Play the Man: Post 24

Chapter Sixteen & Seventeen: More Dithering! Also, Can We Get an Editor Up in Here?

I wonder if Jaymee Jacobs had to hit a certain page limit. Sometimes the meandering musings of the characters in this novel read like the padding my students add to their papers. And I’m not exactly one who has ever been accused of being succinct.

When Jenna leaves Nick’s place, she considers options on where to go to think things through and who she can talk to. Like Ryan, she doesn’t have many options. She dismisses her friend Katie as an option because Jenna’s too ashamed to admit to what she’s done. That leaves… nothing. So she goes home and sees all the things that Ryan has done around the house.

His bag was picked up from its spot on the floor, presumably emptied and taken care of instead of stashed away in the closet somewhere. He was supposed to do stuff like that as a grown man; it was his stuff, and he was supposed to be responsible and put his things away. But he’d also washed the dishes that Jenna had been too tired to worry about doing last night after dinner. … This had not been Ryan’s responsibility, but he’d done it (106 emphasis original).

So apparently this couple has a division of labor, and that’s fair; many do, right? But it seems like Ryan’s only responsibilities are to put away his own stuff (which apparently he usually doesn’t do) and to take care of the lawn (it gets mentioned later). Jenna does the cooking, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, and the laundry, on top of her charity duties and grad school requirements. This division seems rather unequal if you ask me, and for that matter, with the money that Ryan makes, they could hire a cook and/or someone to clean.

Even if you have divvied up the chores between a couple, it seems to me that occasionally chipping in to help the other person is, frankly, to be expected. But we know that Ryan doesn’t do so without being asked.

This was the second time he had stepped up to the plate without having to be asked—even though yes, he shouldn’t have been asked and nagged about it. She couldn’t remember the last time Ryan had put away his bag. He had done it on the occasions when she wasn’t around to do it… (106).

The first (few) times I read the above passage, my mind filled in “he shouldn’t have had to have been asked and nagged about it” which tells you more about my expectations than about the novel, I fear. It’s possible that’s what the author actually meant. However, what she wrote, what was published, is “he shouldn’t have been asked and nagged about it” which means that what’s really going on is that Jenna ought not to have asked Ryan to put his bag away. Why not? Might it upset the big important hockey player? Ugh.

Also, this is the “second time”? They have been together for eight years. Eight. Years. And this is the second time he’s done housework without having been asked? He’s even vacuumed and Jenna’s reaction is surprise that he so much as knows where she keeps the vacuum cleaner. I get that this is supposed to show us that he’s making an effort, but when the effort is so small (oooh, a morning of housework) compared to what’s gone before (eight years of having Jenna mother him), it’s unimpressive.

Jenna decides to basically not deal with Ryan until she can figure out what she wants and until she can figure out what his angle is. (I think his angle is pretty clear, even if it weren’t for all the perspective jumping. She’s acting odd, so he did something nice for her.)

If there was one thing that she had learned about hockey while watching Ryan play at Dartmouth, it was that she shouldn’t play the puck. She had to play the man (107).

Way to shoehorn that title in there. I… so don’t see the relevance. There’s no puck for her to play. (Wait, is housework the puck? I don’t get it.)

There’s some awkwardness where Ryan asks where she’s been and she says she has to think. According to Ryan, Jenna thinking is a bad thing somehow, which often involves spa days or couples’ retreats. Jenna asks why he wants to marry her and he says it’s because he loves her. That’s not enough for Jenna, and we then get a bunch of navel gazing from Ryan about how he feels love from his heart but Jenna uses her brain and blah blah blah manufactured drama.

Still, this makes Jenna think about how she and Ryan are opposites and that’s why they work, but that maybe she hasn’t given enough credit to his perspective on the future, where as long as they’re together that’s what matters (as opposed to being actually married.) She thinks that Ryan proposing, even though it isn’t important to him, was his way of doing whatever it takes to make Jenna happy. (Except, I’d point out, go see a single freaking piece of art work.) On the other hand, she’s concerned that she and Nick are too similar and they’d be too serious as a couple. And she worries that if she breaks up with Ryan and Nick turns out to only be a fling, it would have been a terrible decision.

I can actually solve that latter dilemma for her—break up with Ryan because he’s an asshat. Then it won’t matter what happens with Nick, Jenna will already have made one good choice.

The next chapter opens with Ryan moping because Jenna is still upset. This is not particularly interesting, nor is it news. I mention this because in this chapter the author seems to have forgotten how to tell time. Otherwise, she has just begun jumping calendar days the way she jumps perspectives.

