“Kelsey,” she corrects, cutting me off.
“Kelsey. Sorry. You’re incredibly beautiful and a great conversationalist and this has nothing to do with you whatsoever—but I’ve got to call it a night.”
17
Ryan
“[T]hen all collapsed and the great shroud of the sea rolled on...”
“Fuck,” I say softly, holding my phone against my ear with white knuckles. I’m lying in bed, naked and alone. It’s a state of being that’s become par for the course for me these past two months. Henn’s crushing words are sounding in my ear.
Right before answering this call from Henn, I’d just finished jerking myself off while watching the music video for the Spanish-language version of “Bailando” (because, holy shit, the lead actress-dancer in the red dresstotallyreminds me of Samantha!)—and I was about to drift into a happy, blissful sleep, content in the knowledge that a genius-hacker was out in the world doing God’s work for me, when Henn called. And now, not thirty seconds into this phone call, I’m wide awake and feeling like I’ve been punched in the gut.
“I’m really sorry, Ryan,” Henn says. “I was so sure.” He sighs. “At this point, the only thing I can think is her legal name’s gotta be something different than Samantha. It’s not all that uncommon, actually. Did you know Miley Cyrus’ given name is Destiny Hope? But do you think Miley has ever introduced herself to a guy in a bar as ‘Destiny Hope’? I think not.”
I rub my forehead with my free hand. “Yeah, it’s gotta be something like that. A nickname different from her given name. Shit.”
“Ironic, huh? I scoured nine airlines’ databases and it turns out you were probably right about Delta all along—we just didn’t have the right name to search.”
I sigh. “Well, can we run another search in Delta, then? Like, I dunno, maybe look at the files of all twenty-seven-year-old female flight attendants?”
“The database isn’t set up to search that way. I’m sure I could limit my search to flight attendants only, but without a name or employee-number, that’s about all I could do—and that’d be a helluva lot of files to look through.”
“Hey, I’m totally willing to review them myself. I’ll fly down to L.A. some weekend, whenever you’re free, and sift through them.”
“Ha! You think you’d need aweekendto get through all those files? Ryan, Delta’s got, like, eighty thousand employees. Even if I could narrow things down to flight attendants for you, it’d still probably take you a month to sift through everything, and that’s if you do it without a day off.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry, man. I know how badly you wanted this.”
“It’s okay. I should have known: Captain Ahab doesn’t catch the whale.”
“Yeah, well, I was really hoping this time he would. The name thing just turned out to be an unexpected snafu.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s okay. It’s karma for me being cheesy enough to tell a girl I’d be all over her ‘likeblancoonarroz.’”
Henn laughs. “You said that to her?”
“Yup. That’s how bad I had it for her.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “But, okay. No more whining allowed. I’ve got no choice but to turn the page and try to look at the silver lining here. I mean, hey, here’s an upside: I get to have sex again, right? With someone not nearly as great, but, hey.”
“That’s something.”
“And not a moment too soon, man. Is it possible for a guy to die from lack of sex? Because, if so, you’d better read me my last rites.”
“No, I’m quite certain lack of sex can’t be fatal; otherwise, I’d be dead. Not these days, of course, thanks to Hannah, but I’ve had some dry spells in my time that would have been terminal, if that were a thing. Oh, hey, heads up, if manwhoring is gonna be your thing again, you’d better tell Kat. At the Climb & Conquer party, she told me if the search for Samantha went bust, she was dying to play matchmaker with you and T-Rod.”
I roll my eyes. “Great. Just what I need.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t be so quick to say ‘no, thanks.’ T-Rod’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah? Actually, I think Sarah said something about that, come to think of it.”
“You know Reed Rivers—the guy Josh and I went to UCLA with?”
“Yeah. I mean, no, I haven’t met him yet, but my little brother Dax is hoping to get his band signed by Reed’s record label. Why?”
“Well, just to give you an idea of T-Rod’s allure, Reed Rivers can get any woman he wants—literally—he even dated Isabel Randolph for a while—and he’salwayshad a thing for T-Rod.”
