Page 41 of Emergency Exit
Piper sighed. “That’s giving veryI regret thisvibes.”
“Yeah,” agreed Harper sadly.
“But at least we’re about to get waffles and more booze.” Piper nodded toward the waitress exiting the kitchen with a full tray.
“Waffles,” said Harper longingly, and Piper laughed.
“We are about to be hands-free, face-down in whipped cream. That would totally be a double entendre if you were gay.”
“It’s not a double entendre if I’m straight? Because it sounded like it, even to me.”
“Oh, no, it was. I just meant it literally in this case. I’m not confident enough to say that to an IRL girl. I’m queer and probably slutty, but I wouldn’t know because I’m also people-avoidant.”
Harper laughed and wished she knew more people in Seattle so she could hook Piper up. Piper was too awesome not to have someone telling her that regularly.
13
Ash
Dinged Up
His phone chirped, and the haptic buzz vibrated his face. Ash sat up and glared at his office. A pale Northwest daylight was coming through the blinds. He’d fallen asleep on the couch. He fumbled for his phone, expecting to see a message from Harper.
Call me when you get a sec... I have a question.
He blinked at his mother’s message and her blatant use of the Boomer ellipses, then checked the time. It was after eight, but that still seemed too damn early to be texting anyone on a Saturday. Ash loved his mom. She had many wonderful qualities, but basic life skills were somewhat elusive for her. There had been a period of three months where she’d stopped watching TV because she’d lost the remote and hadn’t wanted to tell him about it.
Ash stumbled to his desk and wrote himself a Post-it note. He slapped the pink square in the middle of his computer monitor so he would remember to call her after he called Rowan. Then he staggered out to the hall toward the bathroom. He’d slept in his office plenty of times after college—tearing through research and pizza, waking up, and then dashing off to hang with friends. At the moment, he couldn’t imagine dashing anywhere. Welcome to being over thirty.
By the time he got out of the bathroom and chugged half a Mountain Dew, he felt like less of a zombie. He checked in at Mel’s office—they were asleep in their napping hammock under a snuggie and a panda bear eye mask. He decided not to wake them up and returned to his office just in time to hear hisphone’s message alert again. He checked the face and saw with relief he saw it was from Harper.
Is your brother OK?
That was a weird message. Shouldn’t she be asking about him? Ash was about to dial her when Forest’s face popped up, and the phone began to ring.
“Hey, Forest,” said Ash, picking up. “Can I call you back? I need to call Rowan real quick. I’ve got a security question for him.”
“Uh… yeah.” Forest sounded odd, although Ash couldn’t pin down quite how. “You’re going to have to put that on hold for a day or two.”
“What does that mean?”
“Haven’t turned on the news, have you?”
“Who watches the news?” Ash flipped on his computer, moved the Post-it note off the screen, and pulled up a search on local news.
“OK, well, the good news is that Rowan will be fine.”
“The good news?” repeated Ash numbly, feeling a cold lump form in the pit of his stomach. Rowan was one of the cornerstones of his universe. Nothing could happen to Rowan. That was not allowed. He’d been so relieved when Rowan got out of the military. Rowan was supposed to be safe now.
“What’s the bad news?”
“Your brother did one of his heroic things again.”
Forest only disavowed his relationship to one of them when they had done something epically dumb. The last time Rowan had done something heroic, he’d come home from the Middle East with extra holes in him.
“Is he OK?”
“So last night he went to some veteran’s fundraiser gala, and there was a drive-by shooting.” Forest was doing the thing where he didn’t actually answer the question. Instead, he gaveinformation until the question answered itself.
