Page 14 of Common Grounds

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“You mean to tell me”—Mike sips his nightly latte on Monday— “that you banged that girl from the bar on Friday night before you even bothered to get her number, and when you woke up in the morning, she was gone?”

I drag a hand over my face. “Can you be a little less crass about it, please?”

Mike lifts his hands from his sides, looking around the empty shop. “There’s no one here.”

I sent James home early when Mike came in, promising to pay him for his hours, anyway. I had been too embarrassed to call my best friend over the weekend, but by the time five o’clock rolled around on Monday, I had been over and over it in my head so many times that I jumped at the chance to talk to him. I know, at eighteen years old, James is technically an adult, but I didn’t feel right talking about this with him around. And, besides, it’s not like we’re packed with customers anyway.

“It’s not the company. It’s the principle. She was nice. I thought we were having a great time.” I know I sound sad. I probably look sad, too. I can’t believe I never got her number, and I don’t know what I could have done wrong for her to leave while I was asleep.

My eyes widen as I look at Mike. “Do you think she was… I dunno… unsatisfied?”

Mike tips his head back and howls his amusement. I can feel my face heating as the room fills with his over-dramatic laughter, and I slink even further into my seat.

“No, man. I don’t think she was ‘unsatisfied.’” He says it like he’s mocking me. “I’ll try to be less vulgar, for your sake, but you know what it feels like when a woman comes, surely.”

I bang my head on the table and cover the back of it with my hands. “Kill me now,” I groan.

“Okay, listen.” Mike’s tone has become placating, which makes me think he feels bad for me. Mike never feels bad for me; he only ever gives me shit. I lift my head from the table to shoot him a wary glance, but he continues. “You’re pretty sure she’s the hottie we saw running past here the other day, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, if she was running past this place and going to The Tipsy Geezer on the same day, there’s a good chance she’s local. So, maybe you’ll see her around,” he suggests.

I slink even further into my chair. “Doubtful,” I mumble.

“Hey. Nuh-uh. Nope. You’re the guy who is always talking about miracles and holding out hope for impossible good news. Where’s that characteristic Trevor optimism?”

When I don’t say anything and my eyebrows pinch even further together, a corner of his mouth tips up sarcastically. Which is how I know he’s about to say something cutting to try to break me out of my funk. “You have a better shot at seeing her again than you do at saving this place.”

I glare at him, still slouched in my chair. “That’s low. I’m going to figure out something for this place. I just haven’t landed on it yet.”

“There he is. My ridiculously optimistic friend,” he teases. “Hey, worst-case scenario, you had hot sex with a hot woman. I say you’ve won either way.”

I roll my eyes at his logic, looking out the window and scanning faces in the crowd of people passing by. But no matter how hard I look, none of them are her.

Chapter seven

Emery

Randall pounds on the conference table. Hard. I arch an eyebrow at Ethan, a staff photographer and my closest work friend, who is sitting to my left. He scratches his pen against a pad of paper and tilts it toward me so I can see.

I wonder if his wife forgot to make the coffee again this morning.

I hide a snicker behind my hand and slide the notepad closer to me. I write, I’d be cranky, too, if I had to drink the shit in the break room.

“Our numbers are down for the third week in a row. I saw a video on some app that said those damn Millennial twenty-somethings are killing the news industry, and I’m seeing it with my own eyes.” Randall is half out of his seat now, yelling and pressing his palms into the table, his tie dangling down in front of him.

Ethan scribbles something else on the pad of paper: Who’s gonna tell him we are the Millennials?

I look sidelong at Ethan and tap my nose—not it. He huffs.

“Darlis.” I straighten as Randall calls my last name. My turn, it would appear. “We need something happy.” Sreco, I think, completely unprompted. And, probably for the millionth time since a week ago Friday, I wonder what it means. I’m a journalist. I could look it up. But something in me likes the mystery. It’s not like I’m going to see him again, anyway. I left as soon as I heard his breath deepening, because that’s what you do with one-night stands. And that’s all it was.

I shake my head and remind myself to focus.

“We need something these kids will want to click on.” Randall is punctuating his sentences with the palm of his hand against the table. “They’re sick of the doom and gloom. What do you have for us?” He has returned fully to his seat, but his beady eyes are boring into me from across the conference table. Ethan drags the notepad back to himself and flips the page over, just in case Randall’s evil eye can see that far across the room.

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