Shannon:Or, a chick decked him because he was waving his dick around while drunk
Patrick:That’s more like it
Patrick:This kid is going to send me to an early grave
Shannon:Have you seen my white hairs?
We’d started messaging in meetings over the summer. It started with me pinging him a link to a property auction, and snowballed from there. Finding time to discuss all the business matters that Patrick and I handled without the involvement of the group was challenging, and it was nearly impossible to get time to plan agendas and collaborate on our approach to strategic issues. This was the best alternative, even if it meant we were essentially carrying on a side conversation through the entire meeting.
“And what about you, Sammy?” I asked.
I glanced at him over the lid of my laptop, and sipped my coffee. I sent Tom an instant message to get me another because I knew one hit of espresso wasn’t going to get me through. All told, I probably caught less than three hours of sleep last night. I woke up alone—I expected that part; Will was supposed to be in Virginia by noon—and totally fucking overwhelmed.
I didn’t want to havefeelingsfor this guy. Desire and attraction were fine, but that was where it ended. I wasn’t interested in the pang of sadness that came with an empty bed, or the urge to snap a snarky comment in his direction because he never hesitated to fire back. I wasn’t interested in any of that.
We’d had sex, it was good, and it was over.
Maybe we’d have more sex, but…we weren’t athing. We were an arrangement of sorts, and feelings weren’t coming along for the ride.
But they were.
“My weekend was sensational, Shannon,” Sam said. He was glaring at me, and any hope of him forgetting about the appointment I missed with him on Friday was lost. “I went to six different music festivals in four states, got drunk at the Feast of St. Anthony, passed out in Cambridge, and almost died in a goddamn elevator crash. Where the fuck were you on Friday and why the fuck weren’t you answering your phone?”
The table fell silent, and eventually Riley said, “Did you get to the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass show? I heard that was good this year.”
Patrick:WTF?
Patrick:Is this real?
Patrick:Regardless of whether it’s real…I’ve said it before, I’m saying it again: he needs regular appointments with that psychiatrist, the one who helped him with the OCD shit.
Shannon:Yes, because that will go over so well.
Shannon:Why don’t YOU have that convo with him?
“Is that a metaphor for something? Or are you talking about an actual elevator?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah. What do you mean, you almost died?” Matt said.
“The power went out in the Back Bay, and I was trapped in an elevator at the Comm Ave. property for eight hours,” Sam hissed.
Sam’s words landed like a fist to the gut. The one weekend I convinced myself I could sneak away was the same weekend the world had to implode.
Patrick:There must be more to this story because this sounds ridiculous
Patrick:Sam doesn’t go to music festivals. He must have gotten into RISD’s special brownies again.
Patrick:I’m almost fully convinced this entire story is a hallucination.
Patrick:And you were supposed to meet him there? What happened?
“The same elevator that slammed into the basement of that building?” Matt asked. “The one I read about, with the massive system failure compounded by the outage?”
“Same fucking one,” Sam said, his eyes locked on me. “So I’d love to know, Shannon. How was your weekend?”
I could almost hear Will’s voice telling me that my brothers were codependent children, and Sam’s insistence that I offer up an explanation worthy of abandoning him only confirmed it.
“Did you go somewhere?” Patrick shifted in his seat, staring at me. “You didn’t mention anything…I thought you were staying in town.”
