“Lost me.” Neesa leaned back in her captain’s chair.
Rylee looped her finger in the air. “I’ll circle back.”
“Thank you.”
“I burst out of the building like my hair was on fire.”
“You’d stop, drop, and roll.”
“Seriously, Neesa?”
“Sorry.” She pointed at Rylee, “Continue.”
“Okay, so I burst out the front door like … like something—”
“Angry,” Neesa offered. “I get it. I don’t need a simile.”
“Thank you. I’m out on the street, and I see a cab just sitting there. I make eye contact with the driver. He knows I’ve claimed the cab. I reached for the door handle, and the door was pulled open for me by this guy.”
“A helpful guy, hanging out on the sidewalk, opening cab doors?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight. As I replayed it all in my mind, I realized he was getting into the cab when I burst onto the scene.”
“Good use of burst that time,” Neesa said. “And you stole his cab.”
“Seems so.”
Rylee thought back. She was so in her head that she was sort of moving forward using muscle memory. Then she was in the cab. She had flowers in her lap. She had the guy's laughing eyes and his nice smile in her awareness. Then the taxi was moving, and the cabbie asked where to go. Rylee had nothing. So she thrust Rose’s blue sticky note at the guy. He looked down at the name of the medical building. “I know that one.” And off they went, weaving through lunchtime traffic.
Rylee felt like she’d been rolled by a massive wave.
And when she came up sputtering, she was sitting there, clutching the bouquet, her nose buried amongst the petals, feeling them smooth out her prickly mood.
“But he was a gentleman,” Neesa was asking, bringing Rylee back to the conversation, “or do you think he saw your face in full bull-mode and you frightened the poor guy?”
“Half bull-mode by that point. But one has to assume that the look on my face made him wary of fighting me over the cab.Just to be clear, I wouldn’t have fought over it. I would have apologized.”
“Of course. The flowers?”
“He handed me the bouquet and shut the door without saying a word.”
“You’re kidding.” Neesa blinked. “That’s got to be a hundred-dollar bouquet.”
“Not kidding, and I know, right?” Rylee turned her focus toward the vase. “I wonder why he was hanging out with a spare bouquet.” She sighed loudly. “I’ll never know.”
“Cute?”
“I think so. I—it was strange, and I got flashes of information.” Rylee held her hand over her head. “He was built like a basketball player. He was wearing a suit, and it fit him well. I remember short blond-ish hair, lawyer kind of feel, maybe? He was blushing pretty hard, though, and he had an easy smile that seemed like a natural part of his face.”
“Huh. So my takeaway is that your guardian angel thought you needed some flowers and provided tall-guy.”
“My thoughts exactly. So,” Rylee planted her feet on the chair to hug her knees, and since she was wearing the sweater dress, Rylee angled so she wasn’t flashing her friend. “And that’s the story of why I’m late to our meeting about attrition.”
“It can wait,” Neesa said. “And so, where were you all this time? Your appointment was hours ago.”
Rylee did a quick recap of what had happened after the doctor left the exam room. “I went to the place on Rose’s sticky note and sat my happy butt in one of their chairs and waited until the nurse friend got back from lunch and then dealt with her patients, and she finally had a moment for me to hand her the note from my nurse and to get an appointment.”
“When?”
