Chapter 10
WALL
Theo: :smiling_face_with_horns_emoji:
That's the entire response to my Yes. One devil, eleven minutes after I sent the most expensive three letters of my life. Then nothing. Two days of nothing now, from a man who answers emojis with paragraphs and one-liners with voice memos.
The silence feels strategic. Leave the door open, but don't stand in it.
Patrick's technique, and Theo has clearly been taking notes, and the longer the silence persists, the more apparent it becomes that nobody is going to ask me anything.
And nobody is going to offer, because the next move has my name on it, and both of them are ninety miles north, waiting to see whether I make it.
I tell myself I'm considering my options.
What I'm actually doing is drafting.
The first attempt happens the morning after, at a red light, four minutes from the practice facility.
Me: Regarding my last message
The light turns green. By the next red light I've read it eight times.
There is no regarding. Regarding is for official emails.
This is a cover letter stapled to a feeling, and I delete it at the third light and drive the rest of the way with the radio at full volume, hoping the sounds will soothe my racing thoughts.
Practice comes and goes. I stop everything, again, which has moved from streak to diagnosis, and Becker spends the whole morning watching me from the blue line with his eyes narrowed. Whatever he sees, I make sure it's boring.
The second attempt happens that night at my kitchen counter, between portioning chicken and labeling it.
Me: If a similar situation were to occur, I would not be opposed to
I sound like I'm consenting to a software update.
Delete.
Me: You have my number. Both of you. Use it whenever
Whenever what? Whenever the mood strikes? Whenever Theo wins an argument? The sentence has no floor. I stand there holding the phone over a container of rice, fork still in my other hand, trying to find the end of it.
The end of it is a picture I can't afford to render in my kitchen on a Tuesday.
Delete.
The problem isn't vocabulary. I've sat across from general managers and said numbers out loud that would buy buildings, in a voice that never moved. The problem is that every draft is a door, and each one opens onto a different version of me. I haven't decided which version gets to exist.
I put the phone in the drawer with the takeout menus and do my entire mobility routine on the living room floor, and if I take it back out at eleven to check the thread, that's between me and the drawer.
At some point on day two I catch myself in the notes app, typing Proposed parameters, with a colon, and the colon is what saves me. A colon means a bullet list is coming. I close the app before the list can arrive, formatted, possibly with sub-clauses.
I put the phone down.
And there's the real block, the one no draft fixes—any message I send makes me a man who sent one. Standing in a doorway can be an accident. Getting caught on a call can be an ambush. A request, typed and delivered, is authored. Signed and time-stamped, from me. Wanting it.
By the second evening, the group thread starts looking like an option, because it has both of them in it and a campaign for cover. Except Theo lives in that thread, and if I type one uncertain word into it he'll point that out where Patrick can see.
His direct thread, then. I scroll up through it, allegedly to gauge the tone, and run straight into my own text from four days ago, sitting there with smugness I barely recognize as mine.
Best hands in the division never have to ask.
I stare at it for a long time.
Four days ago I typed that with one thumb, unbothered, a man operating on someone else's nerve.
It reads differently now. I wrote the scouting report on myself and didn't notice.
The best never have to ask, declared by a man who has since spent two days building paragraphs to avoid asking, deleting them, and filing the exercise under consideration.
It's 9:40 on the second night, drafts dead, dinner eaten, dishes done, everything in this apartment squared away except its owner.
I hear my own voice say, out loud, to nobody, "Just call."
The voice has a point. Every text I've composed had an exit built into it. Some angle I could deny late. But deniability was the previous policy.
The Yes ended it.
I pour a glass of water, drink half, and call Patrick before the glass is back on the counter.
He answers on the second ring. "Wallace."
There’s total quiet behind him, quiet that doesn’t disclose where he is. And with whom.
Every sentence I own files out of the building.
"Am I interrupting?" My voice sounds flat, like I’m buying time by the letter. Which I am.
"No."
Nothing else. He isn't going to fill any space, that's clear inside two words. I can hear him deciding not to help me, and the decision sounds comfortable.
"The gala seating chart," I begin, and immediately hate myself. "Table nine has a conflict."
"It does." A moment of silence. "You called me at ten PM to discuss table nine?"
