I sat down at my computer and ripped off a quick email to a few special people, attaching the story from the Now! website, because I knew a handful of them wouldn’t have known about it nor been able to access it otherwise.
That’s about the time my phone started ringing off the hook, and it didn’t stop the entire morning. The chain-phoning started with Sylvia, but I barely got in a full conversation with her before she passed the receiver off to my father.
“Hi Dad!”
“Loo, the article looks terrific! And Trip looks all grown up. Didn’t I say that, Sylvia? How grown up he looks?”
I could hear her agreeing in the background as I asked, “Did you see the photo credit I gave you? Alongside the graduation shot?”
“No, I… Ha! There it is. Kenneth Warren! Look, Sylvie, I’m famous!”
I started cracking up. Leave it to Dad to get so excited. “Dad! Focus!” I laughed out.
“I’m just kidding, sweetheart. We love the article. You did a fantastic job, really.”
“Thanks.”
“You and Lisa coming swimming later? I haven’t seen her since hearing the big news.”
“No, sorry. It’s a New York Sunday this week. She’ll be coming in later. But I think Pickford said he was going to head over. She’ll probably drop him off and then pick him up after our lunch, though, so you can see her then.”
Pick didn’t need a reason to visit my father, but using the pool was as good an excuse as any. It was pretty much the only time the poor guy wasn’t in pain. I happened to believe that my dad’s pool held mystical healing powers, too, and it sucked that I was missing out on the final weeks of using it. The thing had a heater, but it was still going to need to be closed up in the next week or so. It was Jersey, after all.
“Sounds good, Loo. I’ll defrost some hot dogs.”
I had the sharpest pang of homesickness when he said that. I hadn’t lived in the man’s house for close to a decade, but suddenly, all I wanted was to crawl into my old bed, in my old room, and just be a kid again. Strange to have that thought on the very day my big career was being launched. Stranger still that the thought could have been brought on by the mere mention of some frost-bitten Sabretts.
I was just saying my goodbyes as the phone beeped, so I clicked over to talk to Lisa.
Even though I was going to see her in a few more hours for our lunch date, she was way too excited about the article to wait until then to offer her congratulations. I was pretty excited to talk to her, too. We couldn’t really find a private moment at the bar the night before, and it was too loud to have any sort of in-depth conversation anyway. I was just dying to tell her everything that had happened on Friday. We kept the conversation trained on my article, though, knowing we could save the rehash of my Trip evening until lunch.
I hung up with her just as Bruce called—probably at my father’s reminder—but I took the sentiment as it was offered and thanked him profusely for the congrats.
But when I picked up the phone and heard Cooper’s voice, I nearly squealed into his ear. We liked to think of ourselves as still in touch with one another, even though we’d sometimes go entire months without speaking. He was actually a practicing whatever lawyer down in Baltimore, and I knew he was putting in crazy hours gunning for a promotion at his firm.
“Cooper! It’s so good to hear your voice, my friend. How are you?”
“I’m good. Exhausted. Cranky. But good. But the real question is: how are you, Miss Famous New York Reporter?”
“I’m great! Flying pretty high right now. You read it?”
“Of course I read it. The second I got your email. It was great. I think the best part was when you mentioned the ‘love triangle’ Trip was embroiled in back in high school.”
I started cracking up. “Yeah, well, I suppose you would, Angle C.”
Just then, my call waiting beeped in. I asked Coop to hang on and flashed over.
Click!
“Hello?”
“I was not a cocky teenager.”
Ha! It was Trip. I’d finally answered one of his calls, and I couldn’t even talk right then. But I knew I would be answering from then on. I laughed in his ear and asked him to call me back in five minutes.
“Wait, Layla, I-”
Click!
“Hey Coop, speaking of love triangles... I’ll give you one guess who that was on the other line.”
He guessed correctly, I confirmed, we laughed. We chatted for a few more minutes. He told me all about work and the girl he was seeing in the rare minutes of free time.
“Gosh, Coop. Sounds like you’re really burning it at both ends these days.”
“I am. But Suzy’s been great. She’s very patient.”
“And also very lucky,” I gushed.
I figured it was as good a time as any to tell him about my engagement to Devin. Aside from Lisa and Trip, he was the only other person I’d spilled the news to.
“Engaged? Holy shit, Layla. Congratulations. I’m kinda stunned here.”
“Yeah, well, me too!”
He laughed. “That’s great, though. You sound happy. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the old you.”
Why does everyone keep saying that?