"Maybe I've gotten better at it," Nick suggested. He hadn't, but she wouldn't know, would she? It had been five years. He could have been a totally different person.
He was a totally different person, just not in a way that made him any better at being optimistic.
At least it had made him more patient. Patient enough that he wasn't feeling the frustration of their long wait yet, aside from the echoes of her frustration making the whole thing even more uncomfortable than it had to be. And it had to be pretty uncomfortable considering that they were both here with the last person they would have chosen for company on a stake out.
Maybe Nick should have said no. Maybe he should have invented other plans. But this had sounded important enough that it had seemed worth it, at the time, putting up with the awkwardness and the discomfort of being there with Samantha. Of course, he'd assumed that there would be more action going on so that the two of them wouldn't have to spend quite so much time as just the two of them. It might not have been a big deal if he was alone, the wait, but...
But he wasn't alone and he was starting to suspect that Sam had known they'd be in for a long wait and decided they didn't need the warning. He could guess why, too.
Sam was being a little too optimistic if he thought that Nick and Samantha were going to manage to talk this out over a stake out. Or even start talking it out. Sure, they were talking, but they weren't talking about anything important. Anything that would lessen some of the pressure built up between them.