Page 50 of Five Mountain Daddies

She grins at me and sips her water. “Relax,” she says. “Rematch?”

“Rack ‘em up,” I say, and we set up the boardagain.

We play while eating lunch in the break room, laughing and flirting. Ryan and James are out at the club dealing with a fucking water leak in the pipes which flooded a bathroom, and the twins are fishing like usual, which just leaves me all alone withLondon.

Which is exactly what Iwanted.

“You know, the guys are all getting really fond of you,” I saycasually.

She raises an eyebrow. “How can you tell?” she askssarcastically.

I grin at her. “I’m just saying. It’s a shame you have to leave at the end of thesummer.”

It’s the one subject we pretty much never talk about. I found that I can bring up anything with London, any stupid, boring thing, and she’ll gladly have a conversation about it. She just likes to chat, make dumb jokes, laugh and tease me. But we never talk about her leaving at the end of the summer. It’s like an unspokenrule.

And I just decided to shatter that rule, because fuck rules. I never fucking liked rules, never had much use for them. I’ve always lived my life the way that I felt was right, and this is something that I need to bring up. I need her to understand what she might be giving up byleaving.

“Yeah,” she says. “Summer’s endingsoon.”

“It’s an internship?” I askher.

“At the MoMA,” she says pointedly. “Which is basically like my dreamjob.”

“It’s amazing,” I agree. “An impressive opportunity.” I hesitate a second. “But who do you know in NewYork?”

She stares at me. “I know what you’redoing.”

I smile innocently. “I’m just asking aquestion.”

She sighs. “I don’t know anybody, Henry, but that’s not thepoint.”

“What’s thepoint?”

“To get experience,” she says. “To get out of thistown.”

“You still hate it,huh?”

“Of course,” she says, but she doesn’t sound so sure all of asudden.

I smile a little and look down at the game. I call out my move, and we lapse into the game for a fewminutes.

“Seems to me that you’ll be giving up a lot now if you leave,” Isay.

She sighs, exasperated. “I thought we were done withthis.”

“We’renot.”

“Henry, I have to go. Can you really ask me notto?”

“I’m not,” I say. “But I am trying to get you to think about what you’d be giving up if youdid.”

“I’d be giving up this shitty town,” she snaps, a littleannoyed.

“No,” I say softly. “You’d be giving up this.” I gesture at the break room aroundme.

“Oh damn, I won’t get to work at a steel fabrication company in the middle of a backwards town in Maine,” she says. “What a hugeloss.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “It’s not about that,” Isay.

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