Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
One mention of his dad and me, and tension slams into my bones. Does David know something? Is he onto us? Did Raven say something to David? They aren’t that close, but you never know. I’m on alert as David adds, “And thanks again for getting those golf clubs from Kip.”
“It was my pleasure,” I say, then wish I could take it back because of the double entendre.
“Maybe you and Dad could grab some of the final items later this week?”
Yes, god yes.
But no, just no. Nick and I agreed to stop. “Why don’t you send me the list? I’ll grab them in my car,” I say.
“But then you’d have to park at, like, five different places in the city.”
Solving a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute would be easier, but still, I say, “I really don’t mind doing it. I could even ask Harlow or Ethan. Or Jules. Or Camden.”
I might as well list everyone I’m friends with.
But David waves a dismissive hand. “You know what? I’ll go with you. It’ll be fun.”
David Adam Bancroft is the happiest person I’ve ever known. My heart warms up just being near him, and I’m aching to tell Nick that he did right with this kid. That no matter how complicated the situation was when David was born, somehow, his dad—maybe his mom too—managed to give their son what he needed to become this good, upbeat, kind young man.
But truthfully, I know David’s heart comes from one person—his father. David is the man he is because of Nick.
And that makes me happy. But a little sad too.
Central Park is fifty-one blocks long and three blocks wide, and every time I walk through this centerpiece of the city, I feel like it contains so many secrets in plain sight. Secrets that its forty-two million visitors a year walk past day in and day out.
I almost feel like I could disappear in there, and sometimes that’s what I need. That evening, with the sun still high in the summer sky, I head into the park on my way home, walking along the lake, past joggers and cyclists and after-work exercise warriors till I reach the edge of the water. A little bit beyond, I find an empty green bench under a tree. I beeline for it before anyone else can claim it.
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.