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“I’m not sure it can. It’s important.”
“I’m busy,” Atkins spat, then hung up. I stared at my phone.
“Huh. Guess he’s doing something more important.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
“I’m going home,” Nadia said with a sigh. “You guys coming with me now that the saboteur tried to strike, and failed?”
“I want to stay,” Ryan said. “Maybe the saboteur will return.”
“It would be awfully stupid to return so soon after being seen,” I said carefully.
“You’re right, it would be stupid. Then again, so is everything this jackass has done so far. I’m staying just in case.”
“I’ll join you. Might as well see this through to the end.” I turned to Nadia. “But first I’m walking you to the train station.”
She smiled. “I’ll happily accept. I’m kind of shaken up after seeing the guy.”
We held hands all the way to the station, and kissed goodbye before she went down the stairs. I walked back alone, glancing nervously at every shadow and person who walked by. When I got back, I found Ryan sitting in the front row with the bottle of scotch in his lap.
“It’s weird that Atkins wouldn’t come,” he said without watching me approach. I sat on the edge of the stage across from him. My legs were long enough that they almost touched the ground.
“It’s late,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to rush out here at the drop of a hat either. And it can wait until morning.”
Ryan had a suspicious look on his face. He scratched his jaw and said, “Or our director is hiding something.”
I didn’t feel like arguing about Atkins’ guilt or innocence again, so I said nothing.
“You weirded out about what happened?” he asked after a pause. “The threesome.”
“I already told you I liked it.”
He gave me a patient look. “You said that in front of Nadia. Now it’s just us. Everything peachy?”
I nodded. “I was being completely honest. I… loved it. I would like to try something like that again. If both of you are into it.”
“Oh, trust me: we were,” Ryan grinned. “But you’re acting weird. And it’s not just the fact that you saw the saboteur.”
“I almost told Nadia that I loved her.”
Ryan leaned forward. “Oh shit. Really?”
“Yeah. When she was about to leave the first time, right before we saw him. I wasn’t even thinking about it. The words almost slipped right out of my mouth.”
“Do you mean it,” Ryan asked carefully, “or are you doing that thing you do?”
I frowned. “What thing?”
“That thing where you get overeager and obsessive about something.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Dude,” Ryan replied. “The model airplane kick you went on. Or the month where you set up $5,000 worth of train sets in the basement. You dive headfirst into things without thinking, whether you’re ready or not.”
It would have been easy to automatically disagree with him, but I considered myself a thoughtful person, so I took a moment to consider it. Most of my hobbies were like that, sure. Even my music tastes: I discovered a new band, listened to them non-stop for a month, and then once I was sick of them I dropped them forever. Was it the same way with Nadia?
She had been on my mind for weeks. I went to bed thinking about her, and she was the first thing in my head when I woke up the next morning. I spent hours planning the perfect dates, to the point that I scheduled out how the date should go in five-minute increments. I was headstrong. Obsessive even, in a good way.
