She frowned. “Seriously? Why not?”

“Why would I?” He shrugged. “I’m busy. I just never got around to it.”

Giselle picked up the pencil Coop had been playing spin the bottle with and spun it. It stopped, pointing to him. She reached over and turned it away. “That’s not it,” she said. “It’s because you’re a fuddy-duddy.”

“Excuse me?” Coop spun the pencil and it fell off the table.

“Fuddy. Duddy.”

“No one’s ever called me that before, and I’ve been called a lot of things.”

“Maybe someone should have. You’re a fuddy-duddy, Coop.”

“I am not.”

“If it’s any consolation, you weren’t always. But you turned into one.”

“When? Wait. Don’t tell me. Right before you left.”

“Not exactly. You’d been that way for a while. But your fuddy-duddiness definitely made leaving easier.”

“So happy to make crushing my soul so easy.”

“But that’s what I’m saying: souls mean . . . vibrancy. You were the total opposite of vibrant. Both fuddy and duddy.”

“I was plenty vibrant back then. Vivacious, even. It’s just, when we were together, I had a few reversals. Jobs that should have been cinches but went bad.”

Giselle put the pencil back on the table. When she leaned over to pick it up, Coop got a quick glimpse down the front of her dress. His heart tapped on his ribs again, letting him know it was late to catch a bus.

“You were always good at your job, you know?” she said. “But you didn’t always choose the best partners.”

“You sure got that right,” he said and immediately regretted it. The look on Giselle’s face brought back memories that he’d carefully locked in a steamer trunk, dragged out to sea, and dropped into the Mariana Trench. Now some were floating to the surface like socially awkward jellyfish.

“Look. Sorry,” he said.

Giselle got up. “Forget it.” She smoothed her skirt and headed for the door. On her way over she said, “Take the elevator down a floor and you can get some new clothes at the company store. It’s not really a store. They just call it that. They’ll give you the clothes. It’s a disguise thing. I’ll call and let them know you’re coming.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

She put her hand on the doorknob and turned back to him. “And get something to eat. You look like a whippet in hundred-dollar pants.”

“Three hundred. They were three hundred dollars.”

“Looks like they were nice, too. I guess you still haven’t learned how to hold on to anything.” Giselle left and Coop sat in the empty office alone for a few minutes.

That’s the nicest way anyone has told me to fuck off in a long time.