How The Cookie Crumbles (19 page)

“Oh, there is nobody like you, Jake-y…” I bared my teeth at him, “… on the whole planet.” And there wouldn’t be anyone like him on the whole planet once I was done with him.

The news of how good Jake was in the sack seemed to bother Tracey, and she finally gave up on renewing her relationship with Jake and drifted away. Once we were alone, I started in on him.

“I’m going to kill you,” I hissed at him. “Let go of me, and let me off your lap,”

“No way.” Jake held me tighter. “You’re the one who came over, all jealous, and tried to get rid of Tracey.”

“Jealous? I only came over here because Andrew pleaded with me to rescue you from your horrible ex.”

“C’mon, Frankie, as if Andrew would do that.” I looked over, but Andrew and Chloë were both gone. “I know it takes alcohol for you to admit that you really like me, but it’s pretty much something I knew all along.”

“Why of all the egotistical guys in the world, you really take the cake.” I was getting steamed, or should I say even more steamed.

“And would that be a special gourmet chocolate cake baked by you, while wearing a bikini?”

“Jake, you totally drive me crazy! Now let me off your lap and you can reunite with Tracey as much as you want.”

“Shit, speaking of Tracey, she’s watching us. Quick, kiss me.” And then he pulled my head into his and kissed me long and hard. He pressed his lips firmly against mine, and tilted me back a bit. It was actually not bad, and I was just getting into it when he stopped.

“Okay, she’s stopped watching. Thanks, Frankie.” He let me go abruptly and I slid into the seat beside him.

“Now everyone is going to think that I’m a promiscuous porn star,” I complained bitterly. Were there any other kinds?

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Tracey’s not going to tell anyone, since if I look like a stud it makes her look bad.” Jake sounded a little pissed, and a dark cloud crossed his normally sunny exterior.

“How so?” I asked.

“When we broke up, she told her friends a lot of bad stuff about me. Y’know, stuff that wasn’t true.” He looked like that memory still hurt a lot, and there was a lot more underneath.

I felt so sorry for Jake, sometimes he was like a little boy. I could imagine him being that good-natured kid in the playground who was sometimes the brunt of practical jokes, because he was so innocent and trusting. It wouldn’t be that people didn’t like him, but that he was easy to pick on. And obviously a girlfriend he really cared about could hurt him deeply.

I put an arm around his shoulder. “You’re a sweetie, and a girl would be lucky to go out with you.”

He looked at me unsmilingly. “But not you, right Frankie?”

I was going to open my mouth and say my regular excuse about just being friends, but he seemed so vulnerable.

“Sure, I’ll go out with you.”

We both seemed a bit surprised at this answer. But really, we had been hanging out all summer, would a date be that different? And I had missed him while he was at the cottage.

“Are you just saying you’d go out with me because you’re feeling sorry for me?” he asked, still looking sad. “Tell me the truth.”

I nodded. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay… you’re honest anyway.” He looked down at his lap and then looked up at me with a sad puppy expression. I was watching him with concern when a huge grin came across his face. “And now we’re going out on a date!”

25. No Satisfaction

“Excuse me? A date is not a weekend at your cottage!”

Jake and I were sitting outside on the patio of the café after I had finished work. I was heading for a workout, but he had already done a session with Brad since he was amping up his training in preparation for the new season. Now Jake had come up with his latest brilliant idea.

“Oh come on Frankie, we’ve already done all the regular stuff, like dinner or mini-golf or clubbing. So our actual date should be something bigger. Besides y’know, I think you’ll have fun at the cottage.”

“Well, I guess I could get the time off… but what do we even do at the cottage?” If I got a weekend off, I wanted to go to Toronto and see the art galleries and go shopping, not go some place even smaller than Kingston.

“Do? We relax, we go swimming, we go out in the boat, we eat, we drink. Have you never been to someone’s cottage?”

I frowned, I’d been to people’s cabins at Whistler, but you skied there. And I had gone on family holidays to the Gulf Islands, but usually the ocean was too cold to swim in. “Not really,” I answered.

Jake laughed loudly. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re even from this planet.”

I already knew he was from Planet Horny Guy. Which brought me to question number two. “So, how many people will be there?”

He grinned. “Well, there’s you and me. And then, y’know, me and you.”

