Boomerang (38 page)

“I wasn’t seeing her again.”

“That’s what it looked like. You went on dates with her. You went to
Colorado
with her. You and I . . . we haven’t done
one thing
together that we actually chose.”

I realize it’s true. The first night, we happened to be at Duke’s together after meeting with Adam. The second time we kissed, in her mom’s studio, my being there was a coincidence. Working together happened by chance. Even this moment, right now, is a coincidence.

A prickling sensation spreads over my skin, and I feel like I don’t recognize myself. My internal compass is spinning. I’ve lost my north.

I’ve always gone after what I want, but I haven’t done that with her. I don’t think I’ve done that
for myself
either.

I’m fighting for this job and for my future. For money, so I can pay off my loans and go to law school, but something feels wrong, and I can’t see what it is. It’s like my life’s gone blurry and unfocused.

“Sorry to interrupt your poignant silence,” Paolo says, joining us, “but I just got a text from Mark. Adam’s on fire over at the blackjack tables. I guess he’s up twenty K already and he just sat down ten minutes ago. That’s a must-see situation. At least it is in my book. What about your books?”

“Sure. I’m in.” Mia looks at me, hope glowing in her eyes. We’re not finished with our conversation, and it’s not going to happen now, with Rhett, Sadie, and Pippa standing around us.

“I’m good,” I say. “Maybe I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“Okay,” Mia says, her eyes dimming. She leaves with Paolo, Sadie, and Pippa. I don’t watch her go, but I feel the rush of being with her fade.

Rhett takes the seat she just vacated. “You’re Opposite Man tonight, E.”

I smirk at him.

“It’s true,” he says, grinning. “You keep saying things that are the opposite of what you mean. ’Cause you didn’t want to gamble, and you’re not ‘good’ and I doubt you’re meeting up with them later either.”

“Opposite Man, huh?” I tip my drink back, sucking down the rest. “Well, in that case, I love the way you pry into my private life, Rhett. It doesn’t make me want to punch you so you’ll shut the hell up.”

He laughs, and then we order another drink, and I make my purpose tonight finding a comfortable numbness. Maybe if I do that well enough, I won’t pull up Mia’s picture when I get back to my room.

Because I don’t want to do that.

So says Opposite Man.

Chapter 49

Mia

Q: Bright lights, or quiet nights?

O
nly in Vegas does a hotel exhibit hall blaze with neon and feature carpeting patterned to look like someone fed a tiger into an industrial shredder. Soft techno ebbs and flows beneath a steady stream of conversation punctuated by bursts of shrieking laughter that make my entire body clench.

Of course, I’m on edge already, not just because I’m responsible for finally putting my part of the display together—with help from Paolo, thank God—but because I have to spend the entire day working side-by-side with Ethan, acting like I’m perfectly fine with the fact that we haven’t spoken since I cornered him at the bar yesterday. Everything’s still wrong. But I’m here now, and I’m determined to do the job Adam entrusted me to do.

All around us, people hustle elaborate displays into place, erecting massive vinyl banners, latching together platforms, hauling up shelves. And at every other booth, it seems, someone is having a full-on nervous breakdown.

Nearby, a man with a helmet of straw-gold hair and a shiny steel-gray suit paces back and forth with his cell phone glued to his ear and a face red enough to make me look around for EMTs. “I ordered the ten-foot chrome pyramids, and you sent me these fucking dinky shelves.” He stands back and holds his phone out to capture a pair of triangular bookcases that stand about as tall as my shoulders. “Seriously,” he says. “Are you seeing this shit?”

Just then, a massive ripping sound splits the air, and I look over to see two girls about my age, only tall, wearing dresses that look recently sprayed onto their bodies. Each holds half of a heart-covered banner, now torn neatly in two.

“Jesus Christ, Amy,” one of the women, a redhead, shrieks and throws down her side of the banner. “What did you do?”

“What did I do? I told you to stop tugging at it!”

“This place is cray-cray,” Paolo mumbles and unfolds a schematic of the cavernous space.

“What number’s our booth again?” I ask for about the sixtieth time.

“We are”—he consults the diagram—“in the primo spot, right between the bar and the bathrooms. Number thirty-three.”

Someone almost clips us with a giant wheeled backdrop of men in fatigues and a sign that says, “Love Is a Battlefield,” which feels like an iffy approach to me but hey, I’m not
their
marketing intern.

Finally, I spot our display, and even from here I can see it’s perfect. Shaped like two boomerangs back to back, it has an almost yin-yang effect, with Ethan’s curved wall and floor a deep, glossy black and mine a gleaming white. LCD monitors line a narrow shelf running the length of his side, leading to a tall screen with a console in front of it that I know will run the boomerang game he commissioned. A message scrolls over and over again on every screen:
In the dating game, play to win.

My side is softer, with café tables, comfy chairs, and a curved projection screen that runs almost the full length of my wall. I’ll run a loop of the video I edited together with all the footage I got of the staff at the Boomerang office, my friends and neighbors, Paolo and Beth acting out “dates” in front of the green screen, which Brian helped me convert to dinner at a Parisian café, a picnic in Central Park, and—just for the hell of it—a Moroccan feast, with gossamer tent flaps rippling in the background and a starry moonlit sky beyond.

