Page 60 of The Checklist
“Stalled how?” Dylan asked. Placing her elbow on what looked like a clean patch of table, she rested her head on her hand and leaned toward him. Mike had a gravitational pull that was difficult to resist. Worse, she wondered if she even cared to fight gravity when Mikepulled himself out of his slump and turned to face her. She stopped short. Mike was a bad idea. Gravity or no, he was still a Robinson.
“I’m having trouble finding funding. Even with that stock-gift guy you connected me to. The problem is, our donor base is too small to take advantage of something like that. You may have noticed that Crescent’s pockets aren’t exactly deep.” Mike’s smile barely masked the sting of his honesty. “We’ve gotten a couple big meetings. No bites yet. Lots of ‘Let me know if you secure some funding; then I’ll pitch in.’ Which is another way of saying no.”
Dylan laughed, leaning in a fraction of an inch closer. “How are you pitching this to people?”
“Mostly with a lot of enthusiasm and crappy drawings that an intern put together. Another issue is that I’m asking people to imagine a thing that doesn’t exist. I just—” Mike stopped short and cocked his head to the side, his eyebrows drawing together as he looked out the window.
Glancing over her shoulder, Dylan sat up quickly. Stacy and Neale were on the other side of the glass, looking like two dogs caught chewing on a shoe. The pair had been huddled together, trying to sneak back to the Delacroix house, when Mike had noticed them. For a moment the four of them blinked at each other. Then Stacy waved, causing the duo to devolve into a fit of laughter as Neale pulled out her phone and texted someone.
“What the hell?” Turning to face them fully, Dylan threw up her hands as Mike began to laugh behind her. Neale held up her phone and untangled her arm from Stacy’s just as Dylan’s phone buzzed.
You too were good without us, so we leave. Can you bring me coat home?
Suppressing the urge to laugh at her sister’s drunk typos, Dylan looked up to find Neale gesturing to the coat on the other side of thebench. She had just enough time to give the pair a dirty look before Mike stood up and snatched the coat up, putting his considerable wingspan to good use, then gave Neale a thumbs-up. Looking down, Dylan typed out a message and pointed to her phone.
Real smooth. Assholes
Neale smirked and showed the message to Stacy, who doubled over with a fresh fit of laughter. Waving her thanks, Neale pulled Stacy upright and began to strut away, her head held too high to be considered sober or respectable.
“Guess they aren’t bringing those drinks, then,” Mike said, a wide smile on his face. “Really, it’s for the best. We were just gonna dump them on the floor.”
“I should’ve known they’d skip. Since when does Neale buy pitchers?” Dylan laughed, shaking her head.
“Well, unless you want something else, do you want to get outa here?”
Dylan knew exactly the kind of “outa here” he meant, but her blood still stopped running for a long second. She imagined his sheets felt a lot like that shirt looked, and she wouldn’t mind being in them, as long as he was there too. Without that shirt. She shook her head, putting a halt to her racing thoughts. “Two of these are more than enough for me.”
“In that case,” Mike said, scooting out of the bench, “let’s go.”
Dylan smirked at her own misguided physical response and began the slow, painful slink out of the bench with what little grace she could muster. Feeling her muscles howl as she stood, she turned back to Mike. “Before my sister and very best friend decided to skip out on us, you were saying that no one wants to invest until someone else invests.”
“After you,” Mike said, pushing the door open. “Basically. I need to find someone who’ll take a quarter-million-dollar risk, just to get abunch of other people to take that same risk. On the upside, the other fundraisers like your live text-to-give idea, so that’s something.”
Passing through the door ahead of him, Dylan noticed that he was still carrying Neale’s jacket. “Want me to take that?” she asked, before adding, “Never let it be said you have inexpensive taste, Mike.”
He made a small noise that was somewhere between assent and a laugh. Handing her the jacket, he said, “Unfortunately, there is a difference between having expensive taste and having expensive things. The higher-ups aren’t saying it yet, but I think I may have to retire this dream and put in some blocks or some other tired experience.”
The night air felt good against the Rollercoaster-induced flush. At least, she thought it was the drink that was causing the flush. Risking a glance upward, Dylan decided that Mike had a nice neck. The kind where someone’s head would fit comfortably between his shoulders and his face. It was a neck made for being close to, for cuddling, as well as other, less ... neighborly things.
Dylan paused, thinking of her current living situation and the possible city-ordinance violation her parents were planning to file against the Robinsons. She shuddered, deciding to focus on the less distressing aspects of her off-limits neighbor. Like his work situation.
“Maybe I could help some more? I still have a month left on my placement out here, and I don’t do much, except try not to get fired, so I may as well do something good with myself.” She was mostly babbling now, filling their walk with more acceptable thoughts. “I do know a fair number of well-connected people through my parents’ work and Kaplan. Maybe I could introduce you? Help you get some better meetings?”
“Are you being serious?” Mike had stopped walking, focusing all his attention on her. “I mean, you already connected us to the text-to-give company and the stock-gift-facilitator guy.”
“Of course I am.” Dylan tried to act affronted, as if the idea hadn’t just walked half-clothed into her head. A small voice in the back ofher mind suggested that connecting Mike to actual money would be a lot harder than giving him the email address of a few civically minded former clients, but she pushed it aside. If by some miracle Kaplan didn’t fire her, it would look good on her résumé, and the partners took pro bono work very seriously. It would be a win-win for her career and for Mike. Spending more time with him was just an added bonus.
“Well, if you are serious, I’d love to go over donor names with you.” Mike looked genuinely surprised, even a little touched.
“Pffff. Serious as a heart attack.” Somewhere in the back of her mind, an alarm sounded that her promises might be bigger than her actual skills. But surely she could learn this. Jared basically played charity golf every other weekend, so how hard could this be?
“In that case, I think everyone at Crescent would murder me if I didn’t at least try.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Mike began walking again and bouncing on his toes with the kind of enthusiasm that would make Stacy proud. “I mean, I know it’s a long shot, but we have an event in three weeks. This is a super late addition to the program, but for that much money, I’m sure my big bosses would be willing to rearrange the evening to make a big announcement about the room.”
She heard the wordsthree weeksand cringed internally. She didn’t know a lot about fundraising, but even in the business world, finding millions of dollars in three weeks was a stretch. Unless you had a connection. Which she had just billed herself as having. “Exactly.”
