“Okay, then. Richard will drop me and Chevron by the house early Sunday morning before he drives to the airport. Can you rent the car?”

“Sure, I’ll book it when I get home from work.” If I ever leave this place, I add in my mind. “When do you want to come back, on the twenty-ninth or the thirtieth?”

“Twenty-ninth?” Blair suggests. “So we get that extra day to recuperate before New Year’s Eve?”

“Big plans?”

“No, just a party at Richard’s friend’s house. Want to come?”

“Is it all couples?”

“Err… I don’t know. I can check if you want.”

“Yeah, please.” The last thing I need is to be the only sad loser at a party with no one to kiss at midnight. “So, I’ll pick up the car Saturday night and schedule the drop off for the next Saturday.” This way I can shave two whole days off my homestay and blame it on Blair and her British boyfriend with my mom. She loves Blair; she’s not going to hold it against her. “A clean one-week rental. I hope they have discounts for that.” Gosh, a full week at home. Fake boyfriend or not, the thought still makes me nauseous. “Anything else?”

“Just make sure the rental company allows for pets in the car.”

“And maybe that they check their plates before doling out cars.” I chuckle. “Wouldn’t want to get arrested.”

“Ah, ah… very funny.”

“I’m still so sad they didn’t take a mug shot of you,” I say, referring to Blair’s incident with law enforcement last summer. “I really gotta go now. See you on Sunday?”

“Yeah, bye.”

“Bye.”

***

Whenever I imagined low points in my career, delivering a sales pitch on all the qualities of Russian Blue cats never made the list. Nevertheless, the impossibility of finding a replacement “actor” forced me to do exactly that. I had to support my argument with adoption statistics, substantiated research on the most-loved cat breeds, and a small focus group’s—made of the office secretaries—approval ratings for the specific cat performance.

In the end, I convinced the client to keep the Russian Blue. But this job is killing me. I have to treat myself to something, and since Diego and I also need more shared experiences, I ask Melanie to buy two tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I’m sure Diego won’t mind seeing it a second time.

When my assistant delivers the tickets to my desk the next day, she eyes me inquisitively. “Two front-row seats for tomorrow and Friday’s shows,” she says. “Solved that boyfriend issue, have you?”

I instantly regret having shared too much personal information with her. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m going with a friend.”

“Oh, you seemed so much happier in the past week… I thought you’d met someone.”

Happier, me? How, when I’ve been swamped by my usual workload, plus an impossible project, a rogue team of creatives, and had to deal with kitty-gate. I feel more stressed than ever, definitely not happier.