Throughout the entire show (which was spectacular) he never faltered or even hinted at putting me down. When the crowd started to disperse, I was still on his shoulders, and I could feel his urge to carry me out. Instead, carefully, he lifted me up off his shoulders and set me on the ground.
“Holy cow!” I exclaimed after he’d put me down. “You must eat like a double dose of Wheaties every day!”
“What are you talking about?” Jack asked, looking at me like I was insane.
“You’re super strong!” Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed his bicep, trying to feel some massive amounts of hidden muscle, but honestly, it felt pretty ordinary.
“You’re just really light,” Jack shrugged. He started walking away, attempting to end that line of conversation, but I hurried after him.
“What’s your angle?” I asked, trying to sound more playful than demanding.
“Isosceles,” Jack quipped.
“What?” If Milo had been there, he probably would’ve understood the reference, but geometry wasn’t my thing.
“You asked me what my angle was, so I said isosceles,” Jack explained, looking down at me to make sure that he wasn’t losing me in the crowd. Most of the people had exited the venue by then, except for the disproportionate number of girls that seemed to linger around us. “It’s a type of a triangle with two equal sides. I suppose that’s not really an angle, and I would’ve said something like acute or obtuse, but I thought that would either sound like I was hitting on you or calling you stupid. I should’ve said oblique. Damn! That would’ve been good. I’m gonna remember that for next time.”
“You’re the most cryptic person I’ve ever met,” I sighed. Jack laughed, and everyone around turned to look at him.
We stepped outside into the cold night air, and I pulled my sweatshirt tighter to me, flipping the hood up over my head. Normally, the night air felt refreshing after being all sweaty and crammed with other people on the floor, but since I’d been on Jack’s shoulders, I hadn’t gotten hot at all. He didn’t look sweaty from fighting off the mosh pit, and the cold didn’t seem to effect him either. I was tempted to reach out and take his hand to see what the temperature felt like, but since I didn’t actually want to hold his hand for the sake of holding his hand, it felt too awkward.
“So, did you have fun?” Jack asked me as we walked leisurely to his car.
“I did,” I smiled at him, suddenly remembering that he was responsible for everything good that had happened tonight. I should show more gratitude and spend less time worrying about all the little things that seemed off with him.
“Did you?”
“Of course.”
There was always this wonderful rush after a good concert, like adrenaline but less panicky. So when they let out, I was usually talking a mile a minute about the show and the people and just anything and everything. Tonight, though, I fell silent. There were millions of things running through my mind that I wanted to talk about, but very little had to do with the performance I had seen, so I kept my mouth shut. The last thing I wanted was to interrogate Jack into hating me.
“I don’t mean to be cryptic,” Jack said at length. We were almost to his car, but he stopped walking and kept his gaze focused on some point straight ahead. His hands were shoved deep in the pocket of his Dickies shorts, and he sighed. “I don’t have an angle. Just…” He looked over at me, as if to make sure that I was still listening. I peered up at him from underneath my hood, and he smirked a little. “You’re cold. We should get in the car.”
“No! Tell me what you were going to say first!” I demanded, sounding more forceful than I meant to, but Jack only laughed. But then he went back to staring straight ahead, and his expression went somber.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m completely egotistical, cause I’m not.
I’m just realistic.”
“You’re talking about the way all the girls look at you?” I interjected. That was probably rude, but I was just too excited that he was going to explain it to me.
“Yeah,” Jack said sheepishly. “Everyone kind of… reacts to me a certain way. And you don’t. It’s refreshing. So… that’s what I’m doing here. With you.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I waved my hands at him, feeling a massive twinge of disappointment. “What about the way other people react to you? Why do they do that?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shifted slightly, and I knew he was lying. He knew exactly what was going on, but he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Jack!” I pouted. “That’s not fair!”
“See?” Jack smiled. “This is refreshing. Do you know how many other people argue with me, about anything?”
“If you think this is refreshing, just wait.” I tried to glower at him, but his smile was just too damn infectious.
“Come on,” Jack started walking towards the car again. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”
“Jack!” I protested, but hurried after him. “What is it? Is it something in the way you smell that I’m just not getting?” He got a look of total surprise and made a clicking sound with his tongue. “What?”
“Well, yeah, that’s actually pretty much it,” Jack admitted. He unlocked his car and then walked around to the other side, still looking a little stunned. I hopped into the car and he continued, “It’s a pheromone, or something like that.”
“So, wait. Is that a medical condition or something?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jack nodded, as if that answer was sufficient enough.
“What kind of medical condition?” I pressed, totally oblivious to the fact that that kind of information was really personal. Really, I’m not usually this forward or nosy. There was just something about Jack that made me lose any sense of formality.
“A rare one,” Jack replied flippantly and started the car.
“Well, why don’t I react to it?” I felt terribly perplexed by this whole thing, and then I started to wonder if maybe there was something very wrong with me.
Everyone reacted to him, except for me. Maybe I had a seriously botched sense of smell or a brain tumor or something equally horrible. “The pheromones or whatever?”
“That is a very good question.” Jack pulled out of the parking lot, slipping easily into an opening in the traffic.
“You don’t actually know why, do you?” I asked. “You don’t know why I’m different then everyone else.”
“I do not,” Jack admitted, then looked over at me. “But look, Alice, I don’t want you to get hung up on this thing. It’s too hard to explain and… for our purposes, it doesn’t even matter at all.”
“What purposes?” I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn’t feel nervous or even suspicious of him really, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
“In order for this friendship to work, you’re just going to have to accept that there are certain things that I’m not gonna tell you,” Jack said firmly. “I’m not trying to be a dick about this but that’s just the way it is.”
“And what if I can’t accept that?” Okay, as soon as he said that I’d have to accept things, I knew that I would. Grudgingly, I would follow whatever conditions he put on our friendship.
“Then we can’t hang out anymore.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I could hear the sadness in his voice.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I grumbled, but I was already relenting.
“Why can’t you just tell me things!”
“I can’t tell you why I can’t tell!” He said it like it meant something, like I would go, oh yeah, I get it now.
“This is gonna frustrate me to no end,” I sighed. I was sulking, but that only made him smile.