"So explain to me how you live with that absolute hunk and haven't made your move?" Julia Croft asked her best friend Gabrielle Jaeger over tea and freshly-made ANZAC biscuits in the living room that Gabrielle shared with her housemate, colleague and – most importantly – best friend Jack Quade. Julia had come for a short visit a few months ago, happened across Gabrielle's friend Erica Templeton – who was recently engaged and had asked Gabrielle to be her maid of honour, so the two women were often found knee-deep in wedding magazines – and admitted to being something of a wedding expert.
"She's had a hand in every wedding in Widgee for the last ten years, and most of the wedding within a five-hundred-kilometre radius," Gabrielle had joked, except it wasn't all that far from the truth. "If it's within a day's drive, she can do it. We call her J-Cro, after The Wedding Planner."
Erica's eyes had lit up. Sydney was within a day's drive of the small country town Gabrielle came from, and while she wanted a big white wedding, she found the actual details mind-numbingly boring.
And so Julia Croft, who a few month's ago Erica hadn't known from a bar of soap, had ended up being an integral part of it. Julia seemed to thrive off weddings, a fixation that had only been fed by her own marriage five years ago. Almost as much as she loved having so much opportunity to spend time with Gabrielle. It was just a pity that her ex Steve Taylor had managed to integrate himself back into Gabrielle's life.
Julia had never liked Steve. For one, he was much too old for Gabrielle, especially given the fact she had been sixteen to his twenty-six when they started dating. Then there was his drinking. Not to mention the fact he had cheated on her with her other so-called best friend, Ashley Jones. Ashley, thankgod, was nowhere to be seen. She had left Widgee soon after discovering that Steve was just as capable of cheating on her as he was with her.
But she did like Jack. Not only was he good looking – and about the same age as Gabrielle – but he was smart, sweet, and very much in sync with Gabrielle. They knew eat other's favourite foods (a man who cooked! Real food, not just fish and barbeque! Julia hadn't realised such men existed) and made them for each other. Julia had gone from having no-one in the house who could whip up a decent meal – her husband, Brad, though she loved him to bits, was strictly the fish-and-barbeque type – to having two. Much more of this, and she was never going home.
She had been floored to discover that Gabrielle, single and fancy-free, had been living for several months under the same room as this equally-single hunk of man and hadn't done anything about it. She wondered if Steve's ill-treatment of her had done something to her brain, or at least made her super-cautious around men.
She had tried to find out if Jack dated or slept around. "He used to, sort of," Gabrielle said. "He was going through some pretty awful stuff but he's dealt with it. He's got a bad rap, really. If anyone knows that he doesn't date, it's me, but people are determined to hang onto this idea that he sleeps with everyone woman between eighteen and forty that he comes across."
Julia had taken note of the fact that Gabrielle both didn't tell her what that 'pretty awful stuff' was – which meant her loyalty to Jack went beyond her loyalty to Julia – and that she got defensive about his reputation. She had left her interrogating at that. At least for the time being.
So here they were, on the eve of the wedding, kicking back over tea and biscuits. Gabrielle had known Julia would bring up Jack. Ever the matchmaker, Julia wouldn't let go of this idea of her and Jack getting together – dropping none-too-subtle hints about how smart and good-looking Jack was, and so much more in sync with Gabrielle than Steve ever had been.
She had to admit, she was more in sync with Jack than she ever had been with Steve. And it did make her feel good to know he took fidelity very seriously. Even though he had been promiscuous in the past, he had never cheated; the closest he had come was his well-known liaison with Charlotte Beaumont, his ex-girlfriend Terri's best friend, and he and Terri had been broken up at the time. He had witnessed what his father's infidelity had done to everyone in his family – his wife, his sons – and had vowed never to do that to a woman. If you wanted to play around, then play around, but once you committed to someone, that was it. She had been impressed by that, and comforted by the idea that there was at least one such man in the world.
And more than that – she had been humbled when he had confided in her about the sexual abuse he had suffered as a teenager. OK, so he had kind of been forced to after he had woken up screaming three nights in a row – it turned out he didn't do too well in strange beds, and she couldn't blame him after she had found out why – but it had made her understand him a whole lot more. And it had made her relate to him better, too. They had both been taken advantage of and used up by people who should have been old enough to know better. She knew that the way Steve had treated her in no way compared to what Jack had gone through, but still...
