Page 88 of Against The Boards

“Ha! So modest.”

I spent the morning in meetings and didn’t look at my phone until lunch. I had a bunch of messages and even a voicemail from my mom. It wasn’t odd for my mom to call me or leave me a voicemail. I just always deleted them without listening to them. She’d said what she needed to say all those years ago.

I scrolled through the texts from Benny first.

BENNY: How’s your day?

ME: You sent me flowers?

BENNY: Did you like them? I know they’re your favorite.

ME: I LOVED them. No one has ever sent me flowers. How did you know?

BENNY: Rox, you have a cherry blossom tattoo. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

He was wrong; it took a genius because no one I had dated before him ever bought me flowers. Come to think of it, none of my previous partners even asked me what my favorite flower was. Benny didn’t have to ask; he just knew.

I flipped over to the texts from my brother.

TRISTAN: Yo, slut! Happy birthday!

ME: Hoe! Happy Birthday! I saw you won gold! When are you coming home?

TRISTAN: Soon!

ME: So vague!

TRISTAN: Who sent you flowers?

Shit. I forgot I got so emotional this morning that I snapped a quick thing on my Instagram. I didn’t think he looked at them.

ME: I’ll tell you when you get back...but I’m seeing someone right now.

I responded to a couple of messages that were basic birthday wishes while I tried to decide what to do for lunch. My office phone rang, and I saw it was our receptionist, Cindy. I picked it up. “Hey, Cindy, what’s up?”

“Um…you have a visitor who wants to see you?”

“I do?” I asked. I put the phone on speaker and checked my calendar. “I don’t have anything on my calendar.”

“Um…yeah. It’s your dad.”

I hung up. I told Quinn I needed to run an errand and went to Cindy’s desk in the front. Sure enough, there was my dad standing there in all his six-foot-two glory with his shock of salt and pepper hair.

“Dad?” I asked, not believing what I was seeing.

When he saw me, he didn’t say anything but pulled me into a great big bear hug. “Roxie girl!”

I turned to Cindy. “I’m gonna run out for lunch. Call me if you need anything. I don’t have any meetings for the rest of the day.”

I drug my dad outside. “What are you doing here?” I seethed.

His face hardened, and his hazel eyes bored into me. “You don’t answer my calls. I had to find out from Natalie that you moved to The States,” he said.

I clenched my hands into fists and tried to calm down. I failed. “Why do you even care?” I yelled back at him.

“Look, can we go somewhere to talk?” he asked.

“Fine.”