Page 23 of True Sight
12
CONRAD
1 New Message: Henry Baker
Hey, quick question for you when you have a moment.
Iread the message from my desk, leaning back in my chair. I’ve been knee deep in building out Henry’s admin portal which will allow for him or his team to book private parties or groups at his studio like he requested—an idea thought up by his newest team member, Alex—to target bachelorette parties or corporate events. Honestly, it isn’t a horrible idea, especially for Charleston where hundreds of brides-to-be travel to the city to celebrate their impending nuptials each year.
Marriage. Another thing you’ll never do,a voice in my head scoffs.
I’m not sure why, but the thought of being permanently linked to another human supposedly forever never seems like it’s in the cards for me. With the divorce rates as high as they are, I don’t understand why people evenbother in the first place. But Hank and Kolbi do seem happier now that they’re married, that much is obvious. What I can’t see is me, married to a woman, happily ever after. Something about the image in my head feels wrong. Even when I try to force my brain to conjure up the image of myself and a bride all dressed in white, the image is fuzzy at best.
Something my brain has no issue conjuring up is Henry’s dimpled smile looking at me from our meeting last week. I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow, this time at his workout studio instead of our normal coffee shop, to talk about all the tech he’ll need installed inside to livestream his classes. I blink hard, trying to expel the image of him out of my brain and push a heavy breath from my nose before rereading his text.
Hey, quick question for you when you have a moment.
What’s up?
If this is a tech question, please put it in the dashboard I built for us so we can go over it tomorrow during our meeting. Then you can have my answers in the future when we’re no longer working together.
No longer working together…
It feels weird to think about even though we’ve only been working on his project for a few weeks.
Oh no, this isn’t work related!
I was actually wondering if you wanted to get together this week and hang out. Maybe Friday?
The muscles in my face clench together as I read his offer. He wants to get together? To hangout? I know I said that would be okay but I had no idea he would actually take me up on it. I don’t need to hangout with him, I have friends. Enough friends to keep me plenty busy and enough work that makes my calendar too full to hangout with him.
Sure, that would be fine.
Why the fuck did I say that?
Great! Oh that’s so great to hear!
What time are you thinking?
You can come over at like, 8?
We can watch a movie or something.
What the actual hell am I doing?
That sounds lovely. Send me your address and I’ll come by then. I can’t wait!
I send him my address and set my phone down before I can do anything else totally idiotic.Whyhad I just invited him to come to my place? I never invite people to my place. I didn’t even invite Margaret the first time, she invited herself after getting my address from Kolbi. Fucking narc.
My arms cross defiantly across my chest, annoyed by my friend’s traitorous behavior and the fact that I’d just invited Henry to come and hangout on Friday. He’s going to think we’re friends—we aren’t friends, we have a professional relationship, that’s it. But now he is going to think otherwise. Before I can stew over my terrible decision making skills any longer, a very familiar feeling of a toy being dropped in mylap causes me to look down. Annie, right on time as always, has offered her stuffed alligator toy to me as a sign that she’s ready to go for her afternoon walk.
“Alright, Annie girl, we can go.” I stand from my chair as she does an excited circle in front of me. “While we walk, we can think of some way to talk myself out of these plans on Friday because there’s no way I’m having Henry Baker over to watch a movie.”
“Hey,Conrad, welcome back. It’s good to see you again.” Hanna smiles at me through her silver framed glasses, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail today. I’m back on her couch for another week, ready to have my head shrunk.
“Y-ep,” I draw out the Y and pop the P.
“I see we’re still working on that charming and sunny disposition of yours.” Her mouth quirks as she writes something down on her notepad.