"Gabrielle?" Julia pressed when Gabrielle didn't answer her question. She seemed lost in thought; grinning slyly, Julia wondered if she was thinking about Jack. "You. And. Jack. Why hasn't anything happened between you?"
"We're just friend, Jules," Gabrielle said.
"Yeah? Then why are you blushing?"
"'Cos I'm bloody sick of being asked if there's anything happening between us – or if not, why not. You, Steve, the freaking director of the department." Yes, she thought, even Frank Campion had made some none-too-tactful comments about her close friendship with Jack. She wasn't sure what to make of it; if Frank was just genuinely curious, if he merely enjoyed tormenting her, or if he was interested – or concerned. "He's just a mate."
"A good-looking mate who cooks you dinner," Julia couldn't resist adding. She got a pained look from Gabrielle for her efforts. "Look, did it ever occour to you that maybe people ask 'cos you guys have a real vibe going. Dan and Ricki have nothing on you."
"Julia!" Gabrielle admonished her friend. No matter what Steve had put her through, she was romantic enough that she considered comparing the love Dan and Erica shared to the affection she and Jack shared – not even comparing, but elevating – was almost a sacrilege to her. And yet – Julia wasn't the first person to say that. OK, Julia was the first person to put it so bluntly – and as the only person involved in the wedding who was far more connected to Jack and Gabrielle than she was Dan and Erica, she had the licence to say it – but other people had said something along those lines, of her and Jack having some pretty special that you didn't see in a lot of established couples, let alone people claiming to be 'just friends'. "It's nice," she admitted. "Having someone who gets me so well – and who I get so well. It's... not difficult," she said, shrugging helplessly, realising how lame that sounded.
Julia smiled indulgently. She knew exactly what Gabrielle was getting at. Some relationships were fraught with squabbles and misunderstandings, the constant fights and tears and bitterness that things were so hard, and Steve and Gabrielle's had been right at the top of that list. "A friendship like that is always a good foundation for a relationship," she said. "So why hasn't anything happened between you? Are you scared of getting hurt?" she asked. She knew better than anyone - better even than Jack, because Julia had been there at the time and Jack had only known what she had told him years after it had happened – how devastated she had been by Steve's infidelity. When you lost faith in someone like that – well, it was a part of your innocence that you lost that you could never get back. And Julia, having seen what Gabrielle went through, knew how hard it was for her to trust someone again.
"No," Gabrielle said, surprising herself. She really wasn't afraid of getting hurt. Not at Jack's hands. She knew now that Jack, when he fell, fell deep, and would make someone an incredible boyfriend. In fact, she was jealous of that nameless woman out there in the future somewhere. Which she knew wouldn't be her. "It's not that. It's that Jack would never get involved with me."
Julia rolled her eyes. "Is this about you being not pretty enough?" she asked in her best Kasey Chambers voice. Gabrielle's insecurity about her looks had existed for years. No matter how well she grasped intellectually that Ashley's showy good looks – and Gabrielle's lack thereof – had had nothing to do with Steve's infidelity, no matter how well she knew in her head that Steve was the type of guy who couldn't keep it in his pants and would have cheated if his girlfriend had been Jennifer Hawkins, there had always been a part of Gabrielle that had thought it came down her what she considered her plainness, and that men weren't interested in her. "'Cos there are plenty of men who would be totally into you if you got that bloody chip off your shoulder. You could be Megan Fox and you'd still be a turn-off if you carry on with that attitude."
"It's not that, Jules," Gabrielle said. She felt herself blushing a little bit, thinking of the way Jack made her feel good about herself in so many ways that weren't just about looks – her intelligence, her compassion, her loyalty. "He was involved with someone a few years ago – she was recently widowed and wasn't over her husband. From what I understand, she didn't understand how in love with her he was – but anyway, he really got burned and he'll never get involved with someone who's still hung up on their ex."
"But you're not."
"He doesn't know that."
"Then tell him."