The guys finally had an off day. For one, there was no game, no practice, and not even an optional skate. … Since it was a Wednesday, he knew Jenna had class… (110)

So he wants to spend the morning together being lazy, then when Jenna goes to class, he’ll reluctantly do the yardwork. Fair enough.

But Jenna had spent the entire previous day isolated in the den (110).

So that would be Tuesday, then? Okay. That would make this still Wednesday.

Ryan goes to bed alone and wakes up early realizing he’s still alone. So he looks for Jenna and finds her asleep in the den, scoops her up, and takes her to bed.

He changed quietly in the dark before he left for practice (111).

Okay, so actually this must be Thursday, since there’s a practice. So Jenna locked herself in the den on Wednesday, possibly to the point of not going to class.

…but he figured he needed to get his head ready for the game extra early today (111).

So, not only a practice, but a game (against the Nashville Predators, apparently.) So definitely not the day off, then. So this really must be Thursday.

Except, Jenna then goes to class and Katie specifies that Jenna missed Friday and Monday’s classes. So … it’s Wednesday. Wednesday! A magical day of no practice, no game, a practice, and a game!

Play the Man: Post 19

Chapter Twelve: Anti-climax

Last post, and last chapter, we left Nick and Jenna staring at the ceiling, pondering what they’d just done, when suddenly they hear the front door open and know that it’s Ryan. So naturally we start chapter 12 with Ryan drinking beer.

I imagine you’re confused. I know I was. The entire rest of the book up until this point (77 pages in out of 165) has been completely linear. Perspectives have jumped awkwardly, but other than the occasional flashback (in chapter 1), scenes have always followed chronologically. However, this time the narrative takes us back to when Nick and Jenna have just left for the Art Institute and Ryan has gone out drinking and eating with Alex.

As per usual, they’re complaining about Jenna. Ryan points out that Jenna is still angry at him because of Alex’s calling her “Gollum.” Alex argues that that’s insane since Jenna should be mad at him for the comment, not Ryan. Both of them completely miss the point.

But it does mean that Ryan has started actually contemplating the situation, since Jenna has barely spoken to him in the four days since the “Gollum Incident” and he wants the relationship to be the way it used to be (77). Sure, who doesn’t want a relationship where the other partner takes care of you, never insists on anything, and everything is comfortable? At any rate, Ryan declares that this distance between them makes him want to fix whatever the problem is. However, he’s still a jerk.

He was willing to overlook how he felt Jenna needed to apologize for trying to guilt him into appeasing her… (77).

Gee. How magnanimous. It takes him a few more pages to decide that he needs to head back home and figure out what’s actually wrong and make it right. I’d tell you more about those pages but they’re repetitious. And besides, we all want to see what happens when Ryan gets home and discovers his fiancé with his teammate, right?

When they hear Ryan, Jenna and Nick burst into action, with Nick running to the guest room and Jenna putting on a robe. That’s the most amount of action we’ll see, however, since then Jenna spends many paragraphs contemplating how she could have made such a choice as to sleep with Nick, how Nick makes her feel wanted and connected, how much she hates herself for cheating on Ryan, and how weak she must be.

So, Ryan doesn’t catch them in the act. However, apparently he can smell sex in the air. Jenna assumes, at first, that he knows she’s slept with Nick, but it turns out that Ryan just assumes that Jenna pleasured herself. This leads to a rather convoluted twist of logic for him.

But she was obviously feeling lonely and horny, and she took matters into her own hands, literally, and got herself off instead of caving and giving into [sic] him. Instead of letting their fight slide, she tried to pretend that she didn’t need Ryan and keep up the appearance that she was okay without him. But she wasn’t; she had needs that she needed him to fulfill. That meant that Jenna’s anger was wavering and faltering, and this frustrating battle of wills was going to end (80).

Ryan has quite a few mistakes here, in my opinion. First, even if he’s right that Jenna is just horny, why would she “need” him to satisfy her? He’s assuming that she masturbated—intercourse and masturbation aren’t the same thing, of course, but Ryan’s the one who assumes she’s taken care of matters, which indicates she doesn’t, in fact, need him. From this assumption that Jenna needs sex, specifically from him, he jumps to concluding that she needs sex (from him) so badly that she’ll forgive him now. But this doesn’t really follow.

Jenna wavers back and forth about whether to confess to him once she realizes that he doesn’t know what happened.

She was afraid of what he was going to do, to her or to Nick (80).

This sounds violent. Does Jenna think that Ryan will hurt her or Nick if he finds out what happened? Sure, he’d have every right to be incredibly angry, but in my opinion, if you fear for your safety from your partner, even under unusual circumstances, there’s something wrong.

