The hotel’s top floor has a five-star restaurant, with a gorgeous outdoor seating area. The roof of the north tower has an outdoor patio as well that gets rented out for weddings, parties, and other events. And luckily for me, it’s usually empty on a Monday night.
Usually you need a special key card to access the rooftop patio, but when I first started working at Forester+Blake, one of the older employees showed me how to access the roof from the stairwell via a door with a sticky deadbolt. Now, when I’m feeling like this—too keyed up to go home and too on edge to work—I come up to the rooftop to just be outside for a while.
Tonight, I can’t make myself go home to eat my sandwich alone in front of the TV. After the stress of presenting to the team from Butler and the intensity of the weekend, that just seems pathetic. So instead, I bring my sandwich and iced tea up to the rooftop.
Only the last gray streaks of dusk linger in the west as I make my way across the rooftop to the northeast corner and the best view of the Capitol. There’s a long-abandoned wrought-iron table and chairs up here that are the only evidence anyone else comes up here to enjoy the view.
I’ve just settled in with my sandwich when my phone rings. I stare at it for a second in shock, because no one but Thea ever calls me and I know she’s in her Barcelona zoom right now.
It’s not Thea calling. It’s Keegan.
I have a moment of panic before answering. Do I try to play it like everything is normal or do I come clean about how awkward I’ve been feeling?
I come clean.
“Hey, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been feeling weird about things. But I just want things to be normal between us again. You know?”
The words spill out of me in a rapid jumble.
One which is followed by ... crickets.
No. Not exactly crickets.
I can hear the noise from the bar in the background and him telling someone where the band can park. Did he butt dial me?
Then I hear a door shut and the ambient noise fades like he just shut himself in his office. “Sorry about that. Never fails. The second I pick up my phone, twenty people need something from me.”
I laugh, because yeah, that sounds about right. It’s been a long time since I was at Hung Out to Dry on a Friday evening, but even this early everyone needs his attention. Mostly I’m just relieved he didn’t hear me being a weirdo.
“No worries. W-what’s up?”
Though, now that I’ve said no worries, I am a little worried. Like I said, he never calls me.
“I just wanted to call and check on you.” I can hear his concern through the line. “Your text seemed ... Off.”
By off, I assume he means overly enthusiastic.
Unless he’s talking about the texts last night, when I was just straight up weird.
“Are you okay?” he asks, when I don’t respond, his words coming out in a bit of a rush. “You said it went well today, but I know how important it was to you. And if you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here. Or there. If you need me, I can come to you.” Through the phone I hear someone pounding on the office door and he yells, “Jesus Christ, I will be done in a minute. Whatever it is can wait.”
I can picture it all so clearly, it makes me laugh. Somehow, even though we’re miles apart, it feels like we’re back in college. When we first became friends, during the time between the towel incident and moving from the co-op to the apartment, Keegan would call me every night to make sure I’d made it back to my room okay. Yes, that’s how sketchy the co-op was. Whether I was coming home late from studying or walking down the wall from his room to mine, he wanted me to call him as soon as I locked the door.
Most nights, the last thing I did before falling asleep was talk to him on the phone. Even though nearly a decade has passed, this reminds me of that. And somehow it’s comforting.
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Tell me how it went.”
“It went really well. They loved the presentation. We got the account.”
“That is amazing! Congratulations! When can I see it?”
“W-what?” My voice comes out high-pitched with panic.
Why would he want to see my pitch? And why this pitch in particular? The pitch that’s based on a fantasy about him?
“I want to see what you came up with,” he says. His own tone is not at all high pitched or weird.