Gabrielle thought of the things Jack had said in confidence. She would lie in my arms and wish I was him. It's humiliating to lie in bed with someone and know that no matter what you do, they don't want you the way they want them. Yes, she had known. She hadn't realised it at the time, but in retrospect, she recalled Steve's distance, his boredom with her, especially when she wouldn't engage in the kind of things that Ashley would and he got frustrated with her. Yes, she understood and no, she couldn't blame him. "Jules, drop it, OK?" Gabrielle said testily.
Julia dropped it. She knew that tone of voice.
"So – how exactly do you know Dan and Erica?" Amy Fielding asked Julia at the reception. She didn't like the breezy, opinionated older woman, who always seemed to be making fun of her and wasn't at all phased over her looks or her uncle's position the way so many others were.
"I don't," Julia said breezily, somewhat amused that Amy, who had started working at the ED just days before and had finagled herself an invitation by dint of being the HoD's niece. She reminded Julia a little of a citified Ashley; lazy and shallow, used to getting by on her looks. "I have a talent for organising weddings so I ended up on board." She had engineered herself a position at the same table as Steve and Amy, mostly to check out what he'd done with himself in the last half a dozen years – and to needle him at every opportunity about the chemistry Jack and Gabrielle shared. Especially when they were sitting at the wedding party table, whispering to each other, all dressed up. They both scrubbed up pretty damn well, in her opinion.
"You do anything other than pretend to be Jennifer Lopez?" Amy asked, a little meanly. She decided she didn't like Julia, and she especially didn't like the way Steve seemed so occupied with her. He didn't seem interested in her per se, just agitated and distracted by her presence. Amy wondered if it had something to do with Gabrielle. Who was looking pretty cosy with Jack. She wondered what it was with that girl that she had two men fighting over her. She was so plain.
"I run Widgee State Primary," Julia said, enjoying seeing the lofty look disappear from Amy's face. It was an exaggeration, but not much of one. There were about as many teachers to be found in a place like Widgee as there were nurses.
Julia turned her attention to Steve. "What have you been up to since I saw you last?" she asked sweetly. Steve gave a noncommittal reply about travelling around and working in the country; Julia took this to mean he'd pottered around to whatever place which would take him. She wondered how he had ever managed such a plum position as a job in a major hospital as All Saints. "And you and Gabrielle have stayed friend?" she asked even more sweetly.
Steve grunted at that. He didn't like Julia. He never had, and especially didn't like her now. He wondered how much she knew about what had happened between him and Gabrielle since he had started working at All Saints – their initial reconciliation, their break-up over his drinking, his walking out and walking back in, wanting to quit drinking, to his current sobriety. Not to mention Gabrielle's friendship with Jack – who Steve thought only as a sexual predator who slept around without a thought to the women he was using. (That Steve had done the exact same thing not that long ago was completely lost to him.) He hated that they were friends, and especially hated that they were closer than he and Gabrielle were. He didn't like the way the jerk looked at her – and especially didn't like the way she looked at him. And especially didn't like how cosy they were looking at each other right now.
Julia knew Steve was jealous. How does it feel? She asked, although a bit of jealousy that Steve didn't even have a right to feel was nothing on the hurt and betrayal that he had put Gabrielle through. "She and Jack seem close," she said. She noticed the way Amy glowered slightly when she said this. SO Amy had a thing for Jack. Well, tough luck, nothing's going to happen while I have anything to do with it. She took another sip of her wine, and watched Jack and Gabrielle at their table, wondering when things would get interesting.
She didn't have to wait long. Gabrielle had been watching them. More specifically, she had been watching Steve with Amy. It seemed Amy had a thing for Steve, and while that didn't particularly surprise Gabrielle – Amy seemed to have a crush on all the doctors – it was a little disconcerting that Steve was the object of her attention. And that Steve seemed to be returning the attention, even just a little.
She felt jealous. Amy was attractive, in an obvious blond way. Just like Ashley – just the type Steve liked. She had no claim to Steve – but she didn't want Amy, or anyone she saw on a daily occasion, to have any claim to him either.
She frowned. She knew it wasn't that she still had feelings for him – she had been honest with Julia when she had said that – so she didn't know what it was about seeing Steve with another woman that pushed her buttons so well.
