Page 99 of Cherry Picking

“And tomorrow is—”

“Currently happening. Tomorrow is today.” I set the phone on the stainless steel. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

I turn back to the shelf because my hands are shaking, and I need them to be useful. I have a list from my father in my pocket—seven tasks, all of which I should’ve cleared last week. Two days in Charlotte cost this funeral home a removal and the entire supply rotation.

I’m trying to focus on the boxes, but the frustration leaks out until it finally spills over.

“He never mentioned a single thing about being a free agent,” I blurt, the words catching in my throat. “Not once. I spent an entire weekend over there. I had dinner with his teammates. I sat in an arena next to his captain’s wife while she explained what a shift chart was.”

“And?”

“And he might be leaving all of them anyway. I gave up two days of work to go stand around in his city, and by summer, he could be gone from every bit of it.”

“Or a tabloid that specializes in paranormal fast food made it up.”

“Why are we suddenly doubting the existence of the supernatural”

“Can I give you a professional opinion?” he asks.

“No.”

“I think you’re not actually mad about the article. I think you’re mad because you found out he was twenty minutes away from a push notification instead of a person.”

He’s right. Briggs can come to Vegas whenever he wants—his father lives here, his brother is here, he doesn’t owe me a travel itinerary. But he came home to face the two most painful things in his past, and he did it alone, on purpose, while I was twenty-five minutes away, waiting for a text.

“I just—” I spin on my heel, hands fisted in my hair. “I told him he wouldn’t get a third chance, and I’m going to be genuinely furious if he makes me have to prove it.”

Tomás snorts. “I wouldn’t bet the business on that.”

I glance at the wall clock. I’m scheduled at the Maxwell residence at 4:00 p.m.

“I still have to check in on Murphy in a couple hours,” I mutter.

Tomás winces, sliding the clipboard onto the counter. “Sorry, Evie. What a fucking disaster.”

I spend the next forty minutes drowning in paperwork, my brain doing a slow loop around a man with a mustache and a neck tattoo. When my phone finally buzzes in my pocket, my heart does a ridiculous, unearned lap around my ribs.

I’m already reaching for it, primed for a text from Briggs, but it’s not him.

Murphy

No need for you today, kid. Got a visitor.

A visitor. Of course.

I spend the final hour of my shift working through the supply restock, checking off three of the seven items on my father’s list before I finally give up and walk out the side door. The desert glare is already working on my patience.

I sit in my car with the engine off and my knee going. Murphy’s house is twenty minutes north. I could be in that living room before either of them figured out what to say to each other. I let myself picture the scene for a second.

But that house has been waiting all week for those two men to sit down across from each other, and I’m not going to be the thing that interrupts it. Murphy deserves the conversation without an audience.

I’m also not driving over there to ask a grown man why he hasn’t bothered to use my number. If Briggs wants to see me, he knows the address.

I start the car and aim for Hazel’s place instead, stopping at Lee’s Discount Liquor on the way. She opens the door in a towel with a toothbrush in her mouth, staring down at the handle of Jameson like it’s a gift from the heavens.

“It’s three forty,” she says. “How’d you know I’d be home already?”

“Checked your location,” I reply. “And you’re lucky because I have an opening in my schedule.”