Nick’s reasoning isn’t much better than that of the unhappy couple. First, he worries that Jenna might think he’d taken advantage of her. Then, a page later, he compares Jenna to a drug addict, because she “repeatedly hurt herself by making the wrong choices” and knowing that she’d be better off without Ryan. In fact, he declares that having sex with her “was Nick’s intervention,” that he was showing her an alternative (81).

Oh Nick, you disappoint me. Really? REALLY? Intervention? Do you even like Jenna?

Nick finally decides that he needs to tell Ryan what happened and face him “like a man”, in order to prove that he’s the man Jenna deserves, no matter what reaction (81).

With one deep breath he grabbed the doorknob and opened the portal into his unknown and uncertain future (82).

Apparently Nick has been visiting the Department of Redundancy Department. Unknown AND uncertain?

He runs into Jenna who convinces him not to tell Ryan, at least for now. Then the point of view changes again and Ryan returns and gives Jenna his guest list. Because apparently that’s what he’s taken to be the big problem. Methinks Ryan is missing the forest for the trees and also, what have I said multiple times? Oh right, too little, too late. And for once, Jenna seems to agree. She doesn’t fall into his arms gratefully. Instead, the chapter ends with her still confused as to whether she wants to tell him the truth, whether she wants to marry him, and what the guilt of her actions might mean. (Which means 90 more pages of wibbling before she and Nick get together, I assume.)

Play the Man: Post 14

Chapter Nine: Magically (In)Convenient Concussion

Because concussions are brain injuries, each one is different. Mine, for example, was mild and basically meant I had a headache for almost two weeks straight and I was sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights, but after the first hour or so I wasn’t at all confused. Symptoms can, of course, be terrifyingly bad and take a long time to subside, particularly if the patient has had repeated concussions. I am not a medical professional. I want to emphasize that the symptoms that Nick portrays in this book are not impossible—but they’re very, very unlikely. And everyone’s reactions to those symptoms are more unlikely still.

Chapter nine opens with Nick acting completely out of character, “emotional, unsteady, and volatile” (58). He continues to refuse to listen to anyone but Jenna, up to and including not being willing to lie still for the CT scan unless Jenna stays with him, her hand on his ankle. The technician does give her a lead apron thing to wear for safety, but this is still against procedure and I’d be surprised if it were allowed.

Stranger still is that since there is no internal bleeding visible on the CT scan, the doctor declares that “while Nick would seem out of sorts for at least a week, he would make a full recovery (60). That’s not just something a doctor would declare. There’d be talk about not knowing how long but probably a week or two, and that a full recovery is likely, no promises.

Nick can’t seem to remember anything, which means he’s repeating himself constantly and repeatedly asking questions. While amnesia about the injury and even some time before the injury is common, this continued trouble is not usual for a concussion. I’m surprised that the doctors aren’t concerned about this symptom. Furthermore, neither are the trainers who are around hockey injuries all the time.

The doctors say that Nick needs someone with him at all times for 48 hours, which conveniently falls to Jenna. They also say no physical or mental exertion, which is absolutely what they’d say—but they don’t say a dark room and no tv or reading, which is standard procedure for concussions. The whole point is brain rest. Not only is that not said, but when they tell Jenna she has to wake Nick every 3 hours and keep him awake for an hour, she turns the lights on and they play cards. Frankly, he shouldn’t be doing even that much.

(Let me tell you how awful it was for me to be not permitted to read for almost two weeks.  ARG.)

So Nick is brought to Jenna and Ryan’s house and they take him to the guest room. He’s confused as to why he’s there and he gets cranky as soon as he sees Ryan. When he reaches the guestroom, he strips to his boxers, which upsets Jenna.

Sure, she had seen half-naked hockey players before and was used to being around them, but having one in her house—one who wasn’t her fiancé—stripped down to just his underwear, well, it just seemed… inappropriate (62 emphasis original).

Really, it seems to me that Jenna should just get over it. The man is repeating himself constantly, cranky as all heck, and suffering a traumatic brain injury. If he wants to sleep in his boxers, let him.

After Jenna has woken Nick twice to play cards, Ryan offers to do the next one. This surprises Jenna and me, too. ‘You’d do that?” is her initial response (63) and Ryan says yes, that he’s the captain and he should do this for a teammate. Ryan then asks if this’ll be what it’s like when they have kids—sharing night-time feedings and such—and declaring it good practice. His looking to the future with Jenna makes fall asleep happy. 

I suspect this is meant to show readers that Ryan has good qualities so that if (when) it comes time for Jenna to choose between the two men it’s actually a bit of a quandary. But to me, this is way too little, way too late.