Maybe, she thought idly, she should have gone easier on Steve when he griped about her burgeoning friendship with Jack. It wasn't easy to have been so close with someone for so long and watch them being close with someone else – no matter how you felt about either of them. Steve meant the world to her as a friend and a link to her past, but she wasn't in love with him, and she had feelings for Jack that she couldn't name – that she didn't dare give too much thought to because she knew that he would never consider getting involved with her.
She was starting to think she had been better off alone and thinking she was destined to stay that way forever because she wasn't pretty enough.
She kept downing the champagne, getting drunker and drunker. She had never been much of a drinker, and the champers was going straight to her head. She felt light-headed and giggly – and just a little flirty.
Jack watched her in amusement. He had never seen Gabrielle drink this much. She wasn't much of a drinker – maybe a six-pack or a bottle of wine between them over dinner or a DVD – so to see her this giggly and flirty and not entirely stead on her feet was somewhat amusing.
What wasn't so amusing was that Gabrielle had been watching Steve and Amy all night. He saw it as part of her unresolved feelings for Steve – she looked jealous as all hell at the attention he was paying Amy. Actually, Jack was a little jealous about attention he was paying. He was interested in her himself, despite Gabrielle's warning that she was Frank's niece. He wished Gabrielle would do something about it, rather than just watch them sullenly, and that would free up Amy for him.
"Why don't you go talk to him?" he asked, trying to hide the bitterness in his voice. He had never understood how women could hold candles like that.
"Who?" Gabrielle asked distractedly, thinking how good Jack looked in his tux. She was watching his lips move out of the corner of her eye, and wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Rachel had said he was a very good kisser.
"Steve. You've had your eye on him all night."
"I have not! And besides, it's none of your business."
Whatever. "Fine, fine. Look, I'm heading off, and I think it's time you went to bed." He was a little worried about someone taking advantage of Gabrielle in her current condition. He had witnessed her ability to look after herself, but the combination of too much champagne and her jealousy over Steve and Amy – well, who knew how suggestible she was right now?
"No, you go. Go on, choof off. Go on, choof, choof."
Choof off? Was that some country saying? Did this mean she was all nostalgic, thinking about the good times about her country life – her life with Steve? "Alright, I'll choof off when you come with me." If she wanted to get involved with him again, that was her prerogative, bad judgement or not, but as her friend, he had an obligation to try and make sure that was bad judgement exercised sober.
Jack pulled Gabrielle out of her chair. She stumbled awkwardly into his arms, and looked up at him. Their eyes connected, and for the first time, she was struck by what beautiful eyes he had. Of course, she had noticed them before, bur she had never been this drunk before – ever, come to think of it. God, he was such a beautiful, sexy man.
She kissed him. She planted her lips against his with surprising deftness. His lips were soft and his body against hers hard.
For a second, he kissed her back. It wasn't like he had never thought about kissing her and for a second, it was the most right thing in the world to kiss her back. She tasted of champagne and strawberry lip balm, and she smelled of deodorant and strawberry shampoo. It was the headiest combination he could remember in a woman – something he could get hooked on very quickly.
And then he remembered that she was hooked on someone else.
He pulled away. "I'm calling you a cab," he said gruffly.
Gabrielle clutched the back of her chair. "He's calling a cab," she giggled.
Gabrielle woke up with her head throbbing. She couldn't remember ever feeling this awful, and intellectually she knew this was a hangover. She had never been much of a drinker – initially because she had always been the designated driver in her relationship with Steve, and after that because she knew better than most how ugly alcohol could get – so she had never been familiar with the morning-after effects of drinking too much alcohol. In her case, far too much.
Groaning, she got out of bed and padded into the bathroom for neurofen. That taken care of, she went to look for Jack. She had a vague feeling she owed him an apology.
She didn't remember much after kissing him. He had bundled her into the cab and given the driver directions home, then helped her into bed. The alcohol had hit her pretty hard after she had kissed him – that kiss had been the last she had been able to do much – and after that, she only remembered being carried and prodded into bed.
Until now.
She raked her hand through her hair and cringed. She couldn't believe she had kissed Jack. Not that she hadn't thought of it before, but – to do it so publicly – she had a vague memory of Bart having a video camera – to make asses of both of them.
Jack would be furious.
