“Uber.”
He straightens, decided as he says, “I’ll drive you.”
“As much as I appreciate that, I need to clear my head before I see my dad.”
Disapproval flattens his lips. “I’ll walk you to the Uber.”
“I’m good,” I say. “I really need to think and clear my head before I see my dad.”
“Don’t wallow in that presentation going badly, Mia. It’s done. It’s over. It’s behind you.”
It’s not, I think, but I don’t push my point. He’ll comfort me. I know he will.
Suddenly my fears over not really knowing Jack fly right out the window in my head. He’s a good friend. He’s always been a good friend. So what if he’s on a dating site that he didn’t tell me about? He was probably embarrassed in some way. Men tend to be more private about these things than women, I’ve noticed, especially with Jess around. In fact, as for deleting his profile, I doubt it was me he was hiding from. Most likely it was Jess, who isn’t always kind to Jack.
I close the space between me and him and say, “Thanks for being a good friend, Jack. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”
His eyes warm in that friendly way they always do with me. “If you need me tonight, I’ll be around. Call me. Okay?”
“You know I will.”
I step around him and head for the door, and it’s not long before I’m riding down the escalator, passing floor two. It’s as dead as a ghost town.
Chapter Eighteen
I step outside the library, a prickly sensation dancing on the nerve endings at my nape, for no explainable reason. The street is a hustle and bustle of nightlife, the decorative but practical outdoor library lighting casting me in a spotlight, a shield of light, a repellant to any promise of danger. Nevertheless, I welcome the ride that will offer the additional armor of a moving box on wheels, whisking me away from the war zone, where my presentation has left me bloody and bruised, if only in my own well-developed imagination.
I pull up my app and check the status of my ride. Joe, my driver, is no longer my driver, apparently. Jack, of all names, will now be picking me up in ten minutes. He’s driving a black Kia. Joe. Jack. So many Js. What is the universe trying to tell me? I wonder.
Or maybe, just maybe, there is no hidden or subliminal message at all. I’m simply feeding fictional mayhem into everything that flutters a wing in my path, be it a bat or a beautiful butterfly.
I shiver against a chilly, damp night, rain still clinging to the air, an early fall evening, breaking from a hot summer. It’s officially a busy, fun-filled season at the library. A haunted house will be a ticketed event, sweet treats will evolve into ghostly treats in the café, and spooky booklists will be handed out on all floors. During my childhood fall meant our house would soon become the “Halloween house” everyone wanted to visit, complete with a smoke machine.
My cellphone rings, and for the briefest moment, I assume it’s Kara, nerves jangling a tune in my chest, but instead Jess’s name flashes on my screen.
“Hey,” I answer, wishing she really were Kara, wishing that dreaded call were behind me.
“I heard,” she states.
“Oh good Lord, how did you hear? Has there been a public announcement, something like ‘Invisible Girl escapes her invisible status to create a stir as the Stupid Girl instead’?”
“First of all, you are not stupid, and stop talking about yourself that way. And as for how I know, Jack called me.”
“Now I know how pathetic I must seem. Jack never calls you.”
“True, but Jack is also a protective little ninny, too. He allows you to wallow in pity, and therefore he turns your molehills into mountains.”
She’s not wrong. The pity party thing is, well, a thing between me and Jack. However, in this case, there are no molehills.
I flash back to the end of the meeting, when Neil had chased me across the main floor lobby and stopped my escape. “That was a disgrace,” he said nastily. “I’m not sure why Kara thought you could pull that off, but she and I will be talking about your future, and hers, for that matter.”
Jess is talking, and I realize I have no idea what she’s saying, but it ends with, “I’ll grab that pasta you love and meet you at your place.”
“I’m going to my dad’s, remember? Which you already know is a whole other thing we need to talk about. I think I told you already, but my mother may be having an affair or it’s a molehill–mountain thing. I need to find out.”
“Oh God, with the boss she is out of town with?”
“Yes, but I’m hanging up before you give me your opinion. I can’t take hearing it right now.” I eye the car that just pulled to the curb. Jack has arrived. “My Uber is here. I need to go.”
“Call me later if you can. I have things to say.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Love you, Jess.” On that note, I hang up before she can push back and rush to the car.
Once I’m inside, I pull my MacBook out of my bag and search for photos of the library’s board of directors. I find them with unexpected ease, scavenging through each image, a pirate after my prize, but there is no chest of gold to be found. I do not see anyone who resembles the man from floor two, and the back of the presentation room, in any of the photos. With a wave of unease and more than a hint of motion sickness, I shut the lid of my computer.
He was invited to the meeting; therefore he’s known in the library system. Logic tells me that means the only danger he represents is to my job. So why does it feel like more?
Chapter Nineteen
Jack, the Uber driver, is a twentysomething redhead, with curls and freckles, who doesn’t talk, nor does he sing well, but sing he does. Not the country music you might expect to hear in Nashville, or “Nashvegas” as some of us call our great city. A nickname earned with bright lights and rowdy nightlife, but, truly, we’re not all country vibes. Around these parts, we’re a melting pot filled with variety. Driving home this point, as he literally drives me to my family home, Jack’s performing Dua Lipa and Elton John’s “Cold Heart,” with two voices I assume to indicate each singer, defined in high and low octaves.
I quickly open the app to my father’s and my favorite pizza joint and key in our regular order. After which I sink back into my seat and enjoy Jack’s ballooning energy, which thankfully leaves zero room for the dreary, fretful self that I am tonight. As long as Jack sings, my mind sticks to the lyrics right along with him, and the escape is one I’d liken to the good ol’ days, defined as most of those before this one. For example, days when I was not expected to stand in front of judgmental eyes and pretend I knew how to do so, without flopping. Days when I do nothing more than step onto floor three and my troubles fade into literary luxury while the world purrs like a kitten with my love of books. Days when I ride to my family home and worry that my mother will press me on my dating life rather than potentially exploring her own.
The ride is a short zip across the highway, exactly three replays of Dua and Elton leading Jack to Uber microphone stardom. Jack is belting out lyrics to “Cold Heart” when he pulls the Kia to a halt in front of my parents’ house. “Thanks, Jack,” I call out, and I open my door and step to the white picket fence in front of and around my family home.
My parents live in one of those old neighborhoods filled with character and charm—and trees with trunks the size of three or four, or even five, of me. An old neighborhood where the history whispers in the wind and sings with the drip-drop of rain on the rooftops.