I sucked air through my teeth. “I don’t know…”
“What?”
“Why don’t we just stay here? I can make us lunch.”
She smiled. “Oh, I see. You do want to hang out with me, but you don’t do spontaneity.”
“I can be spontaneous,” I said defensively.
She smirked. “Oh yeah? When’s the last time you did something that wasn’t thoroughly planned? And stuff inside your apartment building doesn’t count. That’s still your safe space.”
“Well, I saved a man from an avalanche today.”
She laughed. It was good to see the humor return to her face.
“Doesn’t count,” she said, still smiling. “You’re a fixer, so today’s emergency was totally in your wheelhouse. I’m talking about a genuine, spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-your-pants fun thing.”
I had nothing.
How did this woman have my card so thoroughly pulled?
When I didn’t answer, she cocked her head. “That’s what I thought. You thrive on predictability.” She narrowed her eyes. “I bet that’s why you like the job you have.”
“How do you mean?”
“You like being in control. And what better way to feel like the master of destiny than to beat all the odds with everything stacked against you? Make innocent men out of the guilty.”
I mulled this over. “I never thought of it that way.”
“You’re not that hard to figure out, Adrian Copeland. Even your hobbies are planned. You run races that you train for for months, you work, work, work—you are a creature of habit. A total control freak. Your dang junk drawer is organized.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You looked in my junk drawer?”
“I was looking for a spoon for my coffee. I was not prepared to see that. Your paper clips were all color coordinated, and you had a little caddy for your loose batteries—” She shuddered. “I can’t even talk about it. It really freaked me out.”
I snorted.
“I promise you, you will not implode if you do something you didn’t plan on today.” She grinned at me. “Come with me. It’ll be an adventure. And there’s this Italian restaurant on Lake Superior and I swear to God, it’s the best Italian food in Minnesota.”
Coming from her, this was high praise.
“I can’t remember the last time I went up north,” I said somewhat distantly. “Dad used to take me, but I haven’t been in ages.”
“You’re missing out. The North Shore is ridiculously gorgeous. So. Duluth. Are we going?”
She waited for me to answer like a puppy wagging its tail.
“Okay. But I’m driving.”
She clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay!”
I smiled. I realized that doing what she wanted gave me a little high. She was some kind of mood booster for me—even when all we were doing was picking up trash in a hoarded house.
I liked her.
And that gave me a little high too.
CHAPTER 10
HOW TO FIND WHAT
YOU’RE MISSING USING THIS
ONE WEIRD TRICK!
ADRIAN
I walked into my office after a court visit on Monday morning feeling like my two-day weekend had been a six-month vacation from life. Despite the amount of actual shit I now dealt with on an hourly basis, I was smiling.
I’d spent the whole weekend hanging out with Vanessa. We hadn’t gotten home from Duluth until almost midnight last night.
We’d bundled up the baby and walked through the Christmas lights at Bentleyville, an outdoor village completely decked out for the holiday. Got hot chocolate, had dinner at the place on Lake Superior—and Vanessa was right. It was the best Italian food in Minnesota.
I’d had a good time. A great time. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever enjoyed a date so much—not that it had been a date. It wasn’t, of course. But I couldn’t help acknowledging that I hadn’t had that much fun with someone in ages.
Vanessa made me laugh. She made me forget. About everything other than what we were doing in that moment. It felt like a rest for my soul. I’d been living under the constant pressure of work and Mom and Richard and now this breakup with Rachel, and suddenly I was distracted and having fun and all those stressors got shut off. Now they were duller somehow. They mattered less. And I wondered if this is what Vanessa meant about always having something to look forward to. Only, the thing I seemed to be looking forward to was her.
Not in any inappropriate way. I just wanted to see what she’d do next. It was like I’d found some cool new restaurant and the menu was never the same and I wanted to keep going back to see what they were serving.
Becky stood at the door of my office waiting for me like she did every morning, holding my coffee and wearing that searching look on her face that she gave me these days, trying to discern my mood.
“Did you, like, go tanning or something?” she said, handing me my cappuccino. “You look brighter.”
I walked around my desk, sat, and unbuckled my briefcase to pull out the Keller file. “I didn’t,” I said, ignoring her narrowed eyes. “What’s on my schedule for the day?”
“You have a consultation at ten, lunch with Marcus at eleven fifteen to go over the Keller case, and the rest of your day is free.” She looked around. “Um, where’s the dog? You do remember you have one, right?”
“With all the shitting it does? How could I forget.” I logged on to my desktop.
“You just left him at home? He can’t be in the apartment all day by himself, he’ll be lonely.”
“He’s got the demon he’s possessed with to keep him company.”
She scowled at me.
I tried not to let her see my smile. “He’s with a friend. I’m keeping him until he gets adopted.” I didn’t look up to see the triumphant grin I knew she was giving me.
Vanessa liked Harry. She’d asked to dog-sit him while I was at work and I’d happily agreed.
I signed in to my email. “I need you to call Sonja Duggar to see if she’s available. I might have a full-time job for her. And don’t put anything on my schedule after lunch. I’m leaving early again. I’ll finish listening to the Buller tapes from home.”
Becky didn’t speak to give me her opinion on this like she usually would. A silent Becky was cause for concern, and I was forced to look up to make sure she hadn’t died where she stood.
She stared at me, slack jawed. “You’re going home early? Again?”
My cell phone pinged, and I pulled it out. It was a video from Vanessa. Harry in a diaper, growling at a chair leg. I laughed.
When she’d had my phone the other day, she’d changed my lock screen to the selfie of us. I didn’t notice it until a few hours later.
I hadn’t changed it back.
She was wearing that stupid cereal necklace in it and I had on that Maryland crab shirt and a glow stick bracelet. Her arm was peppered with stickers. The baby was smiling and the dog had his tongue out. It was this colorful, fun slap of happy right in the middle of my black, serious phone—and it made me smile every time I looked at it.