She had to explain it to him.
She didn't even know what she was explaining. She hadn't meant to kiss Jack, hadn't wanted to embarrass both of them by kissing him in public, but... she wasn't sure she regretted actually kissing him... just the circumstances under which she had.
She bit her lip, and tried to remember Steve and Amy, and how disconcerted she had been. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter. Steve could talk to, flirt with – hell date, sleep with, marry if it took his fancy – anyone who caught his eye.
And it didn't matter to her. Not like it mattered to her having Jack keeping looking at her the way he did, having Jack to come home to at the end of the day and gel with. What Steve did with his life didn't matter nearly as much as her own life. And her own life was so much less for not having Jack in it. Or worse, for having Jack pissed as hell at her for embarrassing him at a wedding. A wedding in which he was best man, no less, which made him a central figure. She bet this was one of those things that people would talk about until it became an urban legend. Did you hear the one about the best man and maid-of-honour?
She had to talk to Jack.
Jack was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in the house and he wasn't answering his phone. When she called his sister's place, Rebecca sounded cagey, which meant that Jack was there, hiding from her. Which meant, knowing Jack as she did, she had to wait it out until he was willing to talk to her. Anything sooner and he would just shut down like a turtle retreating into its shell, and she'd never be able to explain herself.
"You were certainly hot gossip," Julia teased later that day. She had come over with KFC – much greasier than anything she could have gotten her hands on in Widgee, and the perfect hangover food – and was needling Gabrielle in the way that only a childhood best friend could.
Gabrielle cringed again, which she had done every time she thought about it. "I don't know what came over me," she said miserably.
"I do," Julia said cheerfully. "You were drunk and overcome with your attraction for him, am I right?" Gabrielle just looked away guiltily, and Julia knew she was right. "So what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Gabrielle said. "Jack's gone to stay with his sister for a few days. He'll come back when there's enough time between it and then that he can laugh about it and it's just another dumb thing that happened after a few too many drinks."
"And that's how you want it?" Julia asked, her tone making it clear that she knew it wasn't.
"What can I do, Jules? I've already told you how he feels."
"Yeah, yeah, he got burned, blah, blah. Does he know how you feel?"
"It's not that simple," Gabrielle insisted.
"I don't see why not. You're totally hot for each other and you're totally into him. Seems pretty bloody simple to me."
That, Gabrielle thought, was because Julia didn't understand Jack like she did. Terri Sullivan had broken Jack's heart because she hadn't known the depth of her own love for another man; a man with whom she'd had a drawn-out and convoluted relationship with. Jack would never be able to overlook the similarities between the two relationships. "Julia, drop it."
Julia dropped it, and soon after, left Gabrielle alone to her thoughts. It didn't matter how she felt about Jack; she could never make him believe that her feelings were genuine, because to him, even if she believed she had feelings for him, and that those feelings were sincere – they weren't. She could never make Jack believe that she was completely over Steve and that she was in love with him.
The thought made her want to cry.
It wasn't until Dan and Erica got back from their honeymoon that she managed to get alone with him; something of a feat, considering they lived together. When he had come back from Rebecca's, he had made sure to come home late and leave early. She was sure he was avoiding her.
Dan must have said something, because this time, he actually slowed down to wait for her when she called him. "Jack, I'm so sorry about what happened," she said. "Me and weddings – I always get so sentimental. It's what I get for being friends with Julia for so long."
He smiled thinly. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it, although that had proved impossible. He couldn't stop tasting strawberry lip balm on his mouth. He couldn't stop thinking about kissing her. He wanted to kiss her right now. The way she was chewing on her bottom lip nervously made him want to draw her into his arms and kiss her deeply. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that if he did kiss her, she was sure to be thinking about kissing him. Steve bloody Taylor, Jerk Boyfriend of the Decade who nonetheless managed to inspire never-ending feelings of love and loyalty for Steve.
She deserved better than that. And he deserved better that someone who was hung up on their ex. He had certainly learned his lesson there. He wasn't about to repeat it – no matter how kissable Gabrielle looked, and no matter how preoccupied he was with the taste of strawberry lip balm. "It's fine," he said in a small, strained voice.
"No, I need to explain – " she started.
