Page 2 of Wrong Number, Right Fox (Dial M For Mates #6)
JOSS
“And one Americano.” I set Harold’s coffee in front of him and flopped in the armchair across from him.
Harold and I had been co-workers since we got the idea to do this consulting firm.
We’d been college roommates freshman year and somehow managed to not hate each other, sticking together through all four years and then again for two more, for our MBAs.
We worked well together. I was more the creative one.
He was more the “how to keep track of everything” one.
Together, we’d built up quite a strong company.
Each year, we grew and grew. At first it was just the two of us and a shoestring budget.
And now? Now we had a staff of eight who were paid well and spoiled with benefits, were looking to add a few more to our list, and stopped living paycheck to paycheck ages ago.
Things had changed a lot since we began.
We’d started in an on-campus apartment and were now in our own office space.
We didn’t even take a salary for three years, living off our second jobs.
But one thing we always did was start our office days with a cup of coffee.
In the early days it was a crappy cup made in a drip maker I found at a yard sale.
Now it was the good stuff from the local coffee shop next door.
But no matter how good or bad the beverage was, it was our tradition and was one thing I hoped would never change.
Today was my turn to bring it, and I was a little bored and decided to mess with Harold. If I didn’t, he might get bored too. It was like I was doing him a favor.
“You know I don’t like Americanos.” He rolled his eyes. “Is this yours?”
“No. It’s yours... a caramel latte. I’m surprised you can’t smell all that sugary syrup from here.” He liked his coffee less coffee and more milk and syrup.
He smiled and picked it up, leaning back in his chair. “I thought it was yours.” He winked. Harold was messing with me right back. Of course he was.
“Like I would actually give you Americano.” He’d just make me go back, or worse, get me one of those sugar bombs when it was his turn. “Why would you even think I would?”
“Because you’re always on me about my sugar.”
“Once, once in college, I told you you probably shouldn’t eat the entire bag of taffy because that much sugar wasn’t good for you.
Once.” He was never going to let me forget that.
It hadn’t even been a real attempt to get him to change.
I was trying to angle for a piece of his candy. That backfired.
“I enjoyed every last bite of it, and I’ll probably do it again.”
He enjoyed every last bite of it because it was his prize sent to him by his sister.
I didn’t even know what for, but he won some bet, and he walked around proud as a peacock over it.
It was funny—to the outside world, everybody looked at Harold as the straight-laced, prim and proper one, but neither of us were. He just held up the facade better.
“What do we have going on this week?”
“I’m leaving on Wednesday to go to Houston. I’ve got a den there figuring out how to up their game.”
“A what?” I needed to pay attention better. He looked at me, confused. “You said you had a something that wanted to...”
“Oh, a small company…”
That wasn’t what he said, but then again, I’d only been half paying attention.
“They’re working on increasing their reach.”
“Oh. That’s promising.” And well within our wheelhouse.
He went on to talk about how they were a value-added agricultural business, and honestly, I lost track partway through.
I’ve been restless lately, beyond restless.
Here I had pretty much accomplished my dreams, but still I felt like there was more out there, more that I needed to know, more that I needed to be able to accomplish, which was ridiculous.
You set a goal, you achieved it, then you maybe found a new goal, or maybe, just maybe, you settled down and finally were happy. And maybe that was it. I wasn’t really happy. It wasn’t like I was depressed or anything like that. I was just going through the motions.
“Well, you can have fun in Texas. I’d rather stay out of the tin cans in the air.
” I’d never been a big fan of flying. So if he wanted to take the long-distance gigs, he could have at it.
“But don’t think you’re getting out of your coffee days just because you’re not there. I expect mine to be delivered daily.”
He barked out a laugh. “Yeah. Since when did you ever have coffee sent when you weren’t gonna be here?”
“Fair.” I took a long sip of my cafe au lait. Boring, I know, but it was my favorite. “It can be a new tradition.”
He ignored me and instead went through the rest of our agenda for the day, my mind still wandering.
“And don’t forget, we’re going to happy hour tonight,” I reminded him.
“I...” He let out a groan.
“It’s Julie’s birthday, and all she wants is to go to ten-cent wing night.” And goddess knew why they called them ten-cent wings, because they were now 50 cents each, despite the name.
It was Julie’s birthday, and she wasn’t going to be paying, so to her the discount didn’t play a part in it. She just loved the trivia that came with wing night and was really good at it. I was not.
Harold and I always tried to make sure the people that worked for us were happy, because that was how you got them to continue working for you.
No one wanted to go into an office and be underappreciated on a daily basis.
That was for sure. And besides, sharing part of our dreams with like-minded people always felt good, too.
“I know… it’s just so people-y there.” He scrunched his nose.
“Yeah, it is, but it’s also ten-cent wing night.”
“Fine, don’t let me forget,” he conceded.
And I didn’t let him forget. At ten to five, I marched back into his office and told to shut down the computer. It was wing night, and we were going to be there with smiles on… and a cake, because birthday.
Everyone from the office came, all ten of us crowding into the little dive bar. We drank pitchers of beer and margaritas, ate gobs of wings, and got more questions wrong on trivia than right—still coming out victorious by some miracle.
We talked about work too much and a little about home lives.
Mark just got a cat. Sally was thinking about buying a new sofa.
Frances was on the lookout for a new babysitter, not for her children, they were all grown, but for her parrot.
It was nice, normal, almost like family, without the whole toxic work vibes.
But once again, a feeling that something was missing, a feeling that there could be something more for me, settled in.
Maybe this was what a midlife crisis felt like. I wouldn’t exactly call myself midlife, or at least I hoped I wasn’t at midlife. There was so much left to experience, but I needed to snap out of whatever funk this was, because just going through the motions, was that really life at all?
I paid our tab and went back to my place, where I took a shower to wash the scent of stale beer and grease off of me before heading to bed. I was really exhausted and made the false assumption that I’d fall quickly to sleep.
Two hours of tossing and turning later, I was still awake, wondering if maybe I should take some time off from work to travel.
I could be like one of those vloggers and travel by van across the country.
It wasn’t my normal thing. I was a homebody, usually, but this feeling that something was missing and I needed to find it was taking root.
And it was hard to find something you’d lost or maybe never had when you didn’t know what it even was. Going from one random odd tourist destination to the next was as good of a plan as there was to locate it. It was better than what I was doing about it now, which was exactly nothing.
But first I needed to talk to Harold and see what he thought.
We’d been running this together for too long for me to leave him high and dry, especially when he was going to be out of town for a while.
And who knew. Maybe by the time he came back, I’d be all settled and living a life of sunshine and rainbows.
Stranger things had been known to happen.