Teddy

"YOU HAVE A FAN CLUB."

The voice startles me, and I screech and jump, clutching my chest. "Jesus, Jackson. You scared the shit out of me."

Chuckling, he points at the animal trailing behind me. "Your fan club."

"Cleo!" I groan and throw up my hands when I spot the pink pig. "That pig is too freaking smart. He keeps figuring out how to open the gate, even when I'm sure I've pig-proofed it. I don't know how he's doing it."

"Pig-proofed it?" Jackson scrubs a hand over his face to hide the smile. He is a quick study and he learned fast that I don't enjoy being the butt of a joke, yet he can't seem to contain his amusement over my current predicament.

"Yeah, pig-proofed. You know, like childproof, but for pigs. Except that pig is 300 times smarter than any toddler, I swear. I need to set up a camera to see how he's doing it." I usher Cleo back to his pen, securing him back inside.

"No camera needed. It's obvious how he's doing it. He uses his snout to unlatch the gate." Jackson demonstrates his theory. "Plus, I watched him do it as I walked over here, so I can confirm this is a fact."

"Dammit. Ok, I'll add that to my list of things to fix." I pull out my phone and type in the task on my running To Do list.

"Where on that list does is say to get a coffee with Jackson? I seem to remember mentioning that a while ago and you haven't taken me up on it yet."

Surprised, I look up from my phone at him. So Jensen was right; he had been asking me out. Shit. Do I want to go out with him? He's a nice enough guy, easy to talk to, definitely not bad to look at. It's been a while since I've dated. It's probably time to put myself out there again, but it usually ends up not being worth the effort. Plus, we work together. That's always a recipe for disaster if things don't work out.

"I see things spinning in here." He taps the side of my head and grins at me. "It's just coffee, Teddy. I'm not asking for your hand in marriage. But it's cool if you don't want to. Or if maybe you're not available...?" His voice trails off at the end like he isn't sure how to finish the sentence.

"Available? I'm not seeing anyone if that's what you mean." I fidget with my braid, twirling the end of it around my fingers. Why is this conversation making me so nervous? A coffee date is innocent enough, right?

"So, you and Jensen...?" He looks at me sheepishly, the question lingering between us.

"Oh god, no! Jensen is. Uh. No. He's just my friend. Best friend. Nothing more." I mentally slap myself for that ungraceful word vomit.

Jackson must sense my discomfort because he shows me mercy. "Ok, well, the offer stands. For coffee, I mean. Or a drink some night after work even. Whatever you're comfortable with. Or not."

Before I have a chance to answer, Jensen rounds the corner and stops abruptly when he sees us. "Oh. You." His eyes hop from Jackson to me and then back to Jackson. "I was looking for you, Teddy. I wanted to run something by you." He's talking to me but keeps his eyes on Jackson.

"Uh. Ok." Jackson takes a few steps back. He nods at me. "Let me know, Teddy." Then he spins around and walks away.

"What was that about? Let you know what?" Jensen is now standing directly in front of me, his eyes piercing mine. The blue of his irises is a deep color, the sun creating little twinkles in them.

"Nothing. Don't worry about it. What did you want to run by me?" I try to steer the conversation in a different direction to distract him, but I should know better. Jensen is like a damn dog with a bone.

"Teddy. What did Apple Jax want?" He tugs my hand away from where I've been fiddling with my braid again. His warm thumb rubs circles over my palm, alighting goosebumps along my arm.

"Fine. You were right. He was asking me out the other day. He just did again before you barged in again. You have this funny knack of doing that lately. It's like you have hidden cameras tracking my every move." I pull my hand away from him, shoving it into my pocket. His random touches lately have been messing with me. I think about them too much, giving them far too much weight. It's Jensen. They're innocent touches. They don't mean anything.

"Come on." He grabs my arm and roughly leads me in the direction he came from. After a few minutes of quick, long steps where I'm almost running to keep up, he slows his pace and eases his hand down my arm to clasp my hand instead.

Holy shit, Jensen is hanging on to my hand. And it feels like he means it this time. Shit, shit, shit.

"Um," I say, my voice a hoarse whisper. I'm trying to shake my rattled thoughts away from the fact that my fingers are intertwined with Jensen's as I gather my thoughts. "Where are you taking me?"

"To my apartment."

"Wait, what?" I drag my feet in the grass to slow our progress. My rampant thoughts are getting away from me. Why are we going to his apartment in the middle of the day?