“Forget it,” I said, firmly. Being alone in any enclosed space with Jake would only lead to a wrestling session. “Just because I agreed to go out with you, it doesn’t mean we’re sleeping together.”

“Frankie, you’re soooo – I don’t even know – like a nun or something. Have you even had sex?”

“Nope, never. I’m saving it for marriage. So unless you’re interested in putting a ring on it, Jake darlin’, I guess we can forget about the weekend at the cottage.” I knew this answer would stop him dead.

He let out a huge sigh. “Okay, well then it’ll be Tolly, maybe his girlfriend, and Andrew and Chloë. And don’t worry, you’ll get your own bedroom. But if you have bad dreams, I’ll be right next door.” And he leered at me in a way that was hardly reassuring.

“Any bad dreams will probably involve you. Okay, when would we be leaving?”

“Friday, when everyone’s done work or whatever,” I had noticed that Jake was alarmingly casual around time, whereas I liked to plan exactly.

Getting the weekend off wasn’t too much trouble, since I’d been taking everyone else’s shifts all summer. I had to admit I felt slightly nervous about the whole excursion. Nothing in our relationship had progressed normally and so it was like all the rules were out the window. Can you have a normal first date with someone you already know really well? Jake was always upfront with what he wanted, but I wasn’t sure. I missed him when he wasn’t around, but then when I saw him again I wavered between enjoyment and irritation. One thing I knew for sure was that I hated feeling pressured and uncertain.

“Do you think I should take a pillow for a hostess gift?” I asked Chloë, eyeing the dozen pillows still gracing our living room.

Chloë scrunched up her face, “A hostess gift… for Jake?”

“Yeah, you’re right. What am I thinking? He’d only use a pillow to chuck it at someone. You’re sure going to have a lot of pillows around here once I leave.”

“Maybe I’ll try to sell some more of them, but you’ll have to help me get the cat hair off before you go. So, are you and Jake leaving for the cottage on Friday afternoon?”

“Yes, after my shift at the café, I’ll come home and shower, and we’ll go.” I had no idea how primitive the cottage was, so I wanted to wash and style my hair before I left. If it was like camping, I was in trouble. I hated camping because I liked my creature comforts. If a holiday had no bathtub, I wasn’t interested. “Aren’t you and Andrew coming?”

“Well, I was thinking, we might come up on Saturday, you know, around lunch time.”

“Why would you do that? Why don’t you come with us on Friday?” Suddenly, I noticed how nervous Chloë looked. Light bulb going on! “Oh, you want the house all to yourself Friday night! My little girl’s becoming a woman.”

“Frankie, stop it! It’s just, I was thinking, it might be nice to have some time alone with Andrew.”

“I only work every night of the weekend, it’s not like I’m home all the time, knocking on your bedroom door and asking if you’ve seen the remote.”

“Yes, but when you work at The Keg, you get cut at different times, so you could walk in at any time.”

I was always gone for at least three or four hours, but apparently Chloë was optimistically thinking that she would need more time than that. I hoped Andrew was up for this. Or maybe it was the afterglow she was looking for, Chloë was definitely an afterglow type. I went over and gave her a hug, Chloë was such a romantic, and I wanted everything to be all hearts and flowers for her.

Maybe it was conventional, but I admired the way that Chloë and Andrew’s relationship had progressed. They liked each other at school and chatted, and then went out on that nerve-wracking first date, and dated a lot more before getting really physical. Not like going on a first date where the guy expected you to have sex all weekend. Taking things slow was the best way not to get your heart broken.

Chloë sighed and blinked. “Remember in high school after you and Adam did it the first time, and you came back and told us about it?”

“I really shouldn’t have said anything. But you and Bianca made me promise to tell you.” Chloë, Bianca, and I were the student-council-peer-counseling-straight-A-types in high school, and I was the first one of us to have a steady boyfriend and all that went with that.

“Anyway, I still remember everything you said. How romantic it was… and it’s so dumb, but it’s never been that great for me.” Chloë clearly looked hopeful that this time would be different.

I shrugged, “I wouldn’t worry about meeting those standards, I lied about it.”

“What? You lied! I can’t believe it, we were there waiting to hear about sex from you and you lied. What part did you lie about?”

