I left the kitchen without saying goodbye.
When I got to Sarah’s room, I had to shout over the music. A moment later she pulled the door open and went back to her bed without saying hello.
I came in and looked around. “This is new,” I said. She had red LED string lights along the walls. The whole bedroom was bathed in red. It was sort of depressing. “I got you McDonald’s.”
“Thanks,” she muttered without looking up from her phone.
I put her food on the desk. “So what have you been up to?”
No answer.
“Are you watching any cool shows?”
She glared up at me, annoyed.
“Oookay,” I said. “Well. I’ll see you later then.”
“Bye,” she said, irritated.
I left.
This was another thing that worried me. Alex was easy. Chelsea was too, in her own way. But Sarah? I didn’t know what her deal was recently. She was moody and pissed off, and I would be the one who had to figure it out.
I felt preemptively exhausted.
The kids probably needed therapy. I would have to find someone, at least for the older two who knew what was going on. One more thing to add to the long-ass list of stuff I would now be responsible for.
A few hours later I’d gone for a run and come back to my apartment and put some Buffalo chicken into the slow cooker for tomorrow. I looked up some options for family counseling and sent a few emails, which at the very least made me feel like I was heading in the right direction. I was thinking of dropping in on Brad or Benny or something, just to stay busy, but something better came up. Emma texted me “WYD.”
Right now Emma was my favorite distraction. Honestly, she was the only thing going on that didn’t suck.
I didn’t text her back. I called.
“Hey,” she said, picking up.
“Hey.”
I heard the long sound of a zipper closing on luggage.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Packing for Hawaii?”
“No. Not yet. I’m just throwing something in there. I don’t pack until the morning I leave.”
“Really?” I sat in front of my monitor. “I need like a whole day to pack.”
“That’s because you’re deciding what to bring. I know what to bring. I just bring everything I came with.”
I smiled, pulling up the spreadsheet I’d started working on last night. “So do you have a second?” I asked.
“Yes, or I wouldn’t have answered.”
“I know we’re not doing this thing until you’re back on the mainland somewhere, but I was thinking we should probably work out the baseline. You know, so we’re ready when we meet.”
“A baseline?” she said. “For what?”
“For the dating thing. So we do it right. This has to be a controlled experiment. We need to replicate the pattern that leads to the outcome we keep getting. How long the dates need to be, what we need to do on the dates, where we need to go. We have to make sure we hit all the common denominators.”
“Oh,” she said. “Good idea. You’re so organized.”
“I need to be in my line of work. I started a spreadsheet. I can send it to you when I’m done.”
“Okay.”
“All right, so we have to do a minimum of four dates,” I said, “over the course of one month. Does the length of time matter for each date?”
“I think it has to be at least two hours.”
“Maybe we should shoot for three hours, just to be safe?”
“Okay. Three hours works.”
“Or longer. The dates could definitely be longer. You know, if that feels organic of course.”
“Sure.”
I smiled. “Is there anything that we absolutely have to do?” I asked. “Something that’s been the same for all the qualifying dates? Like they’ve all been dinner dates or something?”
“They’ve all been different.”
