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Jill didn’t play poker with the guys. She actually avoided coming downstairs on poker night. And, Marsie thought, she and Jill were still friendly. The other woman had sent her a couple texts over the past week, like nothing had happened with Jason. Her and Kenny’s house wasn’t far from the office, nor was it far from Marsie’s house. Jill might be willing to come get her and drive her home.
Marsie could get her car tomorrow. The hassle would give her something to do.
She pulled her phone out of her purse and made the call.
“Hey, Jill?”
“Marsie? How are you?”
“I have a favor to ask,” Marsie said then explained.
She was only a little surprised when Jill said, “Sure. Be there in about fifteen minutes.”
Relieved, Marsie leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
* * *
JASON WAS COMING out of the bathroom when he heard Jill say, “Be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Leaving during the poker game?”
“You mean the poker game I don’t attend.” She shook her head. “Marsie said her car won’t start. I’m going to give her a ride home.” Jill cocked her head. “I don’t know why she didn’t call you.”
Jason checked his phone, just in case he hadn’t heard a call. “No call. But I’ll go get her. I’ll tell the guys to cash me out, and I’ll settle up whatever money is owed later.”
He was headed for the basement stairs when he heard Jill ask, “Why didn’t she call you?”
From Jill’s point of view, it was a perfectly reasonable question. She knew that he and Marsie had gone on a date. She didn’t know that they were effectively broken up. He hadn’t wanted to tell her. Frankly, he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone.
If he told someone, then it was true. But Jill was asking, and he didn’t have an easy lie at the tip of his tongue—and Jill wasn’t the kind of person you lied to.
“Marsie and I aren’t… I guess we went on one awesome date, and then we broke up.”
Jill lifted an eyebrow. “She didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“I didn’t realize…” Jill was a good person. Marsie was a good person. Marsie had wanted to contact Jill, and of course she would follow through on doing it. She was Marsie. “That’s good actually. Two good people being friends.”
Her eyebrow raised again. “Sounds like it makes you nervous.”
“Maybe a little. Not that I would lie to you about anything that happened between Marsie and me, but it would have been nice to have that option.”
“Jason,” she said, exasperated. “The only reason I can imagine you even thinking about pulling the wool over my eyes is that you did something wrong. So what did you do?”
“I broke up with her.” As he told Jill the quick version, her face went from shocked to angry to sympathetic. “And that’s why she didn’t call me,” he finished. “But I’ll still go pick her up.”
“Are you going to pick her up and drive her home in silence, or are you going to talk to her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. I don’t know what to think about her algorithms, but I don’t like being ranked so low.”
“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I wouldn’t, either. But it’s interesting to me that she thought to put you in the algorithm in the first place. And then that she kept trying to make your profile fit. It’s almost as if she knew she liked you and was testing her algorithm to see if it worked, not to see if you could pass it.”
“She said she was trying to make me pass.” Thinking that he’d failed her most basic of tests had hurt. Like he’d been stabbed in his pride, piercing his heart.
Jill shrugged. “I don’t see why a woman who wasn’t interested in a man would put all the effort into making him fit an algorithm she believed in.”
“Why the algorithm in the first place?” Why couldn’t she just have noticed and known that she was interested in him? Why the games?
“I’ve listened to you talk about spark enough times to stop asking you why. You needed something to hang on to, to use as you figured out what you wanted.”