He held up his hand in a stop motion. "It's fine," he repeated. "I understand it, I really do. And I'm not angry. I know you have a history with Steve. I don't appreciate being embarrassed like that, but I get that you wanted to make him jealous and I was just a handy male."
"It wasn't – "
"Gabrielle, please. You're still in love with him. I get that. I've been through this before. Can we just take a step back and treat it as the drunken indiscretion that it was?"
Something flared inside Gabrielle. He wasn't giving her the opportunity to explain, just cutting her off and treating her like she was exactly the same as Terri Sullivan, too deep in her grief to realise she had this fantastic guy in front of her if she only tried to stop thinking of someone else when she was with him. It didn't matter that they had shared so much – he was always going to compare her to some woman who's broken his heart years ago.
He was determined to overlook whatever feelings she had for him – or discount them, think that they weren't real... just the superficial feelings of a woman who didn't know what she wanted.
"How dare you," she hissed at him, her eyes sparking in a way he hadn't seen before, not even when he'd humiliated one of the best temps she'd ever had into quitting.
"Sorry?" he asked, completely taken aback. Gabrielle had never spoken to him like that, not even when he had given her good reason to, and certainly not in the months they had been living together, growing closer and closer. She was his best friend, and he had never seen this side of her. It was somewhat disconcerting. Especially since she was in the wrong. Especially when she was the one who had kissed him to make a point to her ex – and ex who didn't deserve the time of day from her, let alone the effort she had gone to in order to make him jealous.
"How dare you assume that my intentions are based on me being hung up on Steve. How dare you assume that I am hung up on him. You don't know me at all."
For the first time it occurred to him that maybe she wasn't as hung up on Steve as he thought she was. "Gabrielle, I – "
"No. I'm so freaking tired of you thinking what you want of me because of something that was done to you years ago. Jesus, Jack, don't you know me by now? Don't you think I'd know something like whether or not I was hung up on a guy?"
"I –"
"Do I strike you as someone so out of touch with their feelings that they don't actually know what their feelings are? Have I ever said or done anything to make you believe that I'd use someone to make up for unrequited feelings that – that – I don't even have?"
"Well, no, but –"
"So then how dare you stand there and assume that I would only ever kiss you because I was drunk and wanted to make a point to Steve?" she raged at him.
"Well, I – I mean – I didn't mean to assume – hang on, what do you mean? Didn't you kiss me just to make a point to Steve?" Jack asked, by now completely flustered. He had expected Gabrielle to admit that he was right – or at the very least, not go on the offensive like this.
It was actually kind of sexy.
"No," Gabrielle said, scowling, still resenting Jack just a little for assuming that she would only kiss him because she was hung up on Steve. "Believe me, if I was trying to make a point, I wouldn't make it with someone I cared about. You can be so full of yourself, you know that? You think everyone's out to get you because a few people screwed you over along the way. Well – get over it. You know what? I don't even know why I bothered with you – you'd clearly rather cultivate that chip on your shoulder than think that anyone might actually be interested in you for yourself." And she walked off, exasperated by Jack's maddening misconception that any interest she might have in him was solely to piss Steve was.
Jack watched her go, completely flummoxed as to what had just happened.
Dan listened to Jack with an amused smile playing on his face. Jack was his best friend, but he wasn't blind to his flaws. In fact, the fact that he was his best friend - and the fact they had lived together for two years – made Dan more aware than most of Jack's flaws. And top of the list was his inability to relate to women as girlfriends. Friends and lovers, he was fine with – hell, excelled at – but girlfriends sank him.
His attitude towards Gabrielle was a prime example of that. He simply didn't understand Gabrielle's thinking, so he defaulted to the only line of thinking that he was familiar with; Terri Sullivan's. Never mind that Terri and Mitch's relationship had ended in death whereas Gabrielle had ended her relationship with Steve – admittedly under unhappy circumstances, but she had ended it by choice nonetheless. Secondly, he and Terri had never been friends. At least, not when they had been sleeping together. Now, they got along like a house on fire. Whereas he and Gabrielle were close – closer than he and Dan were, Dan was the first to admit, and deeply in sync with one another. Theirs was the ideal foundation for a relationship, a close friendship between two people who deeply understood each other and grooved together like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Except Jack seemed determined to be blind to the idea that that friendship might be a jumping point to something else because he was clueless about relationships.
