Page 46 of The Single Dad's Guide to Recreation

ChapterSixteen

JOSH

Just as I walk into my office after another very productive meeting with Carl Conrad at CPR, who is a font of good ideas, my phone rings. Thinking it might be Avery, since I somehow missed her at the rec center, I snatch up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello to you too, Josh. So glad to have caught you.”

I have to stifle my groan when I recognize Martina Diaz’s voice. “Yes, it’s been hectic around here. What can I do for you, Mayor?”

“You can attend the public-private partnership conference I told you about.”

“I tried,” I say, “but registration was closed.”

“Lucky for you, I pulled a string or two and got two tickets. One for Trede and one for CPR. The focus is community center development, so it’s perfect.”

Pulling out my cell, I open my calendar app. I had checked out the conference when she told me about it weeks ago, but when we couldn’t get in, I deleted it from my memory cache. “When was that again?”

When she reminds me, I slump into my desk chair. Naturally, the conference is the one weekend Avery and I have planned to leave town. “Which stakeholders did you tell them would attend?”

“Ideally, it’d be you and Leia Blake. Unless there’s someone else from either organization involved in the current collaboration.”

“And when do you need confirmation?”

“There are grant opportunities specifically targeted to attendees of this conference. It’d be a shame to miss out on them.” Before I can figure out a decent excuse for why I can’t go, she adds, “Especially since I went to the trouble to get you in.”

“Right. I do appreciate it.”

“I’ll get on the horn with Leia and tell her you’ll be there, then,” she says.

Just as I’m about to give in, Eli appears in my doorway. “Mayor, give me an hour to figure this out. I’ll talk to Leia and get back to you.”

“As long as someone shows up.”

“I’ll confirm with you by the end of the day.”

Eli sits down as I’m hanging up. “What’s this you have to figure out with the mayor and Leia?”

“I thought we were meeting at four.”

Reaching across my desk, he picks up the CPR plan that has my notes written in the margins. The notes I planned to work into the final version before our meeting.

“We were, but I saw you in here, and honestly, it’d be better for me if we meet now. Then I could catch an earlier flight to New York.”

“What’s happening in New York?”

“Venture capital crap.” Eyes on the document in his hands, he asks, “You can do this now, right?”

“Well, I’m not really finished prepari?—”

He frowns. “Josh, it’s just me.”

“Yeah, and you’re my boss.”

“We’re still friends.”

I suppress a sigh. He wasfriendswith Lisa. Until I moved to Climax, she was always part of the equation. He likely doesn’t get that there’s a power dynamic between us, either. The same way Lisa never got the difference between parents who paid for every little thing at Yale versus parents who could barely scrape together the money for state school tuition.

I blow out a breath. “Yes, we’re friends. But I’d like to make sure the plan is clear, so that?—”

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