LifeLine

Chapter Nineteen

The clothing store on Elm was called Halston & Reed and it occupied the kind of space that communicated its own seriousness — dark wood fixtures, lighting that made the fabrics look like they deserved consideration, a sales floor laid out with the specific spaciousness of somewhere that understood its clientele didn't enjoy feeling crowded. Connor had driven past it a hundred times in eleven years and never gone in because there had never been a reason to.

He went in Thursday afternoon in his khakis and his button-up, which was by now a choice he was making consciously rather than by default. He had money and he had the Panamera and he had a warehouse building in the arts district and what he didn't have was anything to wear to dinner on Saturday that wasn't either Walmart casual or a Las Vegas poker room.

The salesgirl near the door — mid-twenties, the specific grooming of someone whose job required her to embody the store's aesthetic — looked at him with the brief efficiency of someone running an assessment and arriving at a conclusion that suggested her time was better spent elsewhere. She smiled the professional smile and went back to refolding a stack of sweaters that didn't need refolding.

Connor moved into the store and began looking at the racks with the methodical attention he brought to anything worth doing properly. He wasn't here for suits specifically — he had the charcoal from Las Vegas and he'd get more when he needed them. He was here for the everyday version of a life that had changed. The casual clothes that said something different from khakis and short-sleeve button-ups without saying it loudly.

He was examining a jacket — dark navy, the kind of weight that worked in most temperatures, the kind of cut that looked intentional rather than functional — when he heard his name.

"Connor Flynn."

The voice had the specific quality of someone who projected warmth as a first move, the way a chess player moved a pawn to control the center before revealing the actual strategy. Connor turned.

Blake Jensen had filled out since college in the way that former athletes did — the muscle still present underneath but redistributed, softened at the edges, the quarterback's frame now carrying the weight of a decade behind a desk. He was dressed well, the kind of well that announced itself, and he was smiling the smile of someone who was genuinely pleased to see you in a way that had nothing to do with actually being pleased.

"Blake," Connor said.

"Man." Blake came toward him with his hand extended and shook Connor's with the vigor of someone performing friendliness rather than feeling it. "How long has it been? You look exactly the same, brother. Exactly the same."

It was delivered as a compliment and landed as something else. Connor had heard Blake Jensen deliver compliments that landed as something else for four years of college football and had never quite lost the ability to recognize the specific mechanism.

"Few years," Connor said.

"Few years." Blake shook his head like this was remarkable. "Are you still at that call center? GBTS, right? I think I saw something on LinkedIn." He said it with the particular faux-casualness of someone who had looked it up recently and was performing the memory as accidental.

"I was," Connor said. "Not anymore."

"Oh yeah?" Blake's eyebrows moved upward in the performance of surprise. "Did something happen? I hope everything's okay." The concern was impeccable. It always had been.

"Everything's fine," Connor said. "Just moving in a different direction."

"Good, good." Blake looked around the store with the proprietary ease of someone who considered this his territory. "I'm actually here picking up a few things myself. Client dinner tonight — you know how it is." He said you know how it is the way people said it when they suspected you didn't. "What brings you in? Looking for something special?"

"Just updating the wardrobe," Connor said.

Blake looked at the jacket Connor was holding. Then at the rack it had come from. Then at Connor, with the expression of someone about to do something generous. "You know, if you find something you like I'm happy to help you pick it out. I've been shopping here for years, I know the staff. Sometimes with these places you need someone to —" he paused, letting the implication land softly, "— help you navigate."

"I think I can manage," Connor said pleasantly.

Blake laughed — the easy laugh of someone who found this response charming rather than pointed. "Of course, of course. Just offering." He clapped Connor on the shoulder with the camaraderie of men who had once played on the same team and now occupied different positions in the standings. "Hey, the Falcons thing didn't work out the way I'd hoped, but turns out the family business suits me pretty well. You remember my dad had the financial consulting firm? I'm running the brokerage side now. If you ever want to talk about what to do with your savings — I know on a call center salary it's tough to put much away, but even a little invested correctly —"

"I appreciate that," Connor said.

He took the navy jacket and moved deeper into the store, leaving Blake in the mid-distance. The salesgirl was helping someone near the back now, her energy fully invested in that transaction. Connor worked through the racks on his own with the methodical efficiency of someone who knew what he was looking for even if he hadn't named it yet. Two more jackets — a charcoal casual that was a different weight from the Las Vegas suit, more relaxed, and a tan linen that seemed right for the Greensboro summer ahead. Several shirts, the kind that didn't look like work shirts. A pair of dark jeans that were clearly jeans but carried themselves differently from jeans that cost forty dollars. A leather belt that Mia Randolph would probably have approved of.

He moved through the store for forty minutes and assembled what he needed and brought it to the register.

Blake was still there. He'd been moving through the store in Connor's general orbit with the practiced casualness of someone who was tracking a conversation without appearing to track it, picking things up and setting them down, creating the conditions for another exchange.

He materialized at Connor's shoulder as the salesgirl began ringing up the items.

"Find some things?" Blake said.

"A few," Connor said.

The register total assembled itself item by item on the screen. Blake watched it with the peripheral attention of someone who was waiting for a number and would respond to it when it arrived.

Eight thousand, nine hundred and forty dollars.

The salesgirl said the total with the professional neutrality of someone who said numbers like this regularly and had no particular opinion about them.

Blake made a sound. Not quite a laugh — something more considered than a laugh, the sound of someone modulating their response to land at maximum effect. "Connor," he said, with the warmth of genuine concern, "if you've got nine thousand dollars saved up, you really shouldn't be spending it on clothes. I know it feels good, but that's the kind of money that should be working for you. Talk to me before you do something like this — that's literally what I do for people."

Connor looked at the salesgirl. "I'll take it all."

He handed over the card Emma had configured — the blank Kadiron card, linked to his account, indistinguishable from any other Visa to anyone who wasn't looking for something specific. The transaction processed in four seconds.

He took the bag. Thanked the salesgirl, who had developed a slightly different quality of attention over the course of the last forty minutes, the attention of someone who had been watching something and was reassessing. He turned toward the door.

"Connor." Blake followed him, because of course he did, because Blake Jensen had always needed the last word in the huddle and on the field and apparently in clothing stores on a Thursday afternoon. "Seriously, brother. I know things are tight — it's okay, nobody's judging — but if you want I can point you toward some better options for that kind of money. Nice used car, maybe. Something that would actually hold its —"

Connor pushed through the door onto Elm Street.

The Panamera was parked at the curb directly in front of the store. Jet Black Metallic, the afternoon light doing specific things to the paint, the kind of car that didn't need to announce itself because its presence was sufficient.

Blake came through the door behind him and stopped.

Connor reached into his pocket and clicked the fob. The car chirped. The lights flashed.

He opened the door, set the bag on the passenger seat, and got in. Through the window he could see Blake on the sidewalk, the expression on his face doing something complicated — the specific recalibration of a man who had built an entire interaction on a set of assumptions that had just been removed from underneath him simultaneously.

Connor started the engine. Pulled away from the curb.

In the rearview mirror Blake was still standing on the sidewalk outside Halston and Reed, watching the Panamera until it turned the corner.

That, Emma said, was extremely satisfying.

"He'll be at the next thing," Connor said. "Whatever the next thing is."

Probably, Emma said. People like Blake Jensen tend to show up at things.

"I know." Connor drove through the afternoon toward his apartment, the bag of new clothes on the passenger seat, the Panamera doing what it did. "That's fine. I'll be at the next thing too."