"She was in the wrong!" Jack raged at the inconsistency of the female mind. "She – kissed – me."
"In front of everyone, yeah, I know. I saw it," Dan said, Bart's video had become hot property, with a lot of people chastising him for turning the camera to face the wall. "So? You going to try and convince me that it's the most humiliating thing that ever happened to you?" Dan leaned back, smiling expectantly as if waiting for Jack to attempt to do just that. Jack remained silent, knowing that Dan had him there. "You know what your problem is?" he asked rhetorically. "You don't know anything about relationships."
"I know plenty, Mr-single-digits," Jack said smugly, although it wasn't easy to be smug around Dan, who looked so happy with his single-digits and his new wife.
Dan took that comment with the graceful silence that it deserved. Anyone else who would've said something like that, and he would have thought of them as a braggart; but he knew Jack's promiscuity stemmed from a bloody-minded determination to prove his heterosexuality. The fact Gabrielle knew it too supported Dan's opinion that the two of them were meant to be together. "No, you know plenty about sex," he corrected. "You don't know anything about relationships. If you did, you wouldn't have made the blunders you did."
Jack was getting worked up now, which had been Dan's plan. "Like what?" he asked coolly.
"Like pursuing someone who was far too old for you and far too in love with her late husband. Like falling for someone who was as transparent as glad-wrap to everyone else – a transparent manipulative cow, that was. Like the fact you wouldn't know if a woman was actually interested in you if she stood in front of you and screamed it in your face. Which is kind of what Gabrielle did, actually." Except she was doing something else with her mouth, he thought. "Like – you won't let go of this one time you were hurt by someone that you didn't know and who didn't know you and you're letting it blind you to the fact that you have someone who knows you better than anyone else has in your life, I'll be, and is totally interested in you, and what do you do? Not only turn her down, but accuse her of using her to get back at her ex. And you think you know anything about relationship?" Dan laughed at that, and Jack squirmed. He didn't like people laughing at his expense.
But he couldn't help but take Dan's words in. He had never had that much luck with women, at least not when it came to relationships. Sex, he excelled at – he had been so determined to prove himself sexually and so driven to make it a great experience for the woman he was with that he had studied and practiced it as thoroughly as he had medicine until his comment to Terri about being better in bed then beside one hadn't just been bragging – but relationships... He chewed on his bottom lip. He'd never been good at relationships. He'd never been good at the emotional intimacy that was required for a relationship. In fact, the closest emotionally intimate relationship he had had so far in his life had been Gabrielle. Gabrielle, who could make him laugh and feel good about himself. Gabrielle, who cooked dinner for him and curled up against him when they watched DVDs and made him feel like a man in a way that wasn't the least bit sexual - and had been completely foreign to him up until now.
Gabrielle, who it had been so easy to be friends with – so much easier than it had been to be in a relationship with Terri, Or Deanna, or anyone else. Gabrielle, who had expressed her feelings for him, albeit in a very inappropriate way, and he had shot her down by accusing her of doing it only to make a point with her ex.
Ooops.
The house smelled of chocolate and vanilla – she'd been baking. She baked when she was angry, Jack had learnt. It had solved the question of where all those cakes and biscuits came from in the ED from time to time. Immediately, he felt guilty. She was baking because she was angry at him. "Gabrielle?" he asked tentatively.
"What?" she asked grumpily. "I'm busy."
"No, you're not. You're going to run out of fridge space soon. What are you going to do then, knit a blanket for winter?"
"I don't knit. That's a stupid stereotype about country girls," she said, the grumpiness in her tone just as apparent.
"Sorry," he said. He knew she was sensitive about those stupid country stereotypes. He took a deep breath; if he didn't just come out and say it, he never would, and he knew that the longer these things went unsaid, the harder they got to say. "Look – I'm sorry about what I said, too. About you and Steve, I mean. I – was – dumb – I was scared."
"You think you're the only one who's been scared about getting involved with someone, Jack?" she asked, refusing to give him any ground. She got that he had been scared, but that hadn't given him the right to think so little of her? "I was terrified of getting involved with Steve again." And look where it got me. And do you see me scared to get involved with someone else and making accusations on their character over it?
