Page 65 of Love or Leave

"I know it's brutal right now," Dr. Tanaka said, "but we're getting there."

Cara snorted and shook her head before popping a pain relief tablet in her mouth and chasing it with a swig of cold coffee from her mug.

They'd been collecting thousands of pages of data for the last few months and this week, they finally took on analyzing it. The mountain of work was a welcome relief after the events of the weekend. She hadn't even hesitated to work through her golf lessons. On Tuesday, she'd already had enough of searching through spreadsheets. Wednesday had been torture. It was now Thursday, and she was done.

At least the endless lines of data had thoroughly distracted her from the deep emotions Antonio had brought about.

"We are," Dr. Tanaka said, more enthusiastically this time. "I can feel it."

Cara couldn't feel it. She was pretty sure they were no further along than they had been on Monday. She pulled a sandwich from her lunch bag and spun away from her computer. Dr. Tanaka did the same, grabbing her lunch as she went.

"We should get a table here," Dr. Tanaka said with a smile.

Cara nodded and took a bite, noting the time on the wall so she'd know when to expect the pain medicine to move its way through her system and numb her pulsating head.

"You okay?"

Cara shrugged. "Headache. I'll be fine in twenty minutes."

Dr. Tanaka nodded and took a bite of her leftovers, but didn't seem to buy it. "Thanks for covering for me last week," she said. "I'm sorry I made you miss golf."

"That's okay."

Dr. Tanaka took another bite. "How was the meteor shower?"

"Good."

"And Margaret? How was she?"

Cara finally let out a little laugh. Margaret was the president of the Royal Astrological Society, and to call her intense would be an understatement. She was in her seventies, retired, and took her position seriously.

"She was… Margaret," she said.

Dr. Tanaka laughed for a second, then settled into a smile, and finally got back to her assessing look as she ate.

"And Golf Guy?" she asked. "What's going on with him?"

Cara huffed a sigh and shrugged. "I asked him to come with me to the observatory, but he wanted to work on his short game instead."

"Mmm," she said, showing no surprise.

Cara probably shouldn't have been surprised, either.

"He asked me out to a hockey game."

Dr. Tanaka turned up her nose.

"I know," Cara said. "I told him I'd let him know, but I've been so busy that I didn't know if I had it in me to sit through a whole three-hour hockey game."

Dr. Tanaka’s eyes double in size. "Three hours? That's how long they play?"

Cara nodded.

"Barf. When's the game?"

"Tonight," she said, pulling her phone from her bag. "I actually haven't checked my messages in a while…"

Cara opened her messages and paused. She had a text from Antonio.

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