Page 79 of Knocked Up

"About six minutes."

"Go get a coffee," Delisle said. "Do not sit in your car."

The last hour is the long one. At twelve-nineteen Auggie's cousin Dez reported a deal was done and it was us. At twelve forty-one Skoglund's phone rang and the room went so quiet I could hear the ice plant. It was his mother.

At twelve fifty-five I went and stood in the tunnel by myself, which is the only place in that building where nobody has ever come to find me. I put my hand flat on the middle of my chest through my shirt.

At one o'clock the window closed. The aggregator posted the last three deals in the league and there was not a Denver one. Auggie made a noise like a kettle and went down onto the floor on his back with his arms out.

"Nothing!" he yelled. "They did nothing! That's the best thing I've ever seen a hockey team do!"

Delisle came through ten minutes later and shook hands. When he got to me he said, "Have a good practice tomorrow." He did not look at me one second longer than he looked at anybody else. I've decided that was on purpose.

I sat down in my stall. In eleven years I've been in four rooms on this day and in two of them I was the guy. I've never once been in a room on the 4th of February and had a place to be.

I got my phone.

Staying. Home soon.

I came south on Federal at ten to two and I could see her from a block away.

There is a strip of gravel between the clinic and the fence where the van goes. She was standing in it in the cold with no coat on, in the cardigan. She was holding her phone down by her side with the screen still lit, watching the road. When the truck came around the row she turned toward the clinic door like a woman who had been about to go in the whole time.

I got the truck in park and got the door about halfway open.

She was there before I was.

"You're an idiot, get out of the car," Tessa said.

"I'm getting…"

"Get out."

I got out and got about eight inches of standing room before she was up against me with her fists in the front of my jacket and her face in my neck. I got an arm around her and one hand on the back of her head. Neither of us said anything for a while.

Then she kissed me in front of a passing bus, and it was not a soft one. It went on until somebody in a hatchback at the light did the thing with the horn, two short ones. Tessa put a hand up over her shoulder at them without looking and did not stop.

When she stopped she stayed where she was with her forehead against my sternum.

"I wasn't watching the road," she said.

"No."

"I came out to look at the gate. The gate's been sticking."

"Tessa, you're not wearing a coat."

"The gate has been sticking, Beckett," she said. Then her shoulders went, once. She said, in a completely level voice, "I'm not crying."

"I know. It's cold out. Your eyes water."

"They water," she said. "That's a documented thing."

"Get in the truck."

"I have a two o'clock."

"Sofia's got your two o'clock."