Once again, you wake up running, yelling and waving your hands in the air.
The last person off the bus sees you, turns quickly, but the bus is already out of his reach.
You pull up short. "Crap!"
The man gives you a shrug and then vanishes into the crowd.
Your heart sinks – not at the prospect of another thirty-minute wait but of another fight with Inez. Not another fight, in fact – the same fight all over again.
So you do what you should have done the first time around: you pull out your phone and request an Uber.
You can't work up the nerve for another icy phone call, so you text her instead. Missed the bus. Waiting for an Uber now.
She never texts back.
On the app, you watch the rectangle that is Tarone-in-his-white-Toyota-Corolla creep closer and closer to the star that represents you. It's painfully slow. At one point, you swear it starts moving farther away again. Finally, you have to put your phone away before you burst a blood vessel.
The Corolla finally arrives, and you tell Tarone to go as fast as he can. You check your phone again and Inez still hasn't replied to your text. Even so, you text her that you're on your way and then force yourself to close your eyes and steady your breathing.
Uber notwithstanding, you're still half an hour late by the time you get to La Rose d'Or.
Inez is sitting at the same table as always. She watches as you approach, her fingers tearing a baguette to shreds, just like before.
"Look, I know I'm late," you say, before you even sit down. You shuck off your coat and hang it across the back of your chair. "And I know you're mad at me. And I deserve it."
She just stares up at you, expressionless, saying nothing.
"Please, Inez. I just want us to have a nice dinner."
She drops the half-shredded baguette onto her plate. "We need to talk."
"I know—"
"Let me rephrase that," she says, in the kind of soft voice that's more intimidating than a shout. "I need to talk. You need to listen."
"Okay," you say quietly, dropping your hands to your lap.
"My family – my parents – they're not very warm people. None of my brothers and sisters seemed to mind it, but I did. And I was different from all of them: the way my mind worked, the stuff I was interested in. I ...." Her lips tighten to a small white line. "I got used to being invisible. I didn't like it, but I got used to it."
"Inez..."
"And every time I think I've found someone who sees me – who really sees me – I always end up getting treated like this." She senses the objection forming on your lips and she silences it with a glare. "I don't like feeling this way. I've never liked feeling this way. And I swore I'd never let anyone do this to me again."
And now your heart goes out to her. You barely know this woman, but in that moment she seems so alone. And you know exactly how she feels: Father isn't exactly a wellspring of parental love himself.
Inez sighs, deflating a little. "Anyway, I got a letter today saying I got into the Religious Studies program at Stanford, and I'm going. I just don't see the point in spending the next three months still dating you just to bide my time. I have better things to do with my life." She pushes away from the table and stands. "Enjoy your meal."
You know better than to say anything as you watch her go.
You can:
. . . or you can:
use the house key to go back to the day you and Inez first met.
pull out Inez’s note to try your hand at solving the puzzle.