On each silk-covered table rests a pair of iPads, where clients can access the Boomerang site, create profiles, even enter a drawing for a year’s free membership. Mostly, I want it to feel intimate and sexy here, with my film reminding them of what a big, lovely adventure dating can be.

As long as you’re not me.

“Ethan, you stud!” exclaims Paolo, and jogs the last few yards to the display to give Ethan a vigorous bro hug, which consists of half handshake, half chest bump.

My own footsteps slow, and Ethan looks up at me. I smile, and he smiles, but I don’t believe either of us.

Then he turns away and starts to confer with Rhett, who I now see is on his hands and knees on the floor, plugging cables into a chain of tidily arranged power strips.

Rhett sees me, gets to his feet, and dusts off his hands. “How’s it going, Mia? You ready to rock Adam’s world?”

My whole body goes cold, and I fire a look at Ethan. Did he tell Rhett about my text?

But Ethan gives me a subtle head shake, like he’s reading my mind, and I feel a weird bubble of hysteria rising in me. Is everything—every casual comment—going to remind me of him? If I never see him again after this weekend, do I still have to carry him with me everywhere I go? And for how long?

“Mia?”

“Sorry, yeah.” I say. “Just going to get the video connected and test run it a few times.” Then I just have to wait for a banner delivery with my slogan:
Life is short. Make it an adventure
. Catering will come Monday morning.

“Sounds good. Let me know if you need help.”

Apparently, Raylene agrees with Rhett. His face has fleshed out a bit in the last month or so. And he seems less coiled and intense. More teddy bear, less Skeletor.

It occurs to me how many couples have gotten together in the few months Ethan and I have been working together: Raylene and Rhett; Paolo and Mark, who used to work in accounting; Skyler and Brian. It’s like we’re some kind of a relationship version of Dorian Gray. Everyone around us hooks up, and we keep disintegrating.

Okay, Mia, focus.

I head around to the back of the display, where I’m going to connect my laptop to run the video.

“Hey, Paolo, do we have HDMI cables around here somewhere?”

Paolo comes around to my side of the booth, holding a set of cables in each hand.

“Is it the one with weird prongs that look like a smiley face?”

“Umm . . . No. I don’t know
what
that is.” I hold out my hand for both cables but don’t recognize either. “Crap. Not what I need.”

Music blares from Ethan’s side of the display, followed by a sharp whooshing sound.

“Oh, that’s
sick,
E,” says Rhett, and I can’t help myself. I have to see.

Over on Ethan’s turf, I find Rhett wearing a vinyl glove with glinting metal plates on the knuckles. A screen in front of him displays a grid with heart-shaped signposts measuring distance in ten-foot increments.

“I’m going for thirty this time,” Rhett says. He hefts an imaginary object in his gloved hand, then cocks his arm back and swings it at the screen. A red-and-blue boomerang, bearing the Boomerang logo, comes whipping in from the corner of the screen. It soars past the ten-foot marker, the twenty, and almost makes it to thirty before spinning in the air and coming back toward Rhett.

He bounces on his feet and lunges forward, hand closing on air. On the screen, an animated hand passes right through the boomerang, and it disappears from the screen. Red letters appear: “MISSED.”

“You grabbed for it too quickly,” says Ethan, and his tone carries the same amused patience it does when he coaches his kids. “Wait ’til it fills about a third of the screen and snap it up then.”

“Got it.” Rhett does it again, and after a couple of tries, he’s flinging the virtual boomerang at least forty feet and nabbing it back on each try.

“There you go,” says Ethan, and then he finally notices me standing there.

“It’s looking really good,” I tell him. “All of it.”

And it’s true. Everything looks polished and put together on this side. Appealing. Like him.

“Thanks.” He brushes his bangs off his forehead, and I feel a full-body longing to do it for him. Just for an excuse to touch him.

“Hey, do you guys have an extra HDMI cable?”

“About six of them,” Rhett says. “Help yourself.”

I look to Ethan for confirmation that it’s okay, but he’s already bending over a tangle of cords to find me what I need. “Here you go,” he says, and hands it over. “More here if you need anything.”

We stand there for another awkward moment before I think to say thanks and retreat back to my side of things.

There I connect my laptop, power it on, and wait. Paolo drifts back over to Ethan’s side, and I can hear the three of them taking turns on the game and talking about what time to bring in seating and food on Monday.

Once my desktop icons appear on the big projection screen, I go into the folder for my presentation. I click on it, and a box appears on the screen: “Error 2048—File type unsupported.”

But I’ve run the file a dozen times already. I know it’s supported. I try again. Same error.

A swell of panic laps at my brain, but I force it back. I stored an extra version of the file in the cloud, just in case.

But as I sign into the hotel’s wireless and sign into my account, I feel the stirrings of nausea in my belly. I download and click on the file.

“Error 2048—File type unsupported.”

Because of course I must have saved it
after
it became corrupted somehow. How else was this day going to go?

A taste of something metallic rises in my throat, and my body goes limp. I sink into a chair at one of the café tables.

I’m screwed. Ethan has the perfect, smart presentation going over there, and I’ve got nothing. A weird fake café with some iPads at the table. That’s going to absolutely
dazzle
the investors.

But I don’t really care about that. I just don’t want to humiliate Adam—or myself. And I have no idea how to spare either of us.