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And he didn’t want to think of her going home with him.
God, no wonder people said men and women didn’t make good friends. He couldn’t even think about Marsie stepping through some strange guy’s front door without his jaw tightening. And he had no reason to be jealous.
He should be happy for her.
The elevator dinged and they stepped in together. Marsie and Padmal, who’d been on the elevator when they got on, were going to the same conference in a couple months, so they chatted while Jason stood and stewed.
The weekend would be here soon. He had a couple dates lined up. He’d meet a wonderful woman this weekend. He could feel it in his bones. This weekend was the weekend.
* * *
“HEY, SON.” JASON’S dad always sounded surprised whenever he answered his cell phone, like he couldn’t believe he could carry technology like that in his pocket. Of course, his dad also nearly always sounded like he was out in the woods—because he was. Retirement hadn’t brought his parents wealth—both his parents still worked a part-time job, though his mom said it was because she needed to “keep busy.” But Jason remembered how his dad used to joke that all he ever wanted to do was fish and hunt.
And when he wasn’t working, that’s pretty much all he did.
“Anything biting?” Jason asked as he poured brown rice into a casserole dish for his dinner. Brown rice and chicken casserole. About as easy as a man could hope for, with the added advantage of being delicious. Double bonus.
“Nah. It’s been a slow week.”
“Just you and the woods.” It sounded like heaven, though Jason would probably bring a book for when the fish weren’t biting. His father liked to stare off into space and disappear into the back of his mind. When Jason had asked why, his father had said that years of working on the factory floor meant all he wanted in life was silence.
“Me, the woods and the mosquitos. At least the mosquitos are biting.”
“Yeah.”
A long silence with periodic breaks of objects being moved around stretched out between them as Jason grabbed the package of chicken thighs from the fridge and dug around in the vegetable drawer for a bag of baby carrots. His parents were easier to talk to when he managed to catch them both in the same room. But their retail jobs meant they were often working in the evenings, and neither of them understood the purpose of weekends any longer, except to go to church, so Jason had taken to calling randomly and hoping he’d catch them both.
When his father was fishing and answered the phone, their conversations were more shared silences than cozy chat. Jason always made sure to have something else he was working on when he called his dad.
“Job good?” his dad asked.
“Sure. It’s steady.” Both his parents had had great hopes that he would go to college and “study something important.” His dad had been laid off from factory to factory to factory until now, working at a sporting goods store. They’d hoped college would give Jason the chance to work with less risk of layoffs.
Jason had tried college, but he wanted a job where he made things, and engineering hadn’t been the right fit, despite comments from his professors when he dropped out that he was “wasting his talent.” He hadn’t gotten a job where he made things, exactly, but he liked the variety of people he interacted with during the day. And he liked being the man people called when the smartest person in a room of smart people said, “I don’t know how we fix this. Let’s call Jason.”
Throughout the course of his day, he worked with his hands, learned things, got book recommendations and had about as much risk of being laid off as the engineers at the tech companies in the buildings near him. Engineers who worked long hours and brought work home with them.
When Jason’s workday was done, he was done with work and had time to meet friends, read, and putter around in his yard. And that time mattered to him more than all the prestige in the world.
“Humph,” was all his dad ever had to say when he asked about his job and Jason answered that it was good. The decision Jason had made still rankled his father.
“And dating?”
“Still doing it.” Jason tucked the phone under his arm so he could open the package of chicken thighs and lay the pieces on top of the rice.