"Steve never –" Jack started to say.
"I swear to God, if you pull that sexual abuse card, I will throw this at you," she said, and Jack didn't know if she meant the dough she was rolling out or the hefty wooden rolling pin she was using to roll it out with. "You had a crap childhood and that's sad, but you don't get to go through life with this chip on your shoulder expecting everyone you come across is either too selfish or self-absorbed to care about you. God, I don't even know what I saw in you in the first place."
Even though he'd never thought about her in that way, the thought of her not feeling about him in that way made him panic. "I was stupid," h said again.
"Damn right you were," she said, but her voice was softer this time. It helped that he kept apologising – and that he actually sounded sincere. Actually, more sincere then Steve ever had. Jack wasn't the only one who had been hurt badly.
"Let me make it up to you," he pleaded. He moved close to her, stepping behind her, and she didn't move away – or threaten him with violence, verbally or non-verbally. "I'm scared," he admitted, and she noticed that he was speaking in the present tense.
"Me, too," she said. She didn't push him away when he placed his hands on her hips – not that she could have, if she'd wanted to; she was positioned between him and the breakfast bar – and she couldn't think of any place she would rather be. After a pause, she leaned slightly into him.
"I don't want to get hurt again."
"Me neither."
So they were agreed that they were scared of being hurt and didn't want to be jerked around – which by extension was an agreement not to jerk each other around – but neither had any idea where to go from there. Gabrielle because she had so little experience with men – Steve had been it for her, and he hadn't exactly been a candidate for Boyfriend of the Year – and Jack... Jack grinned to himself, glad that Gabrielle couldn't see him. In his own way, he had about as much experience with relationships as Gabrielle did.
He kissed the top of her head, feeling as nervous as if he were a sixteen-year-old virgin. Which, he realised, was part of the problem. "Sorry?" Gabrielle asked, and Jack realised he'd been thinking aloud.
"I was thinking that I feel as nervous as a sixteen-year-old virgin, when I actually wasn't one," Jack said. "I'm not good at relationships," he admitted. Funny how it was so much harder to say than it had been to hear Dan say it.
"I worked that out a while ago, Jack," Gabrielle said ruefully. "I also worked out that you're an amazing guy who'll be a wonderful boyfriend when someone who's right for you comes along." And I want that someone to be me, she wanted to add, but it sounded so corny.
"Yeah?" he asked. He'd been called amazing and wonderful before, in other contexts – student, doctor, lover – but never as a boyfriend. He slid his hands from her hips along her stomach so his arms were wrapped around her waist. She was taller than any woman he'd gone to bed with in a while – actually, he couldn't remember ever having been with someone as tall as Gabrielle – and a fuller figure. He had always liked that about her. It meant he could muck around with her without feeling like he could hurt her if he got a little too rough in the heat of the moment.
He knew he had once found Terri Sullivan's very petite-ness alluring, but for the life of him now, he couldn't work out why. "You're so sexy," he murmured huskily in her ear. She squirmed. Steve had called her sexy before, but she had never entirely believed him, thinking herself too tall, too stocky, too plain to be 'sexy'. But with Jack – Jack made her feel like he was seeing something inside her being projected outwards.
And it helped that she could wear heels and he was still taller than her.
"Jack," she whispered, and he knew from her tone that there wasn't a thought of Steve in her mind – and that there hadn't been for a while. You didn't say a person's name like that when you were thinking about someone else. He should know, he had spent so much time longing to hear Terri say his name that way.
He cupped her chin and rotated her head slightly so she was facing him, and kissed her. He shuddered lightly when his lips connected with hers. He had felt something at the wedding, but they had both been drunk and it had come a such a surprise. But this – this – "Gabrielle," he said. He flicked his tongue into her mouth, exploring, searching her own out. She met it with her own, kissing him back, twisting around so she was facing him properly, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He pulled away when he felt her knees start to buckle and propped her gently against the counter. "You OK?" he asked.
"Fine," she said breathlessly. Kissing Jack was the best experience ever, and one she didn't want to end in a hurry. "Just don't stop kissing me."
So he didn't.