“Um, the part where I said it was good.”

“Oh Frank! You didn’t just say it was good, you said it was better than you had imagined, all fireworks and magic. I can remember exactly what you said, ‘A pleasure like nothing I’ve ever known before.’ I believed you, I was so disappointed in my first time after that.” Chloë sat up straight and crossed her arms, now she was mad at me but I couldn’t stop giggling.

“I wanted to protect Adam’s rep. I was sure it would get better.” Fortunately, it had.

On Friday afternoon, Jake came by to pick me up in his black Range Rover. I wheeled my suitcase, my tote, and my cooler bag of food out to the car and he took one look at them and shook his head. “Two days, two nights, and you’ve got enough stuff for two weeks. How ‘bout you leave all this crap, and I’ll buy you a bikini and lingerie. ‘Cause anything else you wear will just be coming off anyway.”

“You wish. I just like to be prepared. You won’t be complaining when I look nice.”

He shook his head and then wheeled the suitcase around to the back and started rearranging stuff. I came along to supervise.

“Maybe if you didn’t have golf clubs and all this beer in here, my suitcase would fit. Is there no Beer Store wherever we’re going?”

“Priorities, babe, priorities.” Jake hummed happily and tetris’ed everything into the back. Whether the contents of my suitcase would be permanently creased or not was another question. We got buckled in, and then took off. “Next stop, my place.”

“Your place?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s my cottage,” he said, craning his head and pulling out to pass a van.

“You mean, your family’s cottage?”

“Nope, mine.”

His own cottage? I wondered if that meant we’d really be roughing it. I envisioned some crappy trailer surrounded by empty cans of beer and Diet Coke.

“Is there an indoor toilet?” I asked pitifully.

Jake looked over at me and started laughing his head off. “You kill me, Frankie.”

Jake was a good driver, although he drove a little fast. We had the tunes cranked, Jake singing along the whole way. He had a nice voice and his high spirits were infectious. I had been working hard all summer, and it was nice to have a break.

He pulled the car up to a metal gate, and hopped out to open it. As we drove down a long driveway, I could see glimpses of water, so I figured we were getting closer to the lake. Finally we pulled up to this big house.

“Where are we? Whose house is this? Where’s your cottage?” I wondered.

“Right here,” he said, getting out. I followed slowly and looked up in shock. This was not like any little cabin I’d ever seen. It was a real house, brand new and built of golden wood and gray stone, with windows reaching right up to a big peaked roof. Jake chuckled at my stunned expression, grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs, onto a wide porch. He unlocked the door, and we walked in.

It was beautiful inside as well. The place was a frigging mansion, with soaring ceilings and a huge rooms, all decorated in natural wood and leather. Judging from the way he dressed, I couldn’t believe Jake had chosen the tasteful, modern furniture. Maybe he had walked into Crate and Barrel and simply said, “Yes.”

“Wow. Did you decorate this place?” I asked.

“Not really, it was my mom. She’s into that kind of thing. I told her what I wanted though,” he replied. “I was involved more in the house design shit.”

I looked at him, startled. Jake did not seem like the type to be interested in architecture. Once again I had underestimated him, and I was feeling a little sheepish. We walked through main floor: the living room was vast with leather couches, comfy loungers, and a dominating stone fireplace; the gourmet kitchen was fully-equipped and had me twitching to get in there; an expansive back deck faced the lake. Outside there was a rolling lawn that extended towards a long dock with an actual boathouse.

Jake was giving me a low-key tour, but I could tell he was pretty proud of this place. Obviously he had constructed it once he got his big contract. We walked up the stairs to the second floor, where everything was equally new and sunshiny.

“Here’s my room,” he led the way into a spacious master bedroom, bright with a skylight and picture windows. The bed had beautiful view of the lake.

“That’s the biggest bed I’ve ever seen,” I said. It looked enormous, probably because it was on a platform.

He snaked an arm around me, “Yeah, I know. So you could sleep here with me, and you wouldn’t even know I was there.”

“As if you’d stay on your own side of the bed,” I snorted sarcastically. “I think in a place this big, I can have my own room. How many bedrooms are there, anyway?

“Six.” He explained, “You know, when my whole family comes over, or a bunch of the guys, I need the room.”