14 #Breakthrough

It was exactly seven o’clock when the call went through from Jon’s New York City apartment to the Jersey suburbs.  Okay, so the clock may have flipped over to 7:01 as Teddi picked up, but Jon reasoned that he was still technically on time.

“Once again, your punctuality is appreciated,” she greeted without really smiling but giving the impression of it as she rubbed a gold hoop earring.

Honeyed hair was twisted up this evening, due to the hot as balls weather, but she still exuded freshness in her pristine beige blouse.  With woven stitching that carried a Bohemian vibe, tonight’s shirt was less uptight than the others he’d seen, but the color still inspired the imagined scent of cookies.    

This evening, he’d been tempted to ask Stephanie where the vanilla kipper supply place was, but then that whole “Dad should be dating” thing happened.  His cookie fix went down the drain and left behind an unfulfilled craving for something sweet.  Something that smelled of vanilla and almonds.    

You'd be disappointed as hell if it turned out Cookie doesn’t taste like cookies.   

Maybe so, but the thought of finding out was an uncomfortable reminder of how long it had been since he had any.  Cookies or women. 

“Evenin’,” he lazily greeted the feminine form of baked goods, shifting against the couch cushions and balancing his wineglass on one thigh as she studied him quietly.  “Thanks for the reschedule.  Anytime my kids want to have dinner with me, I try and juggle everything else to the back burner.”

“Understandable as well as commendable.  I would imagine older children aren’t always eager to spend time with their parents.”   

“They like me well enough,” he conceded with a rueful snicker.  “But they like their social lives better.  You got kids?”

Pretty features pinched before smoothing into a neutral mask.  “No, I don’t.”

There was very obviously a story there, but she didn’t offer to tell it.  Jon didn’t feel they knew each other well enough to ask, so he played it off with a light, “That explains why you don’t have gray hair.”

“I rather thought your gray hair was attributed to a former guitarist.”

Her remark was equally light, but they definitely didn’t know each other well enough to talk about his former guitarist.  “Plenty of gray to go around.  Lotta people had a hand in it.  I blame my dad more than most.”

Dark-lashed eyes flew wide with disbelief.  “Your father?”

“Tsk, tsk.  I may have to rethink this contract of ours, Dr. Montgomery.  You claim to be a fan but don’t know my dad has a head full of gray hair?” 

Her sigh of relief was noticeable upon realizing he referred to genetics and not bad family blood.  Crystal eyes rolled before narrowing at the phone screen.  “Rumor has it that David Bryan was the incorrigible one in the band.  I see that's not the case.”

“Oh, it's absolutely true!  That troublemaker makes me look like a choirboy.”

“I have my doubts about that,” she scoffed before softening.  “But I suppose if you were completely incorrigible, you wouldn’t have sent the flowers that arrived just a bit ago.”

“Oh yeah, those,” he drawled, as though just remembering.  “Hope your assistant liked them.”

“Julia doesn’t work on Mondays, but I’m certain she will be quite appreciative.  They’re lovely.  Thank you on her behalf.” 

And what about your behalf, Cookie?  Are we going to pretend that the deliveryman didn’t bring two bouquets?

“My pleasure,” was Jon’s amiable – and unusually patient – response.  Dr. Cookie was a little odd in her prim and proper ways, but she was proper.  There was little doubt that she’d express some form of gratitude.      

“Yes, well…  We should get on with business.  How did you find your first week in Instagram to be?  As horrible as you’d feared?”

She’d smoothly switched gears into teacher mode, which wasn’t all that different from her usual personality, to be fair.  It still irritated him.  He’d been looking forward to those pink cheeks.  To the glimpse of non-beige color that hinted there was more to her than a PhD. 

Something he suspected was neither prim nor proper. 

Jon washed his annoyance down with a slow drink of wine and told her bluntly, “I found it to be mind-numbing and pointless.”

“Not pointless at all,” she countered, unaware of his mood shift.  “There are four milestones in developing a solid social media marketing plan: identify the goal, identify the target audience, choose the platform and audit your performance.  You’ve already accomplished three in the past week.  Now we’re working on the fourth.”

“Playing Joe Schmoe from Jersey for the benefit of your assistants and my family is pointless.  There’s nothing realistic about it.”

Unfazed, she dipped her chin.  “You’re correct to a certain extent.  This control environment is something like a child’s play group.  It gives you some idea of what could happen, but the personalities online are more vivid than what you’re currently being exposed to.”

He was from fucking Jersey.  Jon had lost track of the countless crazies he’d gone toe-to-toe with over the years.  He sure as hell didn’t needed to be babied with some “play group”. 

“I’ve been dealing with ‘vivid personalities’ my whole life.  I don’t need lessons in handling ‘em.”

“I beg to differ.  You’ve dealt with personalities who aren’t afraid to look you in the eye and spit in it.  We’re talking about something completely different here.”

“An asshole is an asshole.  How different can it be?”

“There are a number of social media users who are emboldened by the anonymity the internet offers.  They are trolls whose fingers will say things that their mouths would never dream of uttering, because there are no real consequences.  And from your perspective, everything will be amplified, because those voices aren’t lost in the noise of a crowd.  The hateful, harsh and inappropriate comments are dumped there like stinking garbage that nobody can take out.”

