The Glimpse Chapter 11, a three's company fanfic

Chapter 11

What Was It Like?

Sunday nights were dinner nights with the Dallas's. Jack had come to relish the tradition, using it as an opportunity to use his friends and family as test subjects for new recipes before he debuted them at the restaurant. It was becoming natural to pour everything he had into the Bistro; he'd begun to remember why having his own restaurant had been his dream to begin with. It turned out it was much more fulfilling to form relationships with regular customers than with an audience he didn't know – customers who were much easier to obtain when he had a regular, well-trained staff.

But this week turned out to be a special occasion - Terri had been accepted into UCLA to begin the process of becoming a nurse practitioner. "Functionally I'll be a doctor, but better," she'd piped. Janet insisted on making a cake in the shape of a caduceus, and Jack had done his best to get the shape just right, while she did her artistic best on the piping. They'd had barely enough time between tending to Junior's teething and Jamie's fit over a missing yellow crayon before Larry and Terri arrived.

"I brought the wine!" Terri called before she even had her foot in the door.

"Perfect. I could use this in the marinade," Jack said, playfully grabbing the wine.

"Not on your life, Jack," Terri laughed, pulling it back.

"Congratulations, honey," Janet said, pushing Jack aside and pulling Terri in for a hug. Not a second later, Jamie barged into the room and jumped into Terri's arms.

"Aunt Terri, I drew a picture for you, but Junior stole my yellow crayon. And, and, now the colors of - of your school," she said, tripping over her words in frustration as she tried to explain how her drawing of Terri in her UCLA attire was now ruined.

"Sweetheart, that is totally fine. I love everything you draw no matter what colors you use."

Meanwhile Larry had grabbed Junior from Janet's arms and sent the child into hysterics with a simple cross-eyed glance. "Kids love me," he said to Jack. "They say the mark of a person pure of heart is the adoration of kids and animals. Isn't that right, Chrissy?" he added, ruffling the dog's fur.

Jack took in how wonderful it all felt - to be surrounded by his family, his friends. It'd been so long since he'd felt anything like this, and now he couldn't imagine ever letting it go. As the others talked, he quietly made his way into the kitchen to finish with dinner. A moment later, Terri entered, wine in tow.

"Came to find the wine opener."

"You don't miss a beat, do you?" Jack teased.

"It's a celebration, Jack! In more ways than one," she added that last bit out of the side of her mouth.

"Oh yeah? How so?" he frowned.

Terri set the wine down on the counter, then let out a thoughtful sigh as if carefully considering her next words. "You know, Janet was so worried about you for a while there. We were all worried about you. It was like you weren't our Jack anymore."

Jack found himself looking at the floor, feeling almost a sense of shame. "Do you think I'm back to normal yet?"

"No," she replied confidently. "But our Jack never was," she laughed her light, Terri laugh.

"Har, har, very funny Ter," he replied, thankful for the joke splitting the tension.

"Everybody's just happy that you seem to be, well, snapping out of it, that's all."

"So am I," he said. "Guess I was just having some sort of midlife crisis," he tittered, trying to find an excuse that would appease her. It seemed to work, for she'd turned around to fiddle in the drawer for that wine opener.

He went back to the chicken he'd been glazing, then stopped. He hadn't had much time to actually talk to Terri since he'd been dropped into this new life and he hadn't considered that she, better than Larry, was the perfect person to ask about the one thing that'd been on his mind throughout this entire experience.

"Hey, Terri?"

"Yeah," she said as she continued to rummage. "God, this drawer is a mess, Jack."

"Do you remember the night I stopped the wedding? With...with Janet and Phillip, I mean."

"Ha!" she stopped her rummaging, momentarily giving up on her venture and turning around to face Jack again. "Who could forget it? Why do you ask?"

"Can you tell me what happened? Er...I mean, you know, from your perspective?"

Terri raised an eyebrow but proceeded to answer his question anyway. "From my perspective? I thought you'd lost your damn mind!"

"I..."

"I thought you'd lost your damn mind and yet I was so glad that you'd lost it! I hated Vicky. And Phillip! Sure, I may have been initially blindsided by his attractiveness, but he was just so...so..."

"Rich? Successful?"

"Incredibly dull. I thought Janet could do better than that. Anyone. Anything. Even you would do," she teased.

Jack smiled, taking the backhanded compliment that he knew, from her, was a kindness. He vaguely recalled the advice Terri had given him that day. She'd left Furley's apartment where the reception was being held and found Jack moping on the bench after Vicky had turned down his proposal. He thought about how now, from her perspective, it must never have happened – she'd never reiterated the words he'd said to Janet about being lucky enough to find someone she loved, and how the only thing that really matters is being together with that person. If she hated Vicky, why would she have even said that?

"I've given a lot of bad advice, Jack," she interrupted his thoughts as if reading his mind. "On purpose. Just to preserve the peace. Do you have any idea how unpeaceful it was living with the two of you for three years?"

