The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (color ebook reader TXT) 📗

laptop, threw the computer into its case, and grabbed her coat. She wasn’t sure where she was going; all she knew was she was in over her head, and she didn’t want to hyperventilate or barf on Technocore’s third floor.

Dylan sat in the car, breathing in through her nose for five seconds and out through her mouth for eight, like her middle school choir teacher had taught her. She had been using this trick to fight a state of near-debilitating dread since she’d bolted from the office a half hour earlier.

As she forced herself out of the car, the fresh air hit Dylan like a blast of cold, pine-scented reality, and she yanked on Cruise’s door. This time of day, the place was mostly empty, save for a few college students who looked as stressed as she felt. Trotting toward the counter, she attempted to maintain whatever calm she’d regained on the drive over as the barista finished wiping down the espresso machine. Sure, she was in a hurry, but she wasn’t pressed enough to want old milk from the steamer hanging around her beverage.

“Good morning. How are you?” the guy behind the counter asked, his red stapler tattoo smiling up at her from his forearm.

“Hi, I’m fine, thanks. Can I have a small double latte, please?” Dylan said, forgoing the usual polite exchanges. Best not to get sucked into a conversation when she was exactly three heartbeats away from an anxiety-induced blackout.

“Oh, a double. Someone has a busy morning,” Stapler Tattoo said, smiling despite the fact that Dylan looked like she was ready to tear her hair out.

“Sure is,” she said, her best please-leave-me-alone smile stuck to her face.

“Anything else I can get you?” the guy said, tapping at the screen in front of him.

Dylan eyed the pastry case but decided against getting anything. If she got started with sweets now, she would be eating them all day. “Just the latte, thank you.”

“No problem.” The barista smiled, accepting her credit card. After a moment, he flipped the screen around for her signature. “All right. I’ll bring your latte over to you in a moment.”

“Thank you,” Dylan said, hustling over to a large corner table. In a flash, she began laying out her papers, the pressure behind her eyes mounting with each file she pulled out of her bag. As she took in the sheer volume of paper, her mind began to haze over at the edges, the insurmountable volume of work pushing her past the point of overload.

“Here you go,” the barista chirped, causing Dylan to look up in a frenzy. He rocked back on his heels as her overwhelm washed over him. “You seemed like you needed a little something to pick you up, so I made you a foam leaf.”

“Oh.” Dylan blinked at him for a moment, wondering if she was experiencing some sort of pressure hallucination. It was the only explanation for why this man was talking to her about leaves when her entire world was rapidly crashing around her ears. When the barista didn’t disappear, she looked down at her latte. There in lovely foam art was indeed a leaf. She racked her brain for what the appropriate pity-leaf-design etiquette was and settled on, “That was kind of you. Thank you.”

Her phone began to buzz, Stacy scrolling across the screen. No time for that right now, Dylan thought, gritting her teeth at her phone as well as at the barista, who was still beaming at her. Switching the phone into airplane mode, she turned her attention back to her computer, giving the guy a silent hint that he could leave her in peace. Much to Dylan’s dismay, he coughed loudly, offering her a hint of his own. When she did not look up, he said, “Rough morning?”

Did she have some sort of sign taped to her that said INTERRUPT ME!? Instinctively, Dylan reached around to feel the back of her blouse before recognizing that this was highly unlikely. Reminding herself that this person was trying to be helpful, she sighed, eyeing the leaf design. “You have no idea. It’s not worth discussing.”

“What happened?” Of course she’d managed to find the one nosy barista in all of Seattle. “I still have like three hours left on my shift.” The guy shrugged, settling into the chair across from her. Dylan nearly kicked herself for having said anything. Now she was trapped in a polite exchange with no way out but friendly chitchat or yelling. Shouting was a bad idea. She didn’t want to get kicked out of the coffeehouse. Repacking and unpacking somewhere else would take another hour. Not to mention the stress. Fine. If he really wanted to know. She would make him sorry he’d ever asked.

Taking another deep breath, Dylan laid the last twelve hours out for the complete stranger in front of her, leaving out nothing except names. She might only be employed at Kaplan for another few days, but that was not a good enough reason to relax her spotless client-confidentiality standards. By the time she’d confessed everything, the barista was staring like she had just admitted to highway robbery. “So yeah, I’m roughly twenty-four hours from finally losing my job. I’m being held hostage by my ex, while alienating the boy next door—”

“Technically, the man across the street,” the guy said, holding up an unusually delicate hand. Examining Dylan’s incredulous brows, he demurred, “But I see what you mean.”

“The thing is, I don’t want to give up. I’ve worked hard and done well at my consultancy. I hate that I’m in this pressure cooker where I’m bound to throw it all away.” He opened his mouth to add something, but Dylan pressed on, her voice rising. “And I like a lot of the people at the company I’m working for. I don’t want to let them down. Even the CEO, who I like . . . sometimes.”

“But do you have to give it up?” he asked, watching as a customer