and I would take that as a come on. But Jack
is completely devoted to Petra, and he and I are so platonic it’s hard to
remember a time that we kissed on the lips. He’s like my brother. A brother I
keep secrets from.
There’s what I did this evening, before coming here –
I can never tell Jack because he’s way too good to do such a thing. But there’s
another secret too, the one I’ve kept for over a year, involving a crush and a
hookup with his older brother, Monty. I couldn’t resist his charms, and I don’t
regret our night together. I never told Jack; it would just be a weird and awkward
sort of confession to make.
But keeping secrets from Jack feels about as natural as
Dolly the sheep, and like her, the secrets seem to clone themselves and
multiply.
I roll my shoulders and stretch my neck again. This time
there’s a tiny little pop, but it’s not nearly satisfying enough. “Work has
been stressful,” I tell him. Maybe I can sort
of confess to what is going on. “One of my coworkers is crazy. I’m worried
that if I turn my back on her, she’ll come up from behind and stab me.”
Jack scrunches his face and resists laughing. He’d better
not laugh. “Why?” he asks.
“Like I said, she’s crazy. She wants to turn everything into
a competition.”
A line forms at Jack’s temple, reflecting his effort to take
what I’ve just said seriously. I get why this might be funny; my short stature,
skinny frame and baby face cause me to be mistaken for a sixteen-year-old all
the time, and my personality is closer to Tori Spelling’s on 90210 than it is to Heather Locklear’s
on Melrose Place . It must be hard to
imagine me in a catfight with anyone.
To his credit, Jack keeps a straight face. “It must be
tough, working in the cut-throat field of community organization.”
“Ha, ha. Smart aleck.”
Jack has heard many a story about how I work for the
neighborhood revitalization program here in Minneapolis. My responsibilities
mostly include organizing afterschool programs and youth events. It’s not
exactly
Similar Books