Jensen lives in the apartment above the building that houses the handful of offices. He's the only one who actually lives on the farm since it's more of a business than residence. He moved into the loft apartment right after college, taking his time fixing it up. It'd been years since anyone lived there and it needed a lot of work.

As we walk up the stairs and enter the apartment, I'm struck with visions of how it looked before he renovated it. Gone are the wood paneled walls and dirty carpet. The white walls and hard wood floors brighten the once dark and gloomy spaces.

"Remember when this place was a dump, J?"

I continue to take in the improvements in the open concept layout before my eyes land on Jensen. He's leaning against the support beam that separates the kitchen and living room, and the way he's staring at me causes heat to creep into my neck and cheeks. I gulp, blinking the sudden rush of memories away as quickly as they surface.

As hard as I try to ignore them, memories from a certain night as the clock counted down to midnight all those years ago hang in the air between us. We never talk about the New Years Eve that we were both home visiting from college. It is locked away, never to be revisited. Well, at least in the daylight. I revisit it a lot by myself in the dark.

"Anywho...you wanted to show me something?"

Jensen keeps his heated stare trained on me for a beat longer before shoving off the beam and striding toward the table, which looks to be used more for a dumping ground than for eating. Random mail and trinkets are scattered in piles. He picks up a stack of papers and holds it out to me.

I take the few steps toward him and try to take the papers, but he holds them tight between us. "Are you going to go out with him?" The question confuses me because it feels like we've cycled through so many topics since our run-in with Jackson. It takes me a moment to catch up.

"Uh." I shrug, dropping my hand off the papers. "Maybe. I don't know. It's been a while. It might be nice." I shrug again. I hold my hand out, waiting for him to relinquish the papers hanging between us.

With a grunt, he shoves them at me and turns away. "Those were in the safety deposit box."

Ignoring his gruffness, I scan over the papers. When they don't make any sense, I study them longer. "I don't understand," I finally admit. "What am I looking at?"

"Beats me. None of us can figure it out." He starts pacing the length of his apartment; once he reaches one end, he spins and starts back the way he came. The floor looks worn there, his preferred pacing path, apparently.

I realize then that I don't spend much time up here. We usually see each other at the farm, Roxy's and sometimes my place. Rarely here, though. I wonder if I've been the one avoiding it or if it's him that hasn't extended the invitation to hang out here.

I watch him pace, noticing the tenseness of his posture. Is he stressing over these papers or is he still dwelling on Jackson asking me on a date? Do I want him to be dwelling on the idea of me dating?

"So. This is weird, right?" I'm not sure whether I'm talking about the papers in my hand or the awkwardness between us. Maybe both. Probably the latter.

He stops pacing, pivoting to face me. "Yeah, it's weird. We barely know him. What if he has a family back in the cities? He could have a child he walked out on. Or a disease. Jesus, gross. He could have an STD. The last thing you need is genital warts, Teddy. That shit's nasty."

I glare at him. "I meant this." I wave the papers in front of me "This is weird. Not Jackson asking me out. And, yeah, we don't know him all that well. But it's just coffee for fuck's sake. I can't get genital warts from drinking coffee with him!"

Jensen scrubs a hand down his face. "You're right. I'm being dumb." He grabs the papers out of my hands and tosses them onto the table. "We should get back to work."

With that, he breezes by me and heads for the door.

-

ME: Jackson asked me out.

RYLIE: No shit?! I need more details!

ME: And Jensen barged in.

RYLIE: Because of course he did.

ME: And he thinks Jackson has genital warts.

RYLIE: Back the fuck up. I feel like you're skipping major parts.

ME: You. Me. My house. Wine. Tonight.

Popping the cork on a new bottle of white wine, I pour a decent amount into a stemless wine glass, then splash a bit more in until the glass is nearly full. I bend over to slurp some up so I don't spill and then carry the wine over to my big and fluffy couch. There's an obvious dip in the cushion where my butt belongs in my coveted spot, having spent many hours here bingeing Netflix and reading. I thumb through my phone while I wait for Rylie to show up.

Water droplets drip from my freshly washed hair onto the shoulders of my favorite ratty t-shirt. It's an old basketball shirt of Jensen's that ended up in my possession somehow. There's a hole under the left armpit that slowly grows in size after each wash, but I just can't seem to part with it.

A car door slams outside my window. Living on the first floor of the small apartment building has its perks, being so close to the parking lot is not one of them. Come Friday and Saturday nights, I get to hear a lot of colorful language from people staggering home drunk from one of the three nearby bars in downtown Lake Hope.