Jack softened. She was right, and he suddenly felt a tinge of guilt. He hadn't even considered how any of this would affect her, the other roommate. "Did you ever suspect? I mean...about how I felt about Janet all those years?"

"Suspect? I knew! From the moment I met the two of you it was obvious to me. In fact, I'd assumed you were already together. Trust me, I knew what I was getting myself into when I moved in with you guys and I was fine with it! What drove me crazy was the denial. My god, the denial!"

"Well then why didn't you ever say anything?!"

"That wasn't my decision to make, Jack! It never was! Whether or not the two of you were going to make that decision, it wasn't my place to interfere. To reiterate, I had to live with the two of you. And that meant dealing with any of the consequences if I had said anything."

He relented. Fine. That was fair.

"So I'm glad you made that decision on your own. Because I hated Vicky."

"Yeah, I got that pa – "

"She was just so...so fragile. A perpetual victim. Whiney."

"The day of the wedding, Terri?" he reminded her, still fishing for answers.

"Oh, right, haha. Where was I?" She stopped to think for a moment, remembering. "Oh! I thought you'd lost your damn mind," she said, rushing through the words she'd already said, "but as soon as you did, I felt myself breathing this huge sigh of relief. For one, I didn't have to pretend that I liked Vicky or Phillip anymore. But more importantly, it was like...everything was finally being set right."

"What happened?"

"What do you mean what happened? You were there, not me. Janet ran out of the apartment and you ran after her and that was that."

It was the same thing Larry had told him. He'd stopped the wedding to confess in front of everyone. When Janet ran out, he followed to talk to her.

"That was it?"

"That was all I saw, Jack. After the two of you left, I had to do my best to mollify the guests. Phillip threw a fit, but you knew that. He gave you a piece of his mind later. At one point it all got so overwhelming that I thought about looking for you and Janet to make sure she hadn't murdered you. In which case, she'd have needed someone to help her hide the body and I was more than willing to be an accomplice by that point..."

Jack stopped her. "But Janet never told you any details. About, you know, what we said to each other?"

Terri stared at him again, a judgmental scowl on her face. "Alright, never mind. You're still acting strange. But in a good way, I guess. In a 'suddenly extremely interested in his wife' way. We can work with that."

"You're not gonna talk, are you?"

"Talk to your wife!" she scoffed good-naturedly, turning around to rummage through the drawer again. "Aha! Found it. See you in the living room, Jack!" and with that, she walked out with the wine bottle and bottle opener in hand.

Jack sighed, but he was smiling too The way Terri described it, everything that had happened that day seemed like a breezy inevitability. God, how he wished it really had been.

And then he thought about Janet, and how she must've felt – the absolute whiplash of starting your day preparing to marry one man, and ending it by processing a confession from another. She had to have been livid. But she also had to have been relieved. After all, she chose him, didn't she? And if she chose him, did that mean that, like him, she'd had romantic feelings simmering inside her for as long as he had? Had he lived with her for years, never even knowing? The idea of it was something that Jack hadn't entertained too much while he'd been here. It was enough knowing that she loved him now. But he hadn't considered that she may have always loved him – long before he even knew. And if that were the case in this universe that he'd been thrust into...could it be the case in his own?

He quickly finished what he was doing in the kitchen, grabbed a plate of hors d'oeuvres, and walked back into the living room. "Dinner's just about ready, everyone," he said, handing the plate to Larry. "Oh, and Janet?" he said, turning toward her.

"Ye – " but before she could get the rest of the words out, he had her dipped and locked in a passionate kiss.

"Whoa, get a room you two, huh? There's children present," Larry teased, and Terri playfully batted him on the shoulder.

Jamie groaned and covered her eyes with her hands...but she was smiling. It was a relief to the little girl to finally see her dad acting normal again. Maybe he was finally back. Maybe he was no longer possessed.

Janet, who'd been taken aback at first, deepened the kiss with equal passion. Jack had one hand wrapped around her waist and the other supported her back, and he was soon cheekily lowering her to the ground. Janet latched one hand onto the nearby couch and dramatically dragged it down with her. Terri mock-sighed this time and offered her hand as additional coverage to Jamie's eyes. She felt for the child. After all, she knew what it was like to live with those two, and she'd seen this one before.

"We're going on a bear hunt!"

We're gonna catch a big one!"

"What a beautiful day. We're not scared!

"Uh oh! A forest! A big, dark forest! We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it! Stumble, trip! Stumble, trip!" Jack grew livelier as he repeated the words to the book. They were on their fifth? Sixth? time reading it to the children in a row, so he didn't even have to look at the words anymore. And for the fifth or sixth time, he acted out the descriptive parts while Janet joined in for the repetitive parts. Stumble, trip, and he play-tripped to the ground, waiting for Jamie's on cue giggle.

