Warm arms wrapped around me, pulling me in as I cried.
“Why don’t you rest for a little bit?” Ryan whispered into my hair.
I didn’t have the energy to argue.
“Hey, cupcake,”Ryan said, looking up from his laptop when I wandered into the kitchen.
I rubbed my eyes, warding the sleep away. “What time is it?”
“Three in the afternoon.”
I yawned. “Great. I’m not going to sleep tonight.”
Ryan chuckled and closed his laptop. “You’ll sleep.”
“Did you rest?”
He shook his head. “I had client calls to catch up on.”
“Right.” Because he had dropped everything to drive across the country with me. “What do you do on your client calls?”
He lazily thumbed through a small leather-bound journal. “Problem-solve.”
“Like . . .”
“Like, I’m a paid best friend. A professional listener. A confidante. A sounding board. I’m not a therapist or a psychologist. I don’t claim to be. People need a third party to talk through their problems who isn’t going to judge them. Ihave a few women who are clients, but most of the people who ask for help are men. With me, they know they’re not going to get some thirty-thousand-foot view of their relationship. They’re going to get practical advice mixed with philosophical shit.”
“Philosophical shit. How professional-sounding."
He cracked a smile. “Now you’re getting it.”
“So what happens when you fix a relationship? Isn’t that bad for business?” I asked.
Ryan pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “There are always going to be people who need help in relationships. My goal isn’t to keep them coming back. My goal is to give them the tools to work through their issues, whether it’s communication or finances, or more practical things like sharing a domestic burden and teaching them about their partner’s mental load. Word-of-mouth recommendations are better for business than keeping the same client trapped in a hamster wheel for years.”
I blinked. “You’re a robot, aren’t you? A machine programmed to say all the right things?”
He chuckled. “Sadly, no.”
“Are you secretly a giant blue alien and you’re hiding in this body?” I circled my finger toward his chest.
Ryan’s brows furrowed. “What?”
“Never mind.”
“You seem to be well rested,” he said as he stacked his things on top of each other, then slid them back into his backpack. “Good nap?”
I nodded as I stretched. “I feel almost human.” Before I could say anything else, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. “Sorry. It’s my mom,” I mumbled before answering. “Hello?”
“Are you in town?” Mom shouted over the din of the hair salon. “Bev just came by and said you’re here with a boyfriend?I called Amber to see if she knew something becauseyouhave aboyfriend?” Her laugh of disbelief was insulting.
I glanced at Ryan. “It’s complicated. But yeah. A—uh—friend made the drive with me, so I didn’t have to be alone.”
“You love traveling alone. What’s different this time?” she yammered on as she smacked her gum.
I could almost smell the spearmint through the phone.
“I came for the funeral.”
