He glanced at it and his entire face changed—went soft in a way I’d rarely seen.
“What?” I asked.
“Tyler just sent me another photo.” He turned his phone to show me a picture of Tyler holding a small brown and white puppy with enormous eyes. “This is Benson. We got him from the shelter this morning, and I’m already obsessed and terrified.”
“Sam.”
“I know.” He was grinning now, looking at the photo like it was the best thing he’d ever seen. “He’s perfect and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“You’re going to be a great dog dad.”
“You think?”
“I know.” I smiled at him. “Send me more photos later. I want to see Benson destroy your apartment.”
“He’s probably destroying it right now.” But Sam looked happy about it, already typing a response to Tyler.
He set his phone down and refocused on me. “Okay. Back to you. You checked Terrace Guy out, right? The company he works for? Made sure he’s not secretly a serial killer?”
“I’m notthatparanoid.”
“You absolutely are. Did you check or not?”
I’d checked. That night after we’d hung up, I’d googled Hudson River Development and found exactly what he’d said—small firm, nothing remarkable, no red flags. A handful of residential projects in Brooklyn and Queens, all completed without major controversy.
“I checked,” I admitted. “Everything looks fine. He’s just a guy who works in real estate and apparently has some stress at work.”
“The stress that made him call you drunk at nine PM on a Wednesday?”
“People have bad days, Sam.”
“Bad days, sure. But calling someone you barely know while drunk suggests either he’s very comfortable with you or very bad at boundaries.” Sam pointed his fork at me. “Which is it?”
I thought about how Archie had sounded on the phone. Vulnerable but not sloppy. Honest in a way that felt like he was trusting me with something fragile.
“Comfortable, I think,” I said. “Or maybe just lonely, and I was the person he wanted to talk to.”
“That’s actually kind of sweet.” Sam’s expression softened slightly. “Okay. I’ll allow it. But if he shows up tonight and he’s weird, you text me immediately.”
“Define weird.”
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
We worked on the presentation for an hour, debating citation formats and arguing about whether our professor would accept creative liberties with case law interpretation. Sam was better at the theoretical stuff, and I was better at practical application, so we balanced each other out.
My phone buzzed just as Sam was launching into a passionate defense of why our conclusion was actually brilliant and Professor Diane would love it.
I glanced at the screen.
Archie
Still good for tonight? I can pick you up around 6 if that works.
My pulse kicked up and I found myself reading the text twice. Sam noticed my spike in mood immediately. “Is that him?”
I nodded, already typing back.
Gianna