Janet glanced over at her daughter. Junior had conked out a whole half our ago, and it appeared Jamie had finally succumbed to sleep, too.

"You can get up, Jack. She's asleep," Janet smirked at him.

"Oh, good," he puffed, laying sprawled out, chest down on the floor. "I think I'll stay right here."

"Alright," she shrugged, getting up. "Suit yourself. I'm going to bed."

"Wait, Janet, don't leave me," he pleaded, tugging on her pants and pulling her down with him.

"Jack!" she yell-whispered. "You're going to wake them up!"

"Sorry," he whispered back and turned toward her so that they were both laying on their sides face to face. He studied her for a moment. Gently he reached out his hand and caressed the side of her cheek with the edges of his fingers, slowly running them down and along her chin. She softened under his touch and gazed back at him, welcoming the tenderness from a husband who'd temporarily felt lost to her. "You're beautiful," he said, still whispering. "Do I tell you that enough?"

She nodded and smiled. "All the time."

"Do I tell you that we made the most beautiful, perfect kids and that sometimes I can't even believe they're real?"

Her smile grew wider. "Yeah, something like that."

Jamie stirred briefly, and Jack arched his neck for a moment to look at her. Once he confirmed that she was still asleep, he looked back at Janet. "She reminds me so much of you." Janet smiled at that. "She's so smart. She's creative, and she's witty. And she doesn't take any crap from anyone – especially not from me."

"I taught her well," she teased, then paused for a moment, studying her husband's face. "She idolizes you, Jack."

"Yeah?"

"She studies your every move. If something's wrong, she knows. And when you're happy, she's happy, and she's content. And Jack, if we're not careful, I think she might try to become a chef one day."

"Hey!" he laughed, softly punching her on the shoulder, Janet giggling in response.

"And Junior," she said, softening once more. "If I hadn't given birth to him myself, I'd wonder if you had just gone and cloned yourself."

It was true. It was impossible for Jack to look at the little boy and deny that he was his – that he very much lived in a world where he had children. And even though he'd been playing the part for weeks, it was only just recently really hitting him. He was a dad. And Janet – she was the most wonderful mother. He wanted to know everything, to have seen everything.

"What was it like?" he asked Janet. "When they were born?"

Janet furrowed her brow. "What do you mean, 'what was it like?'"

"Er, I just...like to hear you tell the story."

"Ah...uh, okay," she smirked, her brow still crinkled but humoring him. "Well, with Jamie it was...we didn't know what to expect, you know? And you doted on me. Throughout the entire pregnancy, you waited on me hand and foot, and you made sure I didn't feel an ounce of discomfort. You were so wonderful, Jack. Then, of course, there was the incident..."

"The incident?"

"I know, I know, you're still in denial."

"Denial about what?"

"That the reason you passed out when I was delivering Jamie was because you had forgotten to eat during the excitement of it all and not because of all of the blood."

"I passed out?!"

"We were the only couple in the maternity ward with side-by-side beds. By the time you woke up, Jamie was born, and we placed her in your arms as if you'd given birth yourself."

Janet giggled, then the giggle turned into a laugh...and soon enough she was cracking up, an infectious laugh that Jack soon joined in on. 'Of course,' he thought. 'Of course.' Even if he hadn't experienced it himself, the way that everything had happened made perfect sense, as if the events couldn't have unfolded any other way. He reached out to Janet and pulled her in close, so that his laughter was muffled by her hair and hers by his chest so as not to wake the kids.

When their laughter died down, Janet looked back up at him. "You know, I didn't think I could love you more until I saw the change in you when you became a dad." It was her turn now to caress him, and he clasped her fingers in his, kissing them softly.

"But you...you're the best mom." He said, and she demurred. "No, I mean it. How lucky am I that my kids have, like, the world's greatest mom?"

Still smiling, she bit her lip, taking in the compliment. "I am pretty great, huh?"

"The best."

She looked at him for a moment. "We turned out alright, didn't we? I mean, considering we almost didn't..."

"Almost didn't what?" he asked, knowing what she meant but wanting to hear her say it.

Janet froze for a moment. She turned to lay on her back now, and stared up at the ceiling, stuck in some reverie.

Jack moved his mouth, trying to find the words he wanted to say. "Janet, when I...stopped your wedding to Phil, did you hate me?"

She looked at him as if she just realized he was still there. "At first. Yeah, at first I wanted to strangle you. You have terrible timing, you know."

He huffed. "Yeah. You can say that again." If only she knew just how terrible his timing really was.

"I'm tired," she yawned and made to get up. "You should get some sleep too. It's inventory day tomorrow."

"Inventory day," he sighed. Internally, he juggled the mundanity of his life with his desire to know more – to go back and relive and feel every moment of his history with Janet from the moment he told her about his feelings. With each passing day It all felt more real, his other life the dream - and he wanted all of it. He wanted all of her.