Chapter 2
Theo
Bad things happened when I broke my routine.
It was a fact that had first been established when I was in second grade and Rachel Latta took the red cushion that I always sat on out of the reading nook so she could sit with her friends next to the fish tank.
I was forced to sit on the green cushion next to Aram Yardumian, who spent the first five minutes of silent reading time talking to me instead of reading.
And when I snapped and told him to be quiet, Mrs. Buss blamed the distraction on me and sent me to sit in the hall.
Few things caused as much lasting damage as humiliating an eight-year-old.
The danger of breaking my routine was a truth that I was reminded of over and over—when I did my homework after supper instead of before for whatever reason and got a lower grade, when I put my car keys on the third hook from the door instead of the second and got a flat tire on the way to my first day of work at my first real job, when I bought new shoes and wore them right away instead of letting them sit in their box on my dresser for a week and immediately stepped in dog shit when I left my apartment.
I knew when to tempt fate and when to follow the rules.
That was why I’d started getting my coffee from Common Grounds every morning on my way to work instead of making it myself after my ex took the fancy coffeemaker with him when we split.
Paul could have the blasted thing, for all I cared, and the bitterness that went with it.
Common Grounds had much better coffee anyhow.
And it had Diccon Meyers.
I tried to ignore the heat that had taken over my face as I walked down Easton Road toward the offices of Gershwin and Anglesea Architects with my plain black, boring coffee in hand.
It was perfectly reasonable to like the look of someone who I saw on a daily basis.
I had half a dozen coworkers who were objectively attractive as well.
The only reason my heart sped up a little every time I walked into Common Grounds was because it knew a caffeine fix was coming.
“Keep telling yourself that, boy-o,” I said, mimicking the way my Irish granny had always talked to me as an awkward teenager.
The problem was, I probably would keep telling myself that I wasn’t attracted to Diccon Meyers. I would probably keep on convincing myself that the hot barista with honey-blond hair and happy, hazel eyes was either straight or taken.
But no, he definitely wasn’t straight. None of the Meyers brothers were, if community gossip and the pride flags outside the café were to be believed.
And I’d never seen Diccon out and about in Glenside or neighboring Jenkintown with anyone.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t dating or that I stood a snowball’s chance in—
I stopped so abruptly I would have sloshed hot coffee all over my face as I took my first sip from the cardboard cup if not for the lid.
It wasn’t my usual coffee.
Someone had made a mistake.
My routine was broken.
I blinked, stared warily at the cup for a second, then took another sip as I started walking again, keeping up with the flow of foot traffic instead of getting in everyone’s way.
Actually, whatever this different coffee was, it wasn’t half bad. I took another sip. It was flavored somehow, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Not chocolate. Not caramel. Something lighter, maybe? Fruity? No, there was no such thing as fruity coffee, was there?
An unexpected grin made an appearance on my face as I reached my building and headed through the front door, holding it for Holly, who worked as a receptionist in the dentist’s office downstairs from Gershwin and Anglesea.
Was that the problem they’d had in the kitchen at Common Grounds or—and I was ridiculous for even considering the notion—had Diccon switched up my coffee to something better than the usual as a favor to me.
Was it possible that Diccon Meyers liked me as much as I—
“Oh, shit.”
Holly’s horror-laced profanity stopped me in my tracks again, and I pulled myself out of my thoughts to look at my surroundings.
Oh, shit was right. The lobby was soaked, like a thunderstorm had passed through at some point in the night, but only on the inside of the building.
The old furniture that sat in a spill-over waiting area for the dentist’s office was waterlogged and the wallpaper bubbled with retained moisture.
Off to the side, the dental office’s door was open, and as Holly walked slowly into her workplace, I gaped at the carnage inside.
“What happened?” Holly asked Frieda, the dental assistant.
“There was a fire in one of the breakrooms upstairs,” Frieda sighed as I picked up my pace on my way to the elevator. “It set the sprinkler system off for the entire building last night.”
I hit the elevator button but got no response. So I headed for the door to the stairs, taking another sip of mystery coffee as I went, then savoring the unique taste of disaster on my tongue as I took the stairs to the second floor two at a time.
