Page 50 of The Do-Over
But there were worry lines between his eyes. He furrowed his brows and watched the lines grow deeper. Then he relaxed his face and tried to smooth them away with his thumb, but to no avail. They were etched permanently into his face.
His vision was worse. How had he failed to notice that last night? It wasn’t markedly worse. He knew he would still be able to get through a day without corrective lenses. But—yes, there were glasses and contacts in his toiletries bag.
I don’t even know how to put in contacts.
Did he?
He took out the case and unscrewed the lid with the letter R on it. Carefully, he took out the lens and positioned it on his fingertip.
And even though he would have sworn he had no idea how to do this, and that he had never done this before, he touched the lens to his eye and blinked, feeling it settle into the proper place. When he opened his eye again, his vision was just a little clearer.
He put in the left lens and examined himself in the mirror again. His physique was different than he remembered. He was used to being lean and muscular from hours on the basketball court every day. He was a bit heavier now—not overweight, but softer. He seemed like someone who spent his days…not running back and forth on a basketball court. Doing something else.
Doing what?
There were so many unanswered questions, so many things he just didn’t know how to process at all.
“Rob?” Thea called. He could tell by the proximity of her voice that she was right outside the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and opened the door so that she wouldn’t have to worry. He was done in here anyway. He didn’t want to spend any more time looking at himself in the mirror. It was legitimately upsetting.
“I think I might have found something that will help us,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind—you left your phone on the counter last night.”
She held it out. He took it numbly and stared at it. “My phone?”
“Yeah, I guess…I guess cell phones looked a little different in your last memory of them,” she said.
“A little.” This thing didn’t look like a phone at all. Where were the numbers?
“I couldn’t get into it, and I’m sure you don’t remember your passcode—unless you do?”
He shook his head.
“But then I saw that it had facial recognition,” she said. She held it up to his face.
The screen shifted to a new screen. Rob blinked. The phone had clearly been unlocked, but the technology was beyond anything he would have expected.
“Okay,” Kim said, moving her fingers over the phone’s screen. “Here. The last phone call you made was to someone called Bradley DiAngelo. Do you know who that is?”
The name sparked a reaction in Rob’s gut. It felt familiar. But he couldn’t place it. “No,” he admitted.
“That’s okay,” she said. “Why don’t you just give him a call?”
“And say what? I won’t be able to talk to him about anything. And if I tell him what’s happened, he’s going to be worried, and he won’t be able to do anything.”
“You sound sure,” she said. “Sure that he’s someone who would worry about you, I mean.”
“It…it feels true.”
“Just call him and tell him you’ve arrived in Deer Ridge,” she suggested. “See what he says. The conversation doesn’t need to be any deeper than that.”
Rob took the phone and looked at it for a moment.
“I don’t know how to call,” he admitted.
Thea nodded and took the phone from him, touched the screen, and handed it back. He held it awkwardly to his ear.
It was ringing. At least that hadn’t changed.