Jon’s mouth puckered with distaste around the last gulp of rosé.  This was not the direction he’d anticipated this call would take, and right now, her commentary was making him regret the whole fucking agenda. 

“Isn’t your job to tell me how amazing this shit is?” he demanded testily.  “Make it solve all my problems?”

With infuriating calmness, she corrected, “My job’s educating you on how to take advantage of it while desensitizing you to the backlash.  That’s why the accounts following you will become more aggressive.  This week’s objective is to make you uncomfortable.”

“Pissing me off is only going to convince me to drop this project altogether.”

“Uncomfortable doesn’t mean angry.  Not necessarily, anyway.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“It means,” Teddi sighed gently.  “It means that, no matter how badass you are, Mr. Bon Jovi, someone will eventually hit a soft spot with their remarks.  Unless you understand their motivation.”

Understand their motivation. 

A lightbulb clicked in Jon’s mind.  It wasn’t a spotlight bulb that would illuminate an entire arena.  It was more like one of those little nightlights his grandmother always had in the upstairs hallway.  Even so, it still shed enough light to send his annoyance skittering for the shadows like a cockroach.

When he signed the contract with Dr. Cookie, Jon hadn’t done it with a sense of any real purpose.  The voices of Irv, Dave and Tico had silently urged him on, but he’d mostly done it because Teddi Montgomery was intriguing.  Letting her show him which app buttons to push also created the illusion of doing something in a situation where he had little control. 

It wasn’t until this moment that he felt she had anything of real value to teach him.

“Okay.”

Her head twitched to one side as if confused.  “Did we just have a breakthrough there?  I feel as if we had a breakthrough, even though I’m not quite sure what it was.”

“I personally thought you saying ‘badass’ was the breakthrough.”

There.  There was the pink flush he’d been waiting for.  She’d also latched onto that necklace of hers, but those were the only signs that Teddi was rattled about being called out.  He’d put her poker face up against Tico’s, and there wasn’t a hint of emotion in her quiet, “You don’t know me well enough to make that assumption.”

“Is it an assumption?  Or a fact?” he challenged, secretly rooting for an appearance of the personality lurking behind the beige.

“Assumption.”  The spark in her eyes teased him with a peek of it.  Enough to confirm it was there, but not enough to satisfy him.      

Jon wanted satisfaction. 

“Out of curiosity, how’s that baking thing coming?  Any chance of you hooking me up with some vanilla kipper?”

Nostrils flared above delicately compressed lips.  “You’re a little obsessed with them, it seems.  I saw the mention of cookies in your post last night.  Or, rather, cookie.  You left off the ‘s’.”

“Did I?” He hitched an eyebrow to feign surprise.  That stupid hashtag read exactly how he’d wanted it to read.  “I’ll have to be more careful about typos.”

“It would be in your best interest, yes.”

“To avoid attracting the trolls.”

“That’s correct.”

The twitching of her lips was equivalent to the scent of blood in the water, with Jon being the shark. 

“Got it.  Now, where does that leave us on the cookie thing?”

Teddi now thumbed her necklace with renewed vigor in a move that negated her poker face.  He was starting to realize that it was her “tell” for each time she got rattled, and seeing it brought Jon an unexpected smile.   Rattling her was quickly becoming a new favorite pastime. 

“Actually.”  She cleared her throat delicately and lifted her chin.  “I was baking yesterday when you texted.”

“You were?”  A curious excitement stirred in his gut, but rather than try to analyze it, Jon held his breath and hoped it would last. 

“It took longer than expected to reacquaint myself with the process, but I believe I finally got the hang of it.”  The knuckle on her thumb went white with the force she applied to the pendant.  “There’s a batch sitting in my kitchen now.  If you’d like to text me an address – your manager’s office, perhaps – I can send them out tomorrow.”

He was in the city, but traffic shouldn’t be that bad going out to Jersey at this time of the evening.  Jon could probably be there in under an hour. 

“How about I just come pick ‘em up?”

All of her knuckles went white as she gripped the necklace yet, somehow, Teddi’s face didn’t register any of the anxiety he saw in her hand.  She could be discussing the weather instead of saying, “I’m sorry, but I have a date who will be arriving shortly.”

A date. 

Two little words squashed Jon’s excitement like a watermelon hitting the hot New York sidewalk from seven stories up.  That’s what he got for assuming a dead husband meant she was single.  That’s what he got for letting the line between business and pleasure become blurry. 

Teddi Montgomery was dating someone, just like Dorothea was dating someone.  Mere hours ago, he’d been perfectly fine with not dating someone.  Now his apartment felt emptier than his wine glass. 

“Hey, no.  Don’t worry about it.  I’ll text you that address later.”  Or not.  “Go enjoy your date.”

“I…” Her poker face had slipped, and now Teddi was biting her lip as well as doing the necklace thing.  “Thank you for the flowers.  The ones you sent to me, not Julia.  The single red rose amid all the ivory flowers is quite stunning.”

Now she mentioned the flowers.

At least you know you were right about her good manners.

“You’re welcome.  I’ll see you online, Doc.  G’night.”

Jon disconnected the call before she could respond, mostly because he didn’t want to risk the chance of her mentioning the card that came with the flowers.  Now that he knew there was a boyfriend in the picture, it didn't feel right to mention an inscription that would make her blush.

Neutral shades are timeless and classic, but so is the red rose.  It’s just not afraid to be noticed. ~JBJ