Page 85 of The Tryst

I do some of my best thinking here, and, admittedly, my worst thinking too.

Alone, I replay the last several days, the last several weeks, all the conversations, with my friends, with David, with Nick. I wish there were an easy answer. I wish I could ask someone for the right answer.

Would I ask my dad if he were here?

I don’t honestly know. It’s not as if we talked about romance or boys when I was seventeen. He was a typical dad like that, and I was a typical girl.

Would I ask him now that I’m twenty-three?

I don’t know the answer to that either.

Instead, I ask myself the questions.

But I don’t like the answers I’m giving me, so I stand, run my thumb along the glistening metal plaque on the top slat of the bench, and then go.

27

FOUR DAYS AND FOURTEEN HOURS

Nick

It’s Wednesday, and I’m stepping into the elevator in my office building, checking the time on my watch.

It’s one-thirty, which means it’s been four days and fourteen hours since I left Layla.

I’ve been non-stop since eleven-thirty on Friday night. Like I had any other choice. You have to fight fire with fire. Obsession with obsession. So I poured myself into work all weekend, coffee and me powering through my days and into the night, stopping for little except dinner with my parents and Finn on Sunday evening. Dad gave Finn more tough love about Marilyn. Finn grumbled more, then Mom told Dad to let Finn figure it out in his own time. Finn asked me later if that meant Mom thought Marilyn was bad for him.

We all do, I’d wanted to say. Instead, I’d said,Everyone just wants you to be happy and you haven’t been.

Since then, my week has been wall to wall, and that’s both good for business and for sanity. I just finished a lunch meeting with the founder of an encryption app that has my brain buzzing. I’m itching to crack open my wallet and fund the startup now. But due diligence matters.

And due diligence damn well better keep me busy for the rest of the day.

When I get off the elevator on my floor, I’m in the zone, ready to power through my afternoon. First, though, I head down the hall and pop into David’s cube to say hello. I try not to visit him too much at work. Don’t want to look like I’m giving him special treatment, but I do want to make sure he’s fitting in and learning. His small cube looks like his already. There’s a framed picture of Cynthia and him on the desk, from the hiking expedition over the summer. Then a stress ball to squeeze, and a wall calendar from an animal shelter.

“How’s everything going, David?”

He looks up from his laptop with a droll expression. “Well, considering your social media was white bread until I arrived, it’s better.”

Whoa. “Someone is cocky,” I say, jerking my gaze back. Then I furrow my brow. “Also, what’s white bread?”

“Boring, Dad. Boring,” he says.

“Then make it…un-boring.”

“That’s my goal,” he says, then shoos me away. “Don’t want anyone to see the boss hanging around too long.”

“Message received,” I say, then rap my knuckles on the padded half wall in a goodbye. “See you tonight at Dragonfly.”

A smile tilts his lips as he says, “See you then.”

There. I’ll be busy tonight too. My schedule is so damn full.

I leave, heading toward my office where Kyle greets me from his desk just outside. “Hello, Mr. Adams,” he says. “Did you have a good lunch meeting?”

“Fantastic, Kyle,” I say, since I’m staying in the work zone. “And now I need to bury myself in research.”

Bring it on, research. Rain down from the sky in a deluge.

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