7: “Sort of”

After the personal disaster that was her birthday celebration weekend, Jacklyn had come to the decision that she needed to at least talk to Joey about their relationship. She didn’t really want to because she was afraid of upsetting the delicate balance between them, but she realized she would need to address it at some point, lest she spend the rest of her life in partially secret limbo with him. So she invited him over for dinner when she knew Dick would be out on one of Miles’ forced social engagements to prevent Dick from becoming a hermit. She made a casserole that Joey clearly pretended to like. She’d never made it before and it definitely didn’t turn out, but she appreciated the effort he put into trying not to grimace while he ate. Then she sat him down in the living room with a beer and trapped him into talking about his feelings. Or at least she tried to.

“I was wondering what you thought about us,” Jacklyn began vaguely. She hoped she sounded casual. From the way Joey stopped drinking his beer mid-sip, she assumed she’d missed the mark. He looked at her for a moment.

“What?” He returned eventually. Jacklyn thought about how to phrase it differently, but she couldn’t think of anything.

“Just, you know, how you feel about us,” she said again, waving a hand between the two of them to indicate what she meant. Joey stared at her for another moment.

“Uh, good, I guess,” he replied uncertainly. Jacklyn nodded. She needed to ask him if he wanted to be her boyfriend, if they were exclusive, if she should introduce him to her parents. Instead, she continued nodding until he turned away from her and grabbed the TV remote. Then they watched an Iron Chef marathon and he left early, claiming to be tired from work. It wasn’t exactly everything she had been hoping for. She had gained no more clarity and she still wasn’t sure if he was her boyfriend.

Two days later, she told Helen about it. Helen was one of her friends she hadn’t told about hers and Joey’s secret relationship, though she suspected Helen knew anyway. Jacklyn actually suspected most of her friends knew, but she still couldn’t bring herself to officially confirm it. After her confusing conversation with Joey the night before, if it could even be considered a conversation, she was even less willing to confirm speculation. Telling Helen was fine, though. Helen had a terrible track record with men. She wouldn’t judge Jacklyn.

She judged Jacklyn.

“I don’t know Joey very well,” Helen began, frowning. “But I do know he’s not good enough for you. I’m basing this entirely on the fact that you’re very smart and your hair literally never looks bad. And also that he used to sell drugs.”

Jacklyn wondered if she should be more bothered by that. Everyone else always brought it up when they talked about him.

“Yeah, he used to,” Jacklyn agreed, emphasis on the past tense. Helen raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay, I mean, good I guess,” she conceded, waving her hand dismissively. “So are you guys exclusive or what?”

“I don’t know,” Jacklyn answered and Helen’s frown returned. “I tried to ask him about it a couple days ago, but we ended up watching Iron Chef instead.”

“I hate confrontation as much as the next dude, but I feel like you need to try again,” Helen replied. “This is exactly what happened to me when I was dating Jamie in university.”

It was not exactly what had happened to Helen when she dated Jamie in university. Truthfully, Helen had never asked him if they were exclusive, but they only went on a grand total of four dates before they got drunk at a kegger and Jamie admitted that he was gay and also in love with his roommate John. It hadn’t been great for Helen at the time, but it had worked out well for both Jamie and John in the long run. They had gotten married and now had two children and two toy poodles. Jacklyn hadn’t followed their lives all that closely, but either the dogs or the kids were named any combination of Poppy, Daisy, Rose, and Lily.

“Sort of,” Jacklyn said to Helen, unconvinced. But she still attempted to ask Joey about it again three days later. This time, Dick was regrettably home, but working in his bedroom. Jacklyn had been home from work for over four hours and she had only seen him once when he emerged from his bedroom in a pair of grey sweatpants to go to the washroom. His shirt, a Queens of the Stone Age band shirt that had been converted into a muscle shirt, had holes in it. He’d looked quite bleary-eyed and had actually waved to the lamp instead of Jacklyn on his way past her.

“Are we exclusive?” Jacklyn asked Joey point-blank. He blinked at her for a moment, visibly startled. On the one hand, Jacklyn found this slightly annoying. At the same time, he had been in the middle of telling her about how his nona’s water aerobics class was going so she could understand his confusion.

“Uh, well, I’m not sleeping with anyone else,” he answered, which was nice to hear, but not exactly the clear, definitive answer she’d been hoping for.

“Me neither,” Jacklyn nodded. “So we’re exclusive.”

“I guess technically, yeah,” Joey replied. Jacklyn wasn’t sure she wanted to be exclusive on a technicality. Before she had a chance to ask any more questions, Dick emerged from his bedroom again. He looked even more dazed than he had the last time she’d seen him.

“Hey, Dick,” Joey greeted him instantly with a sharp grin. It was the most engaged he’d looked the entire evening. Jacklyn filed that piece of information away with all the other things she was currently repressing.

“Hi,” Dick replied, throwing Joey an uneasy look before continuing on his way to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and closed it again without taking anything out. Then he stood motionless in the kitchen for a beat before opening the fridge door yet again and pulling out an apple and a bag of baby carrots. Then he retreated to his bedroom without another word. Jacklyn watched him go, wondering if she should be concerned about him at all. Maybe she should start forcing conversation on him in an effort to help Miles keep him properly socialized. When she looked over to make a joke about doing exactly that to Joey, Joey still had his eyes trained on the place where Dick had been before he’d shut his bedroom door. Jacklyn added it to the other things she was avoiding thinking about.