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friend.”
    I cleared many piles off my desk and got us plates and forks from the break room while he unwrapped our first course: mozzarella and prosciutto panini. The singular of which is panino, but not many people realize that. My stomach twanged.
    “I got here just in time,” he laughed. He pulled out a Swiss Army knife and opened a giant bottle of beer and placed it in front of me.
    “Either you’re way overestimating my capacity for alcohol, or you have evil intentions.”
    “It’s the second one.” He opened his own two-liter. “Why are we doing this here?”
    “My computer here is better. Faster. Plus Steven is out of town, so I can stay late.”
    Instant flash of unease. I was here alone with him in this big, empty office, after dark on a cold December night. He had a knife in his pocket. And now he knew that no one would notice if I never made it home. I took a tiny sip of beer and studied him for any sign of a dark vibe. What I saw was a pale, scruffy, hungry young man with crumbs on his chin, looking at me with warm eyes. It felt like I had known him much longer than just a few weeks.
    “Where’d he go?”
    “Steven? London.”
    “For how long?”
    “Four days, this time.”
    “Does he go away a lot?
    “A fair amount.”
    “How come?”
    “He’s a patent attorney for a pharmaceutical company.”
    “I guess he makes a lot of money.”
    I shrugged. “Some, for sure.”
    “So, you gonna bring him to hear me play?”
    “Not likely. He’s a recovering alcoholic. He stays away from bars.”
    “Yeah, I’ll probably end up having to do that one day.” He grinned and I got a flash of the adorable college ID guy.
    “By the way.” I reached under my desk and groped around in Big Green till I found my wallet. I waved his ID at him. “Thanks a lot. I skated across my hall on this when I came out to go to work the other morning.”
    Tyler smiled. “No way! Sorry about that.”
    I pushed it across the desk.
    “You can keep it, if you want.” He took a giant bite of his second panino. “Do you want some of this?”
    “No thanks.” I nudged the ID closer to him. “You might need this.”
    “I don’t think I’m going to. But could you keep it for me? Sometimes I lose things.” He seemed completely earnest. But something about the way he was looking at me made my face feel warm.
    “Oh, well, okay.” I opened up my wallet. “It’ll be right in here with this picture of my mom.”
    He leaned across the desk. “Hey, let me see.”
    I held up the photo.
    “Your mom looks like one of those desperate housewife ladies.”
    I slid the pictures back in my wallet. “That’s just the surface. My mom is powerful.”
    “Yeah, she looks like she could kick some serious ass, if she wanted to.”
    “Believe me, she wants to. And she does.”
    He laughed. “Okay, I think I’ll steer clear of her.”
    He broke out a gigantic cheesecake brownie and we split it. I washed my half down with beer while I brought up Facebook on the computer. He pulled a chair around next to me.
    We created his personal profile and then a musician profile page. Then I showed him the pages of several musicians and bands.
    “So,” I said, “we’re going to need pictures of you. Do you have any?”
    “I just got some taken, I can get Bogue to e-mail them. He’s building me a website, with songs on it and everything.”
    “Oh, great, we can—” I did a double take. “Wait a minute, he is? Why isn’t he doing this for you?”
    Tyler shrugged.
    “Maybe you should have brought him with you tonight.”
    He smiled. “No way.”
    I looked back at the monitor. The animated frog on my screensaver was doing a jaunty little dance. I tapped the keyboard to wake up the computer and closed Facebook. “To be continued, I guess, when we have the photos to upload.”
    He leaned back in his chair. “Okay. Thanks, Grace. I appreciate you being so sweet and helpful to me.” The drawl was thicker than ever.
    “Oh, no problem!”