Dave sent me one of the most dangerous text messages in the English language. Need to talk tomorrow. That was it. Four words. No explanation, no context, and not even an emoji to reassure me that everything was fine. I was sitting on the couch when my phone buzzed, Pandora was reading on her tablet beside me, Mr. Whiskers was asleep across my lap, and down the hall I could hear John Mercer typing away on his laptop. It had been a perfectly peaceful evening until those four words landed on my screen. I read them again, hoping there was some hidden meaning I’d missed the first time. There wasn’t. Somehow that made it worse.
Dave and I worked together, so there were plenty of ordinary reasons he might want to talk. Maybe he had a question about a project. Maybe he’d discovered an error in one of our reports. Maybe he wanted to ask if I was available for something later in the week. Unfortunately, my imagination dismissed every sensible explanation almost immediately. Instead, it promoted those four harmless words into the beginning of a full-blown workplace catastrophe. I found myself rereading the text over and over, convinced there had to be something between the lines that I simply hadn’t deciphered yet. The longer I stared at it, the more certain I became that tomorrow’s conversation would somehow change everything, even though I couldn’t explain how or why.
Pandora eventually looked up from her tablet and smiled. “You’ve read that text at least six times.” I corrected her automatically. “Seven.” She held out her hand, and I passed her my phone. After reading the message she simply handed it back without the slightest hint of concern. “Looks like Dave wants to talk tomorrow.” “That’s exactly what worries me,” I replied. She laughed. “Hal, if it were actually bad news, he probably wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. And if he wanted you to panic, he would’ve written something like, ‘We really need to talk.’” I considered that for a moment before nodding. “You’re right. That somehow sounds much worse.” She smiled, returned to her book, and apparently considered the mystery solved. Unfortunately, my brain had only just begun writing theories.
John wandered out of his room carrying an empty coffee mug and found me staring blankly at my phone. After I explained the text, he waited patiently for the rest of the story. When I admitted there wasn’t any more, he blinked once and said, “Sounds like tomorrow’s conversation.” I admired how effortlessly he reached sensible conclusions. Mine preferred wandering through unnecessary speculation first. Just then my phone buzzed again with a weather alert, and Mr. Whiskers immediately reached out with one lazy paw and tapped the vibrating screen before settling back down for another nap. I pointed at the cat. “See? Even he thinks it’s important.” John looked at Mr. Whiskers, then at me, and smiled. “No, Hal. He thinks your phone moved.”
The rest of the evening became an exercise in creative overthinking. I convinced myself Dave might be about to tell me I’d been volunteered for a project, that the office was being reorganized, that he’d accidentally created a disaster and needed my help, or that someone upstairs had made a decision that would affect everyone. Every theory seemed convincing for about thirty seconds before another one replaced it. Pandora watched the entire process with quiet amusement before finally asking, “Have you considered waiting until tomorrow?” I sighed. “That feels like giving up.” She shook her head. “No. That’s called patience.” I wasn’t entirely convinced the two were the same thing.
By the time I arrived at work the following morning, I had mentally prepared myself for almost every possible disaster. Dave spotted me almost immediately and waved me into his office. I took a deep breath, walked in, and waited for the bad news. Instead, he reached into a folder, pulled out a flyer, and slid it across the desk. “The food trucks are coming Friday,” he said. “I wanted to see if you wanted to grab lunch before the lines get ridiculous.” I stared at him for several seconds before asking, “That’s what you wanted to talk about?” Dave looked genuinely confused. “Yeah. Why? Did you think something was wrong?” I couldn’t help laughing. I’d spent nearly twenty-four hours preparing for a workplace crisis, and all he’d wanted was someone to split a barbecue lunch with.
That evening, after I told Pandora the whole story, she smiled exactly the way I knew she would. “So,” she asked, “was Dave a bigger problem than you thought?” I laughed, shaking my head. “Not even close.” She closed her tablet and looked at me expectantly. “Then what was?” I looked down at Mr. Whiskers, who had already reclaimed his spot on the couch and fallen asleep without a single concern in the world. “The biggest problem,” I admitted, “was giving my imagination twenty-four uninterrupted hours to explain a four-word text message.” Mr. Whiskers opened one eye, yawned, and promptly went back to sleep. Somehow he’d known from the very beginning what had taken me an entire day to figure out: sometimes “Need to talk tomorrow” really does just mean “Need to talk tomorrow.”