Page 98 of Callan

“Nothing. You can’t find anything about him online.”

“Did you look him up?”

I munch on my food again.

“Why would I look him up?” I ask around my food.

“I don’t know. It’s wise to do that. You learn stuff about them. How do you know there’s nothing online if you haven’t looked him up?”

I laugh.

“He has no online presence,” I say.

“Do you at least have his full name?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh, okay. Did he tell you he wasn't active online?”

“Can you please drop it?” I say.”He’s not online. We never talked about this. It never came up in our conversation.”

My irritation is hard to miss.

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

I suck in a long breath, trying to calm my nerves.

“You’re not upsetting me.”

The truth is, I don’t have enough information about Callan to look him up.

And even if I had, I’d still not do it.

Am I a coward fornotdoing that?

Probably.

But not everybody is online. I’m not. And aside from an old page she rarely updates, Kayla’s not active online either.

She stays quiet while I finish my food.

“Listen…” I say before sipping my drink. “Things unfolded quickly, so there was no time to think about anything else. We started to chat, and I wanted to go to the park last night. He offered to take me there. And no, I didn’t get laid. We were only kissing. I’m not even sure whether we’ll see each other again.”

And that’s true.

I have no idea if I’ll see him again. We haven’t talked about it. He knows where I live. And I know where that woman lives.

But I don’t know what she is to him.

As much as I don’t know how he ended it with the woman upstairs and why he got in hot water with her buddies.

Thinking more about the issue, I understand Kayla’s concerns. I’d be concerned, too.

“If we happen to meet again, I’ll learn more about him. If not, it was a good experience. He made me feel good.”

“That’s the most important thing,” she says, relieved that we have overcome the weird moment that created friction between us.

We continue our conversation and say goodbye to each other a few moments later before I look out the window––it’s snowing again––and realize that I’m tired and a nap would be in order.

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