Every time she thought about doing so memories of how he’d described living at his grandparents’ echoed through her head. Jack was a free spirit, not meant to be confined to one place. So, instead of defending why she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, ask Jack to stay, she went on the offensive.
“How about you? Have you talked to Greg about how this long-distance thing is wearing thin? Have you asked him about opening a practice in Warrenville?”
“I know what you’re doing, and it isn’t going to work,” Amy warned.
“Neither would asking Jack to stay.”
“You don’t know that.”
Amy was right. She didn’t know that. She saw how he looked at her, felt how he touched her. He might say yes. But asking Jack to stay would be like asking a bird to give up flying to live in a cage.
How did one ask that of someone they cared for?
She did care for Jack. Way too much. How could she not when he made her laugh, made her feel things she hadn’t known possible, made her step beyond the ordinary lines of her life?
A knock sounded at the door.
“Speaking of the lucky devil,” Amy said, motioning to the door. “I should get that and tell him myself.”
Jumping off the sofa, Taylor’s eyes widened. “Don’t.”
Amy took on a pouty look. “You know I wouldn’t really, but I think you should.”
“Trust me, I shouldn’t.”
Sighing, Amy shrugged. “If you say so. You’d better let him in.”
Taylor nodded. “He’s taking me frog-gigging.”
“He’s what?” Amy looked disgusted. “I take it back. Let him go.”
But her friend was teasing and they both knew it.
* * *
After they spotted the first frog, Taylor was done. No way did she want to participate in spearing a frog. Just the thought of Jack killing the frog had her turning to wade back out of the water. Loudly, and with as much splashing noise as she could make.
Hop away, froggy. Hop away.
“I’m all for learning new things,” she told Jack, hoping her sloshing feet scared the frog away. She hoped it did, and that it sent all the neighboring frogs into hiding. “But you’re on your own with this one. I want no part of murdering frogs.”
Following her rather than going after the frog, Jack laughed and asked, “Not your thing?”
She shook her head. “If you want to feed me frog legs, I can’t have seen those legs still attached to a body with eyes that looked at me,” she warned.
He chuckled. “Fair enough. I brought fishing poles so if we didn’t find any frogs we wouldn’t get bored.”
Fishing didn’t bother her. Jack mostly was a catch and release fisherman, only keeping what he planned to eat.
“Fishing in the dark?”
He’d taken her fishing, several times in fact, but never at night. Just the weekend before they’d gone out with friends, including Greg and Amy, on a nearby lake and whiled the day away with water-skiing, tubing, fishing, and soaking up sunshine. That evening they’d had a fish-fry at Jack’s and had all sat around eating, laughing. It had been a perfect day.
Every day with Jack was a perfect day.
“Some of my best fishing has been at night.”
In the moonlight, she looked at him a little in awe. “Is there anything you can’t do, Jack?”