“I’ll think about it,” I mumbled.

“Please, I’m beggin’ you, do that,” he said, and I blinked up at him at the earnest tone of his voice. “And anytime, day, night, I’m at work, whatever, if you want me with you when you make the right decision, I’m there.”

Well…

Wow.

“Thanks, Rob,” I whispered.

“You take too much on, Evie,” he whispered back. “I lose sleep over you.”

He did?

Oh God.

I was gonna cry.

I had no idea.

“I’ll…think” was all I could say.

He nodded.

He then turned and started to round my car but stopped at my front bumper.

“I love her,” he said.

I didn’t move, even to speak.

“I know it isn’t healthy, not for either of us, the way we treat each other, but I can’t walk away, can’t cut her loose, even though the good we had turned bad, because I love her,” he declared.

“I can’t really talk to you about this right now,” I told him.

Or ever.

“I know. I just want you not to have to think about one more thing. It’s fucked up, but it’s what we got, it’s the way we are, we both choose to stay, and it’s not yours to take on. You with me?”

That was as bizarre as it was sweet.

I nodded.

“Do right, Evie,” he bid.

He had conflicting ideas as to what Mick thought was right.

But between Rob and Mag, that was two votes for the cops.

Rob jogged to the sidewalk and stood there in his pajamas while I got in my car and drove away.

And there it was.

My limited option exhausted.

I wouldn’t go to my sister because I didn’t want her embroiled in this.

And I couldn’t go to my dad because there was no way he was up this early, and I could knock on his door until my knuckles were bloody and he wouldn’t get up.

What he probably would do when he found out was be furious at Mick but not be much help otherwise.

I didn’t even know what I expected from Mom and Rob.

Maybe just not being alone in this.

I sorta had Rob.

But Mom was…

Mom.

I was halfway home when I got a call.

It was Charlie, my other boss.

I stripped four nights a week, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Twelve additional hours a week (that sometimes stretched to more like twenty, if Charlie was in a bind), I filled in on-call, site-support work for Charlie at his company, Computer Raiders, a tech support business.

I’d taken the job because I was a tech kind of girl, it paid okay and it could be fill-in stuff for the time I didn’t actually have on my hands to earn extra money, which anyone could use, but I always needed.

Since I had not done what I normally did over coffee of a morning—assess my all-important day planner—what I’d forgotten was that I was on call that day for the Raiders, from seven to one thirty, with a half hour lunch break.

“Damn,” I muttered, looked at the clock on my dash, saw I was officially open for business, grabbed my phone and took Charlie’s call. “Hey, Charlie.”

“Hiya, Evan. Texting you an address and emailing the sitch. Printer company, their system is down. Sounds like a virus.”

Charlie liked us to wear black jeans and his black Computer Raiders golf shirt when were on duty.

I was thinking I forgot deodorant.

“I’ll get on it, ASAP,” I semi-lied to him, with “ASAP” being once I went home, changed, put on deodorant, and I didn’t want to push it, but I had to, so also after I swung by a drive-through to get coffee.

“Thanks, Evan. Later.”

I bid adieu, made the trek home in full fret about whether to stash the Trader Joe’s bag in my apartment while I was out on a call or keep it with me, decided to keep it with me, but brought it in when I quickly changed clothes and took it back out when I left.

If any of my neighbors saw me carrying that bag back and forth, they’d probably wonder what was going on with me.

I couldn’t think of that.

I had coffee to procure, a virus to clear and a system to bring back up that hopefully didn’t have too much damage done to it by whatever wunderkind out there created a virus rather than putting their mind to something positive, life affirming and world enhancing.

I was in the midst of doing this, with a hovering printer-company manager staring anxiously over my shoulder, protesting too much that no one was allowed to get outside emails on company computers, which hinted that he was likely the culprit who opened a file with a virus, when the first call came in from my dad.

I got three more after that while still working.

I had to wait until lunch, which I ate at Mad Greens in an effort to deflect the pizza debauchery I’d engaged in the night before (which reminded me of Mag, which reminded me of the ugly things I said to Mag, which made me fight crying into my salad) to call my dad.

“Evie, sunshine of my life,” he said in greeting.

Dirk Gardiner, my father, reminded me of that Bob Seger song “Beautiful Loser.”

He was lovable. Affable. Gracious. He was “yes, ma’am,” if a woman was six or sixty, and “no, sir,” if a man was the same. And it was charming.

He’d wanted to hit it big in the music industry but sustained the one-two punch of not really having the talent and definitely not having the drive.

If he went somewhere, he wanted to stay at the Four Seasons, and since he could by no means afford that, he just didn’t go at all.

He’d wanted a wife and family, the love and laughter, but no part in taking care of it.

And somehow, with me staying in contact, and my sister being Daddy’s Little Girl, he got a lot of the former without much of a hint of the latter.

Though he wanted more, always wanted more.

He wanted it all.

And it was somehow the world’s fault he didn’t have it.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, and shoved a huge forkful of salad in my mouth, because Charlie had another job for me, and he needed me to get it done before I was off at one thirty.

And I needed to get it done, because I’d grabbed my day planner when I was home changing, and I had Gert that afternoon too.

“Your mom called,” he shared.

Great.

I swallowed my salad and began, “Listen, Dad—”

“Bring it here, I’ll unload it.”

I stared at my greens.

“No problems,” he continued.

“Are you…being serious?” I asked slowly to confirm.

“Sure. I got you covered, kid,” he replied nonchalantly. “Give you a split, eighty-twenty. Me bein’ the eighty, ’cause I’ll be shifting it.”

For once in this situation, I made a quick decision.

“Dad, that’s not gonna happen.”

“Serve him right. Stick in his craw, his old man did what he couldn’t do.”

So Dad assumed these were Mick’s drugs, he was dealing, and this was not only Dad finding a way to profit off this current situation, which was unsurprising, it was a way to best Mick, which also wasn’t surprising.

Dad’s version of a win-win.

What wasn’t, I noted, in any of that, was any thought to me.