“Damn right.” Mark threw cash on the table for tip. “Come on. Let’s go look at the space. You need to see what you just agreed to.”
“Why do I suddenly have a terrible feeling aboutthis?”
“That’s how you know it’s going to be good.”
We walked out into the Tampa afternoon, and for the first time in years, I felt like I was walking toward something instead of away.
Chapter 3
Finn
Iwas pacing a hole in my apartment’s cheap carpet, back and forth across the living room, phone in hand, my conscience in a hot war with spite. It was Sunday night at 9 p.m. I was supposed to be relaxing on my day off from Riley’s. Instead, I was having a full-blown panic attack about the proper etiquette for quitting a job I well and truly hated.
My next shift was scheduled to start in twenty hours.
Monday, five to close.
It would be another eight hours of smiling at people who treated me like furniture, while making drinks from pre-made mixes and watching Brad take credit for work I did.
Except I wasn’t going to be there.
I was going to quit.
Seriously, I was going to do this.
The only question was: How?
“You are spiraling, dear heart,” Priya called from the kitchen. “I can hear you wearing out the floor. Its tears are a lament to my soul.”
Priya Kapoor was my roommate and, on more days than I could count, my unofficial therapist. We’d met three years ago when I’d been brought into Tampa General’s ER after breaking up a bar fight. It wasn’t my fight; I’d just been stupid enough to step in the middle of it. Priya had been the first-year resident who’d stitched up my split lip while simultaneously diagnosing the drunk guy next to me with appendicitis and explaining to an intern why their treatment plan was completely backward.
She was the smartest person I’d ever known, earning her degree from Johns Hopkins before getting accepted into every medical school she’d applied to—and a few she hadn’t who claimed they “simply had to have her.” Who got recruited into med school? Seriously?
The night of the post-brawl patch-up, we bonded. I still couldn’t explain how it happened. One minute she was all Doctor Serious Face, the next we were giggling like catholic schoolgirls smoking pot behind the bleachers.
Two days later, she called and told me she needed a roommate. Her timing was beyond perfect. My lease was ending and every apartment I’d looked atwanted twice my previous rent. I was about to be homeless. I moved in that week, and we’d been living together ever since.
“I’m not spiraling.”
“You are pacing, sweet pea. You only pace when you are spiraling.” She emerged with a bag of chips, dropped onto the couch, and patted the cushion next to her. “Tell Auntie Priya what is wrong.”
I flopped down, blew out a giant sigh, and let my head fall back so far I was staring at the ceiling fan as I spoke. “I need to quit my job.”
“Okay.” She crunched a chip, unbothered. “So quit.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It literally is. You open your mouth, words come out, those words are ‘I quit.’ See? It is simple.” She paused, studying me. “Wait. Before you quit, do you have something else lined up? Please tell me you are not quitting without a plan. You are a smart boy, but you are also a redhead.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I huffed.
“Everyone knows gingers are impulsive.”
“Are not!”
“Do not make me list the ways you are, dear heart.”
God, I hated when she called me that. Hernicknames were endearing—all except for that one. It was the Indian equivalent of my mom using my middle name or a Southerner saying, “Bless your heart.”