My mouth feels dry. "It seemed urgent."
"Mmhmm."
He lets the sound sit. He knows. He's been standing on the far side of this exact conversation for days, owning the clock.
I switch the phone to my other ear and put my free hand flat on the counter. In real negotiations there's a table, a stack of papers, and faces to read for leverage. Tonight there's just granite under my palm and my pulse behind my ears.
"I have a request."
It comes out in the contract voice, without affect, a voice with no body attached.
On the other end, a breath catches. Slight, half a second, but I've spent three weeks learning this man's breathing, and he just held his.
"I'm listening," he finally says.
My hand presses flatter on the stone. There's no draft to delete now. No icon to hit. Just my mouth, and the thing it's been circling for two days.
"Next time." My throat tries to close. I talk through it. "The two of you... Call me."
Silence from Milwaukee. Total.
With the last of my mental strength, I add, "Don't tell me when."
Ninety miles north, a man I've been at war with for eight years is holding a phone and, unless my ears are lying, still holding his breath.
Then Patrick exhales, long and slow, and I can hear the smile inside every drawn-out syllable as he says, "There he is."
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. "Don't."
"That wasn't a joke, Wallace." His voice has dropped somewhere warmer. "Noted. No warning."
"Fine." I clear my throat. "That'd be all."
"Okay." There’s a pause I can't read. Then, quieter, "Goodnight, Wallace."
"Goodnight."
He hangs up first, and I stand in my kitchen holding a phone with nobody in it.
The shaking starts one beat later, once it's safe, the way it does after a collision the body schedules for later. Hands first, then something high in my chest.
I asked.
Out loud, on record, in a voice that mostly held, and whatever happens next is out of my hands, which is the deal I made, which was the entire point, and which I already regret, and want, and regret wanting.
I sleep badly and wake up hard twice.
***
NIGHT ONE.
The battery reaches one hundred percent by eight and my phone travels with me from kitchen to couch to bathroom sink.
Volume checked twice. Do Not Disturb, off.
At eleven I take it to bed and set it on the nightstand, then move it closer, and at eleven-thirty I catch myself flat on my back in the dark, fully awake, hands folded on my chest, listening intently to a phone not ring.
Night two.
At ten fifty-eight the phone goes off while I'm brushing my teeth, and I answer without looking, foam in my mouth in under one ring.
"Whoa," Becker says. "Were you holding it?"
I spit. "No."
"You—"
"What do you want?"
"Resistance bands. Bring your spare tomorrow? Mine died a warrior's death." There’s a pause, and I can hear his antenna extending. "Why do you sound like that?"
"Like what?"
"Disappointed. Like I'm the wrong—" The pause turns interested, which is the most dangerous thing a Becker pause can do. "Who were you expecting?"
"Nobody. You'll get the bands."
I hang up before he can come up with a theory.
The disappointment has texture, that's the inconvenient part.
It sits under my sternum for another hour while I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Three weeks ago my nights had a shape I'd run for a decade.
Tape, stretch, food, sleep. Now they have a frequency in them, a channel I keep open on purpose.
Night three.
By eleven, I've built the case, and it's a strong case. Exhibit one: I asked, and specifically surrendered the scheduling. Exhibit two: three nights is a long-ass time. Exhibit three: they have each other. Same city, probably the same bed. And no real need for a third man's breathing in the room.
Maybe the ask changed it. Maybe the whole thing ran on me not asking.
Maybe trying to insert myself into it, on purpose, collapsed something that only worked as theft.
Maybe Patrick heard the request, heard how much was packed under it, and the two of them are up there now, working out how to let the big one down easy.
At half past eleven, I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, drafting again. This one is short.
Me: Disregard the request.
Three words and everything goes back. The campaign stays professional, the thread stays quiet, my nights return to their old shape. Better to end it from in here, on my terms, before—
The phone rings in my hand.
P.G.
The draft vanishes behind the incoming-call screen, and takes my exit with it.
My whole body locks. Almost midnight, my bedroom dark, and the name I gave up on twenty minutes ago lighting the room blue.
This is what you asked for.
The thought does nothing useful to my pulse.
I answer on the third ring, and my voice comes out wrecked before anything has even happened to it. "Hello?"