Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Luckily, the office wasn’t too far, and we were a little early since it never mattered what time our plans were to Fanny—only that I got him out of her hair exactly at twelve every other Saturday.
I pulled into an illegal spot in front of the building and looked around. There wasn’t a meter maid in sight, and I’d only be a few minutes. My free pass on parking tickets had expired when I stopped calling the cute meter maid I’d gone out with a few times.
“Just have to run upstairs to pick up the tickets from the drawer in my office.”
“Cool! We never come here. Do you still have Ms. Pac-Man in that big room?”
“We do. But we don’t have time for a game today.”
Lucas pouted. “Just one. Please?”
I was such a sucker. “Fine. One game.”
There were a few people milling around the office, even though it was Saturday. I was relieved to find Annalise wasn’t one of them—her door was shut and no light came from under the doorway. I didn’t want another confrontation with her in front of Lucas. God knows I’d worked hard over the years to keep him from seeing the asshole I often was the other six days of the week.
I unlocked my office and went to my desk drawer, only to find the tickets weren’t where I thought I’d stashed them. I remembered bringing them here with a batch of bills I needed to pay… I could’ve sworn I’d tucked them in the top right drawer. After a few minutes of searching my desk, it became clear they weren’t here at all. Shit. I hoped they were somewhere in my apartment, and I hadn’t inadvertently shredded them with my junk mail.
I looked at the time on my phone. If we left now, we’d be cutting it close. But the arena was in the opposite direction of my apartment; there was no way we’d make it if I drove all the way to my place first. Worse, I had no idea where I’d put the tickets, if they were even there.
I sighed. “I don’t know what I did with the tickets. I’m going to have to call Ticketmaster and find out if they can send me an electronic version or something.”
“Can I go play Ms. Pac-Man while you do that?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s a good idea. It could take me a while if I get stuck on hold, and I need to look up the number first. Come on, I’ll take you to the bullpen.”
As we walked, I kept trying to retrace what I’d done with the tickets after I’d opened the envelope in my office. I remembered looking at the early-admission passes with logoed lanyards and thinking that Lucas would be pumped to wear a badge around his neck. But I couldn’t for the life of me recall what I’d done once I’d stuffed it all back in the envelope—which was exactly what I was focused on when I strolled into the bullpen.
And discovered someone was already in there.
Annalise looked up. She started to smile, but then she saw my face and her lips curled to a scowl. Unexpectedly seeing her there had caught me off guard, too, which is why I stopped three steps into the room—and caused Lucas to walk right into me.
“What the heck?” he whined.
“Sorry, buddy. Uhhh... It looks like someone’s working in here, so it’s probably best you don’t play and make noise.”
Lucas walked around me and looked at Annalise. She glanced at him, then me, then back to him.
Offering a smile, she spoke to my little buddy. “It’s fine. You’re welcome to play a game while I’m in here.”
Lucas didn’t give me a chance to argue. He took off running for the Ms. Pac-Man machine. “Great!”
Annalise chuckled as she watched him.
When she looked back to me, our eyes met, but whatever was on her mind was unreadable.
“You sure you don’t mind? I need to make a call. I seem to have misplaced some tickets we need.”
“It’s fine.”
I nodded, although she didn’t notice because she already had her head down, burying her face in her work.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Back in my office, I looked up the telephone number and dialed Ticketmaster on speakerphone. While the million prompts to push buttons droned on, I searched my desk again. Still no tickets. And of course, there wasn’t a prompt for I lost my tickets, which caused me to have to wait for the last prompt to push the dreaded “all other callers, please press seven.” That inevitably led to a few more annoying prompts to try to identify the particular problem.
Losing patience, I pushed zero a half a dozen times in an attempt to get switched to a live, customer-service person—but that didn’t do anything but restart me at the beginning of the prompt merry-go-round.