The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (famous ebook reader txt) 📕

“What?”

“Totally got that woman to back down on the health care stipulation. I should have the Wilson divorce done in a week or two, tops.”

“That’s great. You didn’t even need your lucky tie,” Dylan mumbled, stepping carefully out of her dress.

“Still haven’t found that. Are you sure you don’t know where it is?”

She immediately regretted mentioning it. Dylan loved a good luck charm as much as the next girl, but Nicolas had been going on about the thing for weeks. The guy had a place for every one of his possessions and was convinced he’d never lose an expensive Thom Browne tie. Dylan was pretty sure it was still somewhere in the gym’s locker room, despite how many times he tried to convince her otherwise. She opened her mouth to say something rude about his tie obsession, but Milo chose that exact moment to howl at nothing, cutting her off completely. That’s probably for the best, she thought. When had she ever cared if Nicolas obsessed over something as trivial as a tie? She usually just tuned that side of him out.

“What’s that? Are you outside?” Nicolas shouted into the phone as if she were standing next to a fire truck and a jackhammer.

Holding the phone away from her ear, Dylan called out, “Sorry. It’s our dog—Milo, knock it off.” Milo stopped and lay down on the floor with a self-satisfied thud, the metal of his collar ringing as it hit the wood. “Good boy—anyway, no. I have no idea where your tie is,” Dylan said, shrugging her pajama top over her head. Thinking back to what Neale had said about him, she chimed in before Nicolas could bring up the case again.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking—I’m not sure how long I’ll be assigned to Technocore.” Or anywhere, she thought. “So, we should take advantage of the free companion ticket Kaplan offers. You could come up here, meet my folks. Show my sister you’re not made up.” Dylan laughed as she pulled the drawstring on her pajama pants. “Maybe next weekend? Since the divorce is wrapping up, you could take Friday and Monday off and make it a long weekend.”

“I don’t know, Dyl. We hadn’t really planned for me to take a vacation right now.”

“True. But we hadn’t planned on me being assigned to Seattle either. You could just use the time you set aside for a trip to Paris.”

“But that’s in August. You’ll be back by then.”

“I know. But you do have the vacation time. And who doesn’t love a spontaneous weekend away?” Dylan joked, trying to ease some of the tension that had crept in over the line. These long placements were always tough on their relationship. She had to remember that.

“You don’t,” Nicolas laughed. “Our last weekend away was on our calendars six months in advance.”

“Thought we could try something new. Spice it up,” Dylan said, a hint of sarcasm poking through her otherwise jovial tone.

“That’s kind of a lot of time away from the office right now.”

Dylan tried not to be offended. Early in their living together, she’d made the mistake of having a phone call with her mother on speakerphone so she could fold their laundry, and Nicolas had caught an all-too-real glimpse of her parents’ life, complete with petty struggles between them and a gallery. To say Nicolas had left the call disinterested in her parents and concerned about their self-employment would be downplaying his reaction. The following week, he’d thoughtfully scheduled a meeting for her with his financial planner to explain the pitfalls of feast-or-famine income and the impact it could have on her retirement savings. Nicolas’s heart was in the right place, even if the meeting had been entirely unnecessary. Giving her head a shake to clear the memory, she tried again. “It’s no more than the time you took off for the comp tickets to New York.”

“Yeah, but things are pretty busy around here.”

“We’ve been together for years, and you still haven’t met my family. The last two times they came to Texas, you were out of town. I figured now would be a perfect opportunity.” She shrugged, put the phone on speaker, and picked up her scarf to wrap her hair. Hearing Nicolas’s exasperation, she tried a softer tone. “It doesn’t have to be a long weekend. You could always fly up late Friday and leave Sunday. Whatever works for you.”

“I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Just let me know so I can send the details over to the office.”

“All right, babe. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow. Talk to you later?”

“Of course,” Dylan said, trying to match his casual manner.

“Night.”

“Love you.”

Nicolas hung up the phone before Dylan realized she’d never finished telling him about her day.

“We were tired anyway, weren’t we, Milo?” After tying off her head wrap, she sank into bed and pulled her comforter around her.

Dylan woke up to Milo crushing her legs and a steely determination to make the Technocore assignment work. As far as she was concerned, things could only go up from yesterday.

“It’s not like Tim could announce my assing the company twice,” she said, stealing bites of her mother’s soggy peanut butter toast.

Bernice quirked an eyebrow. “At least you’ll be getting a lot of ass.”

“Yuck, Mom.” Dylan rolled her eyes as her mother snickered. A small corner of her brain wanted to laugh along, and she quickly squashed that instinct, annoyed at herself for even thinking it was funny. If Dylan laughed, her mother would make more inappropriate jokes, and the next time they’d be in public. Best to nip that instinct in the bud before it got them kicked out of a Fred Meyer or something.

She snagged the rest of the toast and hopped into the car, where she called items to Siri and tried to navigate the growing traffic snarl that was Broadway. She waved as a driver let her merge into a crowded lane, and her optimism picked up when