Page 64 of Jump

“Shut the fuck up!” she booms. “He loves you? So is your freakout, like, slow down, bucko, you’re being a creep? Or, like, holy shit, I love him too, but I’m too afraid to say it out loud because I’m a shy girl?”

“Uh, well…” Nervous and fidgety, I pick up my wine.

“You love him too,” she breathes. “Oh my gosh, Viv is in love! Wow. He must be truly amazing to have you all tied up in knots like this.”

“Tied up like what?” I’m feeling defensive, when this wasn’t my purpose of calling. “I’m not tied up.”

“He’s in your apartment,” she verbally rolls her eyes. “He’s there right now, love is being mentioned… And instead of giving Ruiz twenty bucks to make himself busy elsewhere so you can bang mystery dude’s brains out, you’re on the phone with me. That says knots, girlfriend. So tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll try to fix it.”

I hesitate. “Cone of silence? Like, absolute secrecy. You won’t even tell Axel?”

Her voice turns deadly solemn. “You specifically don’t want me to tell him?”

“No, I don’t want you to tell anyone! I’m hardly even able to talk about it with you.”

“Okay, well…” I hear her drop the toilet lid on her end of the line, then groan as she sits down. “I swear on our friendship I won’t tell a soul. Not even Axel.”

I bite my lip. “It’s Ruiz.”

My stomach rolls, and my head pounds with the start of a stress headache, but where I expect Hannah to screech, silence hangs instead.

Tense, anxiety-broiling, room-filling silence.

After several seconds of this, I jut my chin forward and pout. “Hannah?”

“What’s Ruiz?” I just know, on her end of the line, she looks left to right and searches for answers in her bathroom. “I’m confused.”

“Ruiz is the man I slept with at Nicole’s party.” I sip a little more wine as the proverbial cat sprints out of the bag. “He’s who I was with that night. And now, he’s… um… he said love.”

“I’m sorry…” She sniffs, and hums in the back of her throat. “You slept with Matteo Ruiz? You’re telling me that shy, sensitive Vivian Doyalson slayed the freakin’ man-dragon?”

“He’s not so cranky and horrible, once you get past the surface,” I counter. Defensive! “He’s just… an introvert. He likes quiet and space. And you… lack those boundaries.”

She bursts out with a laugh so loud, it echoes around the bathroom she occupies. “Wow. Calling me out!” But then she lowers her voice. “You and Matt? Seriously?”

I swallow the heavy lump in my throat and look down at my deep red merlot. “Yes.”

“Alright. And remind me again why you’re calling me? Like, what do you need from me?”

“I don’t know.” I glance toward the doorway leading to the hall. I’m on the clock; I have a minute left, at most, for this phone call. “He’s in the shower right now. And I could just walk in there. I know he wants me to, I just—”

“Was he good last time?” she cuts in. “Was it good?”

I drop my gaze and sigh. “Yes. It was amazing.”

“And is he good to you in that home? I only saw the cranky smokejumper who kinda hated my boyfriend but refused to leave his house. So it was a tense environment a lot of the time.”

“Yes, he’s good to me.” I brush my hand over my face and inhale until my chest fills. “He wants to talk books and movies all the time. And, Han… the other night at the lake? That was his book I was reading. We’ve been exchanging them, then discussing our thoughts over dinner. Which he usually cooks for me. But tonight, I cooked for him.”

“You hate cooking.”

“I know! Well,” I amend, “I don’t hate it. But I don’t like it either. Anyway, we’re doing this thing where we take turns putting in a hundred percent.”

She processes my words for a beat, but struggles to come up with sense. “A hundred percent? I don’t get—”

“Like, instead of us sharing responsibility—him cooking and me cleaning, that sort of thing—we each have a night where it’s all on us. Last time, he cooked, he cleaned, he made dessert, and he picked a movie.”

“And tonight’s your night?” she clarifies. “You cooked?”

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