He says things to her, sometimes and she spends hours afterwards decoding them. Well, of course she shouldn't but she does. He talks and talks and talks to her about anything and everything and it's not the worst thing in the world.
"Stop eating your feelings," he'd told her, but that wasn't what got her. It was the, "Do you have any idea how much cholesterol that has? I want you around for awhile."
I want you around for awhile? Around for awhile? And around where? Around him, the office, the show, New York... oh she could go on and on. But her ability to pick apart that particular moment was tainted by the memory of him snatching the last honey dipped out of her hand and tossing it into the garbage.
Around for awhile.
Liz can't overlook the fact that she's met his family. She's met his sisters and his brothers and his mother and Colleen doesn't hate her. Colleen most certainly does not hate her. That's not normal; it's not normal to know your boss's mother, and it's not normal to know when her birthday is and call her on mother's day after you call your own mother. She knows, that can't be normal, right?
And then there's the fact that he knows her parents, that her parents ask about him-when they're not busy prodding her about future prospects for matrimony. The fact that these two conversation pieces generally follow one another is not lost on her, though she wishes it was. She's pretty sure that her mother likes Jack, and she's pretty sure that Jack likes her mother and that soon Margaret Lemon will take it upon herself to play the one-sided matchmaker and urge her daughter to just "test the waters" with Jack. This is not something that she discusses with him.
He's the only man she knows that is single and is not gross, because yes, both Frank and Lutz are a little gross. No, she doesn't think that Jack is gross and the idea of things with him don't creep her out (but she wouldn't admit that to anyone, not anyone, certainly not him) but really, really. Sometimes she tells him that he's a creep, but she knows that he knows that she doesn't mean it.
He says things to her. Things like, "I want to look out for you," and "Don't give it too much thought Lemon, if he can't see you for who you are, he's not worth it," and "Never wear orange again, it makes you look French, but you'd look lovely in violet." He always says it as an aside with such a sense of aloofness that Liz doesn't know if she can possibly take what he's said seriously. She'd look lovely... in violet. Liz is pretty sure she never looked lovely in everything but he'd said it and she wanted to believe it.
And how does anyone look French, anyway.
Liz wants to believe that she might look nice in something because he thinks she'll look nice in something. There will not, under any circumstances, be any new wardrobe purchases made based on that, of this, she is positively sure.
Their ambitions, they care about each other's ambitions. They care about the general comings and goings of the others day and it isn't a chore to talk about them. Spam emails with videos of Britney Spears falling down a flight or stairs, or kittens doing whatever-the-cutest-thing-of-the-day-is are always in her inbox waiting, from him. When she's home alone at night and comes across a particularly interesting documentary or new reality-based show that she thinks he might find amusing, she'll call and they'll talk for a minute or two before he finds some veiled way to insult her sensibilities and she'll hang up on him.
It's like that sort of friendship you had back in junior high school, phone calls and hanging in the hallways but never after school until it is realized that maybe the fact that he shoves you in art and steals your tater tots at lunch is because he likes you. And yeah, Jack has stolen tater tots from her many a time, but she doesn't like to think about that because she's not sure she likes that she still eats tater tots.
It freaks her out a little that there's the possibility that something between them might... you know, whatever. Because he's so powerful, and rich, and knows so many people, talks to so many people (she's not really any of these things) and sure, these are the distinctions of his life and it's not like her to judge a person on things such as that, but maybe it's a defense mechanism. Just another of many, dissecting men to a fault when they might be too right for her and submitting to those that have so many flaws because it's just easier that way. Easier because she has the upper hand and yeah, it's just easier that way.
Speed-dial positions are too intimate to talk about, because he is number three on hers and she number two on his, and though they both know this, there is no mention of it. And of course, she'd be something resembling a mess without him, she proved that pretty clearly when he'd run away to D.C. for a short time. There'd been the perpetual pause over the '3' on her phone, a caress of the button before she would clip her cell shut and tell herself that the sound of his voice would do nothing to quell the steadily rising swell of anxiety in her.
Liz knows that it'd all be a mess anyway, if they ever, if he ever... because she faces it, the balls in his court.
"I've taken the necessary step and requested a background check against that Richard you're seeing, so before this becomes the train wreck I think we all know it's going to, you should know that he sells locks of women's hair on eBay; missing any lately, Lemon?"
Of course she should have been outraged that he'd done something so presumptuous, but it was probably, almost, one of the nicest things that anyone had done for her. Looking out for her like that. A larger part of her wanted to maintain her dignity and as she'd stomped out of his office in a huff, tried to hide the fact that she was searching her scalp for evidence of pilfered hair.
The tone of his voice had been slightly horrified for her, but there had been compassion, and… weird… ness.
Other things he's said to her, "Have a good night," in that strangely-sad voice, the "Good mornings" with a bit more mirth than she is used to. It is all too real, and it is all right there and there is no way she can possibly define a plan to deal with it all accordingly, and thus ignorance is the best avenue of action.
Jack doesn't know that Liz longs for those moments when he tells her about what Don Geiss has said to him, and the newest awkward moment between Jonathan and himself. Maybe that's what friendship is like, and maybe that's what 'something more' is like, but either way, she doesn't hate it.
He speaks with her everywhere and about everything and she returns the gesture in kind and it makes everything authentic for her, so tacit and unimaginably there.
And Colleen doesn't hate her, and Jack doesn't hate her mother and he knows this because he's told her so.
She thinks that maybe the first time they ever have sex-and really, it's a possibility, he's never said anything and she doesn't think about it that much but...-she'll probably keep her bra on, like they do in the movies. Then maybe it wouldn't all be too real for her.
Because he'll probably talk to her there too.
The man just never shuts up, and it's not the worst thing in the world.