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“You look nice today, Salvatore.”
His eyes took a quick perusal of me as he chewed a big bite of muffin. He swallowed hard, giving me a wobbly smile. “You do too. And you can tell your roommate her muffin is delicious.”
“Oh, I will.” I winked and Sal sputtered, his cheeks flaming bright red.
Sal and I were both dressed to the nines in suits, ready to meet with potential investors. We were early, so we had time to double and triple-check that everything was in order. Shana would be here in an hour or so, then we had another half hour before showtime. I was finally feeling good about how things were going to go.
I should have known better. Optimism wasn’t my friend. Things couldn’t look up for long before the pendulum swung the other way.
The first sign that today wouldn’t be going how I expected was the open door. It was only cracked, but it should have been firmly shut and locked. The second sign was when I pushed the door open, it met resistance. Something was on the floor that shouldn’t have been.
“Sal,” I quivered. “I can’t look.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go first. I’m sure it’s fine.”
Stepping aside, I closed my eyes and let him take the lead. His strangled cry had my eyes flying open to meet a horror show.
Destroyed. All our hard work was utterly destroyed. The hours we’d spent setting everything up had gone to waste.
My knees gave out, but Sal caught me, guiding me to a chair.
“It’s okay, Elena, we’ll figure it out.”
I didn’t see how we could. There wasn’t enough time. Even if there was, defeat weighed me down so much, I couldn’t seem to get myself to move.
This was too much.
My fight had run out.
I’m done.
