Lakeside

Left, Right, and Straight-ahead

He should've taken the stairs up to the fourth floor rather than the elevator. It mightn't've worked through the adrenaline spike surging through his veins, making him a little jittery, but he would've had a decent excuse for the clamminess of his palms, the perspiration wetting his hair at the back of his neck. He didn't quite stammer through his greeting to the receptionist, diverting quickly into a request for directions. Which way to Culler's office?

The receptionist tilts his head in one direction, indicating the opposite as the path Tom should take. "Ryan's down that way. End office."

And Tom is off, nodding a brief thanks as he focuses on keeping his plodding momentum. One foot in front of the other. If he stalls out now...

"But." There's the sound of a rolling chair being vacated, and the receptionist is standing when Tom slows his steps and glances back over his shoulder. He's still got his head tilted off kilter, "She's not there?"

Tom blinks, hearing himself respond in question, "She's not?"

"No. She – uh. Who did you say you were, again?"

Had he identified himself as he came off the elevator? He was pretty sure he had. And signed in on the book downstairs, though each of the floors did seem home to different companies. Tom shakes himself, reaching back to snag the envelope as he slowly retraces the half a dozen paces back towards the receptionist's desk. "My sister and I own the place she rented. Recently. Up at the lake?"

The receptionist is still eying him curiously, but not offering a sign-in log. And a few heads have turned in interest, the work in the cubicles being abandoned.

Trying to ignore the movements of the others in the office, Tom muddles on, somehow the planned words getting caught and tangled together in his mouth. "Ryan, ah. Miss Culler left something behind. Found it – aaand – felt like I should deliver them. The documents. That she left. See it, them, safely back."

"You're looking for Ryan?"

Tom takes one involuntary step to his right as one of the women in the cubicles abandons eavesdropping from her chair for inserting herself into the conversation. Wary, he nods, "Yea." He barely resists the urge to palm the envelope back from the counter where he had set it down and shove it back into the back of his waistband.

It's not an unkind look that he's getting, from either of them, the receptionist or Ryan's coworker. "I think she breezed through this morning, didn't she, Oliver?"

Oliver seems hesitant, slow to dart his eyes from the conversation's newest participant back to Tom. "Might've."

"She had us all jealous, the pictures she was sending back."

That news makes Tom's eyebrows rise a bit. He didn't know she was – but then he should've guessed that she had been talking to her friends and family back home, here, staying connected with the world. Somehow it had never occurred to him, up until hearing that singular conversation. But Ryan's coworker is still talking, nodding occasionally as she swivels her focus between the two men.

"Gorgeous sunsets and cool hiking trails." She settles a warm smile on Tom, leaning into Oliver's desk a little more. "About what it's like up there, too. How great everyone is."

His heart clenches, and he fights to keep a grimace from pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Ah. Yea. We loved having her." Feeling a heat rising over his cheeks he darts his gaze down, pulling the envelope off the counter and quickly shoving it right back against his spine again. Giving the pair of them, and the rest of those observing, a light nod, Tom shifts to try to disentangle himself from the conversation. "Though I guess you lot are glad to have her back. At work. Working.