Page 48 of A Ticking Time Boss

Tell me about it, I think. Tell me about anything that’s not here and anything that’s about you, so I can pretend I’m there too.

When Tristan calls the night to an end, I do the same. We shake hands with the people who haven’t gotten to us yet. Our joint Acture assistant gives us a tired thumbs up.

“Only one more day,” she says.

Tristan rolls his neck. “I’m heading out after lunch tomorrow. Carter, you’ll handle the dinner tomorrow?”

“If by handle,” I say, “you mean I’ll gain Acture thirty new potential investors, then yes.”

He smiles. “That’s the spirit.”

“Good night.”

“You too, man.” He holds up his phone and gives it a little shake. “Gotta call Freddie. We… well.”

I raise an eyebrow, my hand stilling on the door handle to my hotel room. “You what?”

Tristan looks sheepish, at odds with his usual competence and calm. “We’re not telling anyone yet.”

“Oh,” I say. And then I understand what he’s saying. “Jesus. Is she…?”

He nods, and the sheepishness dissolves into a grin. “Six weeks.”

I reach for his hand and he lets me pull him in for a half-hug. “Christ, man. You’ll be a father of two.”

“Yes.” He shakes his head, still grinning. “Don’t know how I’ll manage.”

“You have a decade of experience as a father,” I say. “You’ll be fantastic.”

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “It was never like this with Joshua, you know. It was never my wife pregnant, I wasn’t in the delivery room… and I never had him as an infant. There are so many things that could go wrong.”

“But so many things that could go right,” I say. “Congrats, man. To both you and Freddie. Don’t worry, I’ll still act surprised when you tell us all.”

Tristan’s smile widens even further. He looks like he’s lit up from within with joy. “Thanks. I’d better call. I’m driving her insane, probably, asking her to report how she’s feeling several times a day.”

I chuckle and nod toward his hotel room across the hall. “Go, then.”

“Thanks. Night, man.”

“Goodnight.”

I close the hotel door behind me and lean my head against it for a long moment. He’s having a second kid. The first with his wife, and the two of them—the three of them—will go through that together.

I look around the hotel room. It’s bland and beige and about as personal as a franchise chain can be. The bed is huge and doesn’t look slept in. I haven’t felt lonely in years, but here it is, elegantly decorated and acidic.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s Audrey.

Audrey: It was all right. I was actually out on a date. The guy who cancelled last week, you remember?

Fuck.

My mouth tastes like ash, the pleasant aftertaste of bourbon long gone. Is this her answer to my question, then? If she’d consider letting me ask her out.

Defeat feels like a poison in my blood.

She’d gotten ready for him. Done her makeup and hair. Sat across from someone who didn’t know her, didn’t understand her, and made pleasant small talk.

Three little dots appear on the screen as she types another message. I stare down at them. Waiting for the verdict to fall.

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