Page 106 of The Overtime Persuasive

The cab sits at the curb, its hazard lights blinking. I check the time again. The station is across town, and the generous buffer I built into my schedule has dwindled to the point where every traffic light now has personal power over my future.

Through the window, I can see the empty back seat. This isn’t how I pictured the ride. Liam was supposed to be beside me, driving me to the station while I held my sample subscription box balanced across my knees. He would ask me potential questions the whole way there, while I practiced my answers. Then, when the station came into view and I forgot how breathing worked, he would take my hand and remind me that I already knew what I wanted to say.

I never told him I’d imagined any of that.

I’m not sure I realized I had until I saw the empty space where he was supposed to be.

The driver gets out and opens the trunk. The station is getting farther away with every second I remain standing here, hiding in my store––but part of me still half-expects Liam to come running in at any moment now.

I push through Side B’s door, trying to manage my sample subscription box, purse, folder, and garment bag without dragging any of them along the sidewalk. The garment bag catches on the door handle. My folder begins sliding from beneath my arm, and the box tips far enough that I have to catch it with my hip.

My phone rings before I reach the cab, and my heart surges so hard that I nearly drop everything.

For one hopeful, humiliating second, I’m certain it’s Liam. He’s calling to say he’s close. That I need to give him thirty seconds. That we can still make it if the driver leaves now and every light between here and the station turns green.

I dig frantically through my purse while the phone rings again. When I finally manage to pull it free, an unfamiliar number glows beneath two particularly cruel words.

Potential Spam.

For a moment, I can only stare at it.

“Of course,” I whisper, silencing the call and turning my attention to the driver standing in front of me.

“Television station?” the driver asks, double-checking our route as he takes the sample box from my arms.

“Yes. And I’m cutting it close.”

He loads the box and garment bag into the trunk while I slide into the back seat with my purse and folder. Even after the door closes, I keep looking toward the end of the sidewalk, waiting for Liam to appear. To come running around the corner and give me any explanation that allows the version of this day I imagined to catch up with the one I’m living.

But no one comes.

The driver pulls away from the curb, and I wait to check my phone at the first traffic light. There’s no missed call from Liam. No message explaining where he is. I turn the volume all the way up on my ringer, making certain I couldn’t possibly miss either.

But the screen remains dark.

I set it facedown on my lap and look out the window as Old Town disappears behind us. I can’t decide whether I’m angry that he didn’t come, afraid something kept him away, or simply tired of being the person who gathers everything and keeps going.

I can do this alone. That has never been in question.

Usually, that knowledge feels like strength. Today, it feels like one more thing I have to carry.

The trouble is, for the first time in a long time, I’d been looking forward to not having to.

CHAPTER 26

LIAM

We have been at the arena for almost four hours, and Coach has used every one of them. When we arrived, we watched Sunday’s game once at full speed, then again in pieces, each mistake isolated and enlarged until it becomes impossible to blame on anything except the person who made it. Mine comes seven minutes into the second period, when I drift too far toward the boards and leave the middle open.

After the video, we hit the ice. We skate until the back-to-back in California feels like something that happened to other people’s legs. Battle drills become special teams, special teams become line rushes, and every time Coach blows the whistle, someone mutters something that would get us fined if a microphone picked it up.

Then we shower, change, and return to the locker room for more video.

At 11:30, I check the clock above the door. A few minutes later, I check it again.

I need to leave at noon. Not 12:05. Not whenever Coach finishes his final thought and then remembers three more. Noon gives me time to get to Eva, assuming traffic cooperates and every light between the arena and Old Town is karmically aligned.

My phone is tucked inside my stall. I resist the urge to look at it. I’ll be out of here in a few minutes anyway.