I got the same story from Chuck, one of Gershwin and Anglesea’s partners, as soon as I stepped into the office.
“Someone at Merchant Accounting was working late and left a pizza in their toaster oven too long,” Chuck huffed, glaring around at the soaked reception area of their office. “The whole building is a mess because of the sprinkler system.”
I looked around at the wet carpet, soggy wallpaper, and drenched reception desk, then stared at my coffee cup with wide, wary eyes.
Every time. Every single time I set one foot outside of the box.
Maybe Diccon Meyers didn’t like me after all. Maybe he was secretly trying to kill me.
I shouldn’t even have been joking about that, but with my weird, warped sense of humor, the idea almost made me laugh.
I wasn’t laughing a second later when Chuck said, “The workspace is a mess, too. None of us are going to be able to get any work done here until they clean it up.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, wanting to put my coffee down, or maybe chuck it out the window like a grenade and run.
I took a sip instead and tried to ignore all thoughts of Diccon.
Which wasn’t happening.
“Go see for yourself,” Chuck said, gesturing warily toward the back part of the office.
I sent Chuck a last, wary look, then squished my way over sodden carpet and into the workspace area.
Chuck Gershwin and Christopher Anglesea prided themselves on being progressive, forward-thinking bosses.
They were great bosses, I’ll admit. Instead of segregating us all away in cubes or our own closet-sized offices, they’d made the main part of the office into a large, open workspace.
The drafting table that I used, along with Chuck, and sometimes our intern, Madeline, stood off to one side of the room, near the window that looked down on bustling Easton Road.
Chris and Kendra used a different drafting table on the other side of the room.
The workspace also held two desks that any of us could use, but that were usually occupied by Pamela and David, who did most of the accounts payable and receivable for the business.
The entire place was a giant, mushy mess.
“Oh, shit,” I repeated Holly’s observation from downstairs as I took in the carnage.
Anything made of paper was wrecked. That included several sets of blueprints that had been left out on the drafting tables overnight. None of mine, thank God. A few binders that held everything from old invoices to purchase orders looked ruined, too.
Fortunately, it looked like neither of the computers had been damaged.
Pamela stood over one of them, dabbing it with paper towels, but it was on and nothing looked wrong with the monitor.
David was testing the printer on the other computer and making sounds somewhere between growls of frustration and moans of grief as he did.
“We’re not going to be able to work in this mess until it’s cleaned up,” Kendra said from where she was checking through everything that had been stored in a cabinet off to one side of the room.
“Definitely not,” Pamela agreed from the other side of the room.
“How long does it take to clean up something like this?” I asked, surprised that my voice didn’t crack with dread in the middle of the question.
“Who knows?” David groaned. “Several days? Probably weeks.”
“We can all work from home until I can arrange some sort of temporary workspace,” Christopher said from the front corner of the room.
A whole bunch of emotions hit me at once. A temporary workspace could be anywhere. It might not be within walking distance of my apartment, which meant Common Grounds might not be on my way to work.
I wasn’t having any of that.
“What can I do right now?” I asked no one and everyone.
Chuck stomped back in from the front. “You’re right in the middle of the Jameson Industries job, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I am,” I said. “They have the blueprints, but I need to make some changes to account for the new materials they’ve decided to go with. They want the calculations by the end of the week so they can start the job before the end of the month.”
“Then you need to get on it,” Chuck said. “You have everything you need on your laptop, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, using my free hand to touch the satchel slung over my shoulder, like it had somehow flown away while I’d been staring around in horror.
“Then I suggest you find somewhere dry and quiet to work so we can stay on top of things,” Chuck went on. “You, too, Pam. You can connect to the network remotely, right?”
I stared at my coffee cup again as Chuck proceeded to give us all working orders for the day. Every damn time. One little change to the routine and this was what happened.
It was a good thing the offending coffee was tasty. And it gave me an idea, too.
Within fifteen minutes, I’d finished the coffee, gathered up everything I could from the office that wasn’t ruined, and left to retrace my steps back to Common Grounds.