Page 112 of The Overtime Persuasive

It really has been a wonderful day. In fact, today was better than good. It’s the sort of day I’m still buzzing to tell someone about, yet the only person waiting upstairs is a cat who considers enthusiasm beneath him.

True to who he is at his core, Mitch greets me at the door with all the ceremony of someone who has been asleep the entire time I was gone—which, knowing him, he has.

I set down my bag, kick off my shoes, and finally check my phone properly only to find one unread text, sent twenty minutes ago.

Mrs. Green

Spoke to my nephew again. He wants everything! The machine, case, grinder, all of it and he’s fine paying full price. Says it’ll save him months of waiting on backorders. He’d like to send the money this week if that works for you.

I read it twice.

This is news designed to be shouted down a hallway. It deserves someone standing in the room with me, so I can watch their face catch up to mine in real time.

I look up as Mitch blinks at me from the arm of the couch, unmoved.

“The café equipment is basically sold,” I tell him anyway. “That’s most of what’s left on the payment plan. Gone. Just like that.”

He yawns so widely I can see every tooth in his head.

I kiss the top of his furry head. “Thank you for matching my energy.”

I could call Lucy. I probably will in a minute. But Lucy already knew Mrs. Green’s nephew was interested.

This is the part where a possibility becomes real, and the person I want to tell is Liam.

I wish Liam was here, right now, propped beside me on the couch, still smelling like whatever cologne manages to survive four hours beneath studio lights. I’d hand him my phone the way I did in the hallway after Dad’s show and watch his whole face change. Then he’d celebrate loudly enough for both of us, because Liam treats the things that matter to me as important before I’ve decided whether they’re allowed to.

But that version of today depended on him showing up.

Instead, I set the phone faceup on the coffee table, where it sits between me and an empty cushion.

The news is every bit as good as it was thirty seconds ago.

It just has nowhere to land.

For the first time in a long time, it is my greatest wish that I wasn’t coming home alone.

CHAPTER 28

LIAM

The squirrel box sits on my workbench, ready to be hung, while I stand over it pretending there’s still something left to do.

I run my hand along the roof, testing the edges for I don’t know what. Roughness. Structural weakness. Searching for a valid reason to stay in the garage and be busy so I won’t check my phone again.

But there isn’t one.

There are no new messages from Eva. No returned calls. Nothing from her since I reached the studio and found out she’d already left. I even went by the store yesterday to see if I could catch her, but it was closed––and it’s never closed on a Wednesday. I knocked on her apartment door, and nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip.

Behind me, “Blame It on the Rain” spills from the speaker. Eva played it at Side B a few weeks ago, which led to a long and strange argument with a customer—although she called it a discussion—about whether a good song stops being good because the people on the album cover actually didn’t sing it.

“You’re listening to Milli Vanilli?”

I peer over my shoulder. Lucy is walking up the driveway in leggings and an over-sized sweatshirt, her hair piled into a bun on top of her head, staring at me like she’s caught me doing something shameful.

“It’s a good song.”

“You do realize they weren’t the ones singing it?”