Page 65 of On the Power Play

His brow furrowed. “You’ve never seen what happen?”

She twirled her finger in the air and whistled. “You spiralled.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Delia stood, her eyes locking onto him in challenge. “How long do you think it’s been since I asked about your day job?”

Jack blinked. He’d forgotten entirely about the question. “A few seconds.”

Her smile widened until creases formed at the corners of her eyes. “Yeah. It feels like that.” She opened the top drawer of the dresser, then began folding the tiny, delicate articles of clothing on top of the quilt and dropping them in.

Jack didn’t even pretend not to watch that time. Grown. Ass. Adult.

“Has it been a while?” Delia’s eyes flicked to his.

Jack’s blood felt like it was pumping through a crazy straw. “Hmm?”

“Since you’ve played hooky?”

Jack licked his lips. His day job. Right. “Yeah. No.” He ran a hand through his hair and turned so she couldn’t see the shape of his jeans rapidly changing. “My schedule’s been strange since I started with the Blizzard. My boss is a good guy. He’s fine with me holding irregular hours as long as I get the work done.”

“Which company do you work for again?”

“Big Rick.”

She paused, her hands halfway to the drawer. “Did you tell me that before? I don’t think you did because I would’ve remembered that. I always wanted a Big Rick coat when I was a kid.”

“Did you get one?”

She shook her head. “Well, that’s not totally true. One time, this guy in high school—he was two years older than me, only by grade, we were really a year and a half apart but his birthday was in the summer and mine was in the fall, so it wasn’t that weird that he was into me. Not weird because of age, but totally weird because he was on the curling team and everyone knows they only date incestuously. Did you know people on the curling team?”

Jack shook his head, trying to keep up.

“They’re basically the same as jazz band kids, though they at least open up their dating pool to ROTC and theatre kids. But this guy, Antoine, heard me talking about how I wanted a Big Rick coat and said he would sell me his because his dad was buying him a new one for Christmas, and he liked the idea of seeing me in his coat every day at school.”

“Okay. Creepy.”

“No—yes, totally creepy in hindsight—but at the time, it was completely hot because he was a year and a half older than me, and when I tried on the coat, it smelled like Axe body spray and was way too big for me.”

“That’s a good thing?”

She paused with a pair of white satin panties in her hand. “Yeah. It made me feel tiny.”

He swallowed. “You didn’t buy it, did you?”

“I definitely bought it. It made me feel petite and wanted. Which, it turned out, were the exact two things I was struggling with in grade nine.”

“Feeling small?”

“No, wanting to feel small. I took up too much space.”

Jack frowned. “But you are small.”

She laughed and dropped another three pairs of underwear in the drawer. He knew there were three because he was watching the colours and counting. “I’m small compared to you, but I’m not small compared to other women.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It matters.”

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