Chapter 4 — My Friend
At Jenna's insistence, Liz went shopping for a dress to wear to the mayor's dinner instead of just raiding wardrobe.
"You don't have to ask him if it's a date, Liz. It is," Jenna said. "And you both know it, even if Jack hasn't had some wonderful, insightful friend like me wake him up to the fact to the fact that he has the hots for his pal Liz. He'll realize it soon enough.
"So knock his socks off on Saturday. I know it's more my style than yours, but don't be afraid to use your sexuality."
Jenna promised to limit her crises and neediness for the week and to enlist Pete to keep an eye on Tracy so that Liz could spend the better part of Wednesday afternoon shopping for a dress.
Other customers around Liz smiled and laughed and enjoyed browsing among dresses. Liz's brow furrowed as she rejected dress after dress and replayed the questions Jenna had asked after Liz's revelation that she had accidentally begun dating Jack.
"It's easy to start and stop dating someone. Especially when they don't know you're dating. So do you want to date Jack?"
Jack was… Jack. Did she want to be his friend? Absolutely. Did she want to spend her free time with him and support him and care for him and desire him and sleep with him and have babies with him? Wait, where did that come from? She's talking about dating Jack, not committing her life to him. But face it: she was closer to 40 than 30. How could that not be a question about any potential relationship now? And….
Back up. The question was about Jack, not her own biological clock. Think about Jack. What else had Jenna asked?
"How do you feel when he touches you?"
Hmm. She never thought about touching Jack on purpose. She often wondered why they so awkwardly vacillated among handshakes, hugs, shoulder punches, and back pats. She wouldn't give it a second thought if Pete gave her a brief shoulder massage or if she accidentally collided with Frank in the hallway. But every contact with Jack was charged, as though neither of them quite knew the boundaries.
She knew that she'd always thought of Jack as off limits; he made it clear in the beginning that he had no romantic interest in her. So her mind just never went there. But now as she thought about cuddling into his solid, warm body on the couch and visualized those blue eyes looking down at her, Liz's stomach did a long, slow back flip. If she took away the past, their joking, their status as boss and employee, their roles as one another's romantic confidantes — if Jack were just a guy she saw on the street or at a party, would she want to hold his hand, kiss him, jump into bed with him? Those shoulders, those eyes, the quick smile and unrestrained laugh when she said something funny, the way he checked on how their relationship fared after a difficult week at work or when they fought — yes, yes, and yes.
Liz could definitely check off the "attracted to Jack" box.
"Is Jack what you want, the kind of man you can see yourself with?"
Who wanted an arrogant, elitist, conservative businessman who put a price on everything? But surprisingly, the sum of those parts wasn't so bad. He cared what she thought. He tried to help her develop as a person. He was honest with her — perhaps brutally so. He took chances on her (she pushed away the horrible memories of her one week at work on Dealbreaker). He had a job and loved his mother, even if he also loathed her a little, too. He always stood up for her in the end.
Yeah, Jack was the kind of man anyone would want. The kind of man she wanted.
"Who's the first person you'd call if something really good happened at work?"
Jack.
"Who's the first person you'd call if you found out you'd won a lifetime subscription to the cheese-of-the-month club?"
Jack.
"Who's the first person you'd call if you found out your mother was in the hospital?"
Jack.
He's the one who would understand no matter what, the man who had read her the first time he met her.
So back to the first question. Did she want to date Jack?
She was physically attracted to him. She liked him as a person, and he was her best friend. He was the person she'd choose to share all her big moments with.
Was she ready for their relationship to change, to be defined? It was good as things were. But what if it could be great? She didn't want less than they shared now. Yes. She wanted to date Jack. Now it just had to be his idea so he couldn't laugh the idea away if she presented it.
Jack stepped out of the car a little early on Saturday. All day he'd found himself unaccountably looking forward to the evening. Dinners like this were monotonous and obnoxious, relieved only by the shenanigans of the boozy power-hungry and those actually drunk on power. Lemon's comments about their manners and clothes and conversations never failed to brighten such nights. And her remarkable naiveté about the power players always led to satisfying opportunities to shock her and fuel her jokes.
He pressed the call button for her apartment. He heard a harried voice say she was still getting ready and to come upstairs. He found the door unlocked, and he entered the apartment chiding her behavior.
"Even if you know I'm on the way up, Lemon, you can't just leave the door unlocked. This is New York. You don't have a doorman in this building, and who knows all the unsavory characters skulking around."
"Yeah, Jack, someone is going to storm in during the 90 seconds it takes you to make it upstairs," she called from the bedroom. "Just finishing my makeup, and I'll be right out."
"Take your time," he called back as he leafed through the day's newspaper scattered on the coffee table.
He heard bottles clattering and took a moment to marvel that the woman who once had seemed to have a moral objection to lipstick could make herself presentable when necessary. He heard the sharp report of elastic snapping into place.
"Wardrobe malfunction?" he asked with a smirk.
"Suck it, Jack," she said as fabric continued to rustle.
Finally he heard the sound of a long zipper being drawn, so he began to fold the paper and turned to greet her.
"Ready?" he called.
She appeared in the doorway. "Ready," she said softly.
Liz watched with satisfaction as Jack's mouth dropped open ever so slightly.
He stood for a silent moment taking in the smooth hair that had been pulled up in loose curls, the sleek chocolate brown sheath that shimmered in the light and plunged to play her cleavage to full advantage, the high heels that peeked through a slit in the dress that went — good Lord! — all the way up to mid-thigh.
Jack cleared his throat as he caught his extended silence.
"You are stunning," he said roughly. "Really, Liz, well done."
"And you are very handsome yourself," she said as she walked in the room and lightly touched his bow tie to straighten it.
He held out his arm expectantly.
"Shall we?"
After Jack's initial surprise about how attractively Lemon had put herself together, he found himself on very familiar footing. Jack told her about the latest (gaudily overdone) drawings from the decorator, she asked what he'd done for Colleen's birthday, and they quietly mocked a congressman's indiscretion at the party.
Except Jack realized he wasn't dropping his arm after making sure Lemon didn't fall on her face down the stairs. And the hand that guided her through the crowded room lingered longer than necessary at the warm, silky fabric at the small of her back. There were plenty of interesting and important people milling about, but he never thought of leaving Liz's side, preferring to keep company with her.
As they talked with a director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an associate from Jack's brief stint in Washington, and an editor for the New York Times, Jack felt a friendly slap on the shoulder.
"Jack!" He turned to see a broad smile on the face of Robert Johnston, who had started at GE about the same time Jack did. Johnston had risen to a vice presidency in one of the company's other subsidiaries, but Jack hadn't seen him in at least 10 years.
"Robert!" They shook hands heartily. "How the hell are you? And how's your family?"
"Great, just great. Kay is here somewhere. And you're here with —" Johnston's voice ended on a question.
Jack half-turned to put a hand on Lemon's back as she continued an animated conversation with the group.
"This is Liz Lemon, my…" Jack's voice caught in neutral as his brain raced.
Coworker? Too impersonal.
Companion? Too much like "escort" or "prostitute."
Platonic friend? Too bland. And who even said that?
Partner? Too many homosexual overtones or connotations of undefined commitment.
Not girlfriend or lover or wife.
Date? Not…. Jack's mouth fell slightly open for the second time that night. He was acting like he was on a date. With Liz Lemon.
"What, Jack?" Liz had finally extricated herself from conversation and turned toward him. He gave her a brief, unfocused smile.
"Robert, this is my friend, Elizabeth Lemon."
TBC