A moment later, there's a familiar knock on my door. Two loud raps, a pause, followed by two more loud raps.

Rylie has been knocking the same way since our dorm years. She developed a system in case either of us had a guy in the room. If it wasn't ok to enter, the other person was supposed to echo the same knock back. I rarely had cause to institute this fail-safe procedure. Rylie, on the other hand, implemented it far too often, and I'd find myself wandering around campus to waste time until it was safe to come back. Long after our dorm sharing days, and she still announces herself in the same way.

Letting herself in, Rylie kicks off her shoes and walks through the living room, going straight for the wine I left out on the counter in the kitchen. "So," she says, helping herself to a healthy pour of the wine. "Start talking. And don't leave anything out." Once she's seated on the couch next to me, her feet tucked snugly under her body, she turns to me expectantly.

"I was minding my biz, going about my work..."

"OK, when I said don't leave anything out, I didn't mean it literally. Leave out any of the boring work shit. Get right to the part where Ajax asks you out."

Rolling my eyes at her, I take a swig of wine. "So you're adopting the Anderson nickname for Jackson now, too, huh?"

"It's catchy. Plus, you know how gabby Vivi and Sutton are. They're Ajax this and Apple Jax that. I think they might be your competition. If you don't snatch him up, they just might." Rylie sips from her wine glass before setting it on the coffee table in front of her.

"Well, I'm pretty sure there's a certain someone Sutton has her eyes on..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Her brother's bestie. We all know this. Now get back to you."

I tell her how Jackson found me outside of Cleo's pen, the farm's resident pig, and pointed out how I had ignored his previous attempt to ask me out.

"Smooth. So he wants to take you for coffee? Or a drink? You gonna go?"

I turn my body to face her on the couch, waving my arm out in front of me, needing to express my frustration somehow. "I don't know. I never really got a chance to answer him because Jensen barged in out of nowhere. I swear to God he must have some sort of alert system that goes off anytime Jackson comes near me."

Rylie snorts but doesn't say anything. "What?" I demand. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, come on, Teddy. You both are so fucking stupid. How are you the only two that are so blind?"

I huff out an exasperated sigh. "Not this again! Come on, Ry!"

Every now and then she likes to make a point that Jensen and I are pining away for each other, despite my many protests. So maybe sometimes I notice the way my body reacts to Jensen. And maybe sometimes I dissect every little look and touch he gives me. And maybe sometimes I can possibly read into things he says or does that don't really mean anything. But even if I do all of that, I know it's only one-sided. Jensen is definitely not thinking of me in the same pathetic way.

"Fine. Whatever." She waves my protestations away. "Continue. What happened when Jensen showed up out of nowhere? Did he huff and puff and scare away baby Jax?"

"God, Rylie. You're so ridiculous." I chuckle at the absurdity that is my best friend. "But you're not wrong."

"Knew it! What then? Jensen manhandles you and does something utterly confusing?"

"He doesn't manhandle me." Well, maybe he kind of did. He did drag me across the farm to his apartment; and it was utterly confusing the way he intertwined our fingers for the last stretch of the walk.

Seeing the look on my face, Rylie points at me. "Ha! I knew it! Do I know Jensen or do I know Jensen?"

"Whatever. It wasn't like that." I wave her away.

After gathering my damp hair over my shoulder, I start separating the strands into three sections. As my fingers deftly braid my hair, I try to process my thoughts before continuing. "You're right about him being confusing, though. He was all up in arms about Jackson asking me out. He even went as far as saying Jackson probably has genital warts. I mean, what the actual fuck? Then before we can even have a real conversation, he stomps off like a stupid toddler."

"Teddy." My friend looks me in the eye, wearing a serious expression. "Jensen doesn't get to decide if or who or when you date. He always does this." She pauses to take a drink of wine. "What do you want? Do you even want to go out with Jackson? What's going on in that big, fat brain of yours?"

A whoosh of breath leaves my mouth. "That's the thing. I really don't know. Maybe? I am rusty in my lady bits regions, if you know what I mean, so part of me is screaming 'fuck yes, bitch, do it!' But other louder parts are giving me doubts. You know how me and dating don't go well together."

"Oh, honey." My friend rubs her hand up and down my leg. "I do know that very well. But you might just owe it to the rusty lady bits to give it a shot, yeah?"

I grab a throw pillow off the couch and hit her across the face with it. Screeching, she rips the pillow out of my hand and pummels me with it several times. "Don't start a war you can't win, little girl!"

And just like that, the conversation is dropped and we're chasing each other around my living room with pillows.