but he was seriously cute, and my hair was not going to be holding these waves for much longer.
“No, I’m actually doing this for purely mercenary reasons. Hoping if I wait them out a little longer, they’ll up their offer. College isn’t going to pay for itself.”
I nodded, but my smile froze. For me and for Stevie, college was going to pay for itself, in that I’d always known I had a college fund waiting for me, and that I could go wherever I wanted (the caveat about no conservatories was new). Loans and grants and how people actually paid for college was not something I’d ever had to concern myself with.
Hearing this guy say it, so matter-of-factly, was making me feel ashamed of myself—and at the way I’d yelled at my parents about college just a few hours earlier.
“Sounds like a plan,” Stevie said, shaking me out of these thoughts. “And—what’s your name? I could save this as ‘I Cruise,’ but…”
“Let’s not do that,” he said, giving us a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’m Cary.”
“Like Grant?” I asked.
“Or Fukunaga,” he replied. “But I’m Cary Tasso.”
“I’m Kat,” I said with a smile. “And that’s Stevie.”
“Nice to meet you both,” he said as Stevie pressed a button on her phone. A second later his phone rang, a jazzy, upbeat guitar sound, and he looked down at it. “I assume you’re the 203 area code?”
Stevie nodded. “We’re in from Connecticut for the night.”
“Number saved,” he said, typing in his phone. “So I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.” He started to put his phone in his pocket just as it rang again. I stared at it, hope flaring in my chest that it was his uncle, saying he was just around the corner and would be there any second, the answer to all our problems.
“Is that him?” I asked, crossing the fingers on one hand.
Cary looked at the screen, then shook his head, pressing the button to silence the phone. “Paradise Cruises,” he said. “They’ve started calling from creative area codes recently, trying to get me to answer. That one was Alaska.”
Brad must have decided he’d had enough of all this standing around and talking without getting any closer to a walk, and he lunged in the direction of the door. “I think he’s getting antsy,” I said, as though I’d had a lot of experience with Brad’s various moods. “So we can leave him with you, right? Since you guys already get along so well?”
“Normally I would totally take him,” he said, leaning down to stroke Brad’s fluff. “But I actually have to get ready for work—I won’t be back until late. And I don’t want to leave him in a strange apartment alone. But I’ve left a message with my uncle that there’s a lockout happening here, and I’ll leave him a note too.…” He held out the leash to us, and Stevie and I exchanged a look.
I knew she wasn’t going to reach for it, so I finally did, wondering as I did so what we were supposed to do now. How were we going to see the play—or then, after, go to a restaurant—if we had a dog with us?
“Okay,” I finally said, because what else was I supposed to say? “I guess we’ll just look after him until we can get him back in the apartment.” I really wasn’t sure what other choice we had—it wasn’t like we could just tie the dog to the doorknob of 5B and leave him there.
“Great. I’ll head out with you. Just give me a sec,” Cary said, and he disappeared back into the basement unit.
“Head out?” Stevie echoed, frowning. “Does he think we’re going to leave?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want us to hang around the lobby.”
“Should we risk leaving? What if his uncle comes back in the next few minutes?”
“But what if he doesn’t?”
“Also a good point.”
We stood there in silence for a minute, during which I started to feel distinctly panicky as all our options to solve this problem seemed to be disappearing. “Can you try Mallory again?”
“Yeah,” Stevie said, putting the phone on speaker. It went right to voice mail, without even ringing—which seemed to me to mean that Mallory’s phone had either died or was out of range, neither of which were helpful for us right now.
“Who else can we call?” I asked, closing my eyes and trying to think. “Ooh, maybe a locksmith?”