7. Josie #2
And Logan opens his mouth, and nothing comes out, because there is no way to answer that question that doesn't sound like exactly what it is. The back of his neck goes pink. He makes a small sound, the start of a word that doesn't make it.
“Anyway,” Hudson says, smooth as anything, already moving us along. “Coffee's locked. How we met, that's the big one, that's the one your family will dig into.” He taps the pad. “I'm thinking farmers market. You drop a peach.”
“We are not doing the peach.”
“You didn't even let me finish.”
“We did the peach on Wednesday, Hudson. I shot it down then too. The peach is dead. Bury the peach.”
He takes a moment, like he's burying the peach. Then, undeterred, “Fine. No peach. But we need something, and it should be boring enough that your aunt can't poke a hole in it.”
“It should be true,” I say. “You're all from the Hollow, I moved up from Pine Valley for the teaching job, we met around town. That's it. Nobody can poke a hole in a thing that actually happened.”
“That's not a story, that's a census form.”
“It's a story I can't blow, Hudson. Do you understand how rare that is for me.”
He concedes the point with a hand to his chest, wounded, and writes it down the boring way.
“Next question.” He clicks the pen. “Who fell first.”
“Does it matter?”
“It always matters. Your aunt's going to ask. Somebody's going to want the story of who knew first.” He looks around the table, delighted. “So. Volunteers.”
“Me,” Logan says.
He says it plainly, the way he says everything, eyes on the pad, and it lands in the middle of the table and just sits there, too honest, while the rest of us catch up to the fact that he wasn't answering the question about the fake version.
For one second nobody says anything.
Then Logan looks up, registers four people looking at him, and the back of his neck goes red. “For the story,” he says. “Obviously. For the cover. Somebody has to have fallen first, structurally.”
“Structurally,” Finn repeats, the closest he's come to a joke all night.
“It's a strong answer,” Hudson says, recovering for him, kind about it in a way that makes me like him more. “Carpenter falls first, slow burn, very believable. Writing it down.” He does. “Okay. What do we call each other. Pet names. Every real pack has them.”
“We are not doing pet names,” I say.
“Your mother will expect at least one. Sweetheart. Baby. Darlin'.” He tries them on like hats. “Sugar. Pumpkin. Snookums—”
“No,” Finn says, not even looking up.
“I'm just saying, a pack with zero pet names reads cold.”
“Then I'll be cold.”
“Frostbite,” Hudson says, instantly, like it's been waiting in the chamber. “Glacier. Sub-Zero. Oh, I like Sub-Zero—”
Finn groans, low, the sound of a man regretting the entire week. “Absolutely not.”
“Relax.” Hudson still doesn't look up from the pad. “The pet name wasn't even for you. It was for Josie.” He lets that sit for exactly one beat. “You made it about yourself, big guy. That's a you thing.”
Finn opens his mouth. Closes it. Has, visibly, no defense, and the look on his face is so deeply put-upon that I lose it.
And I laugh, the real one, surprised out of me, because Finn's mouth has done the thing again, the quarter-second almost-smile he kills before it finishes, and for the first time all night the three of them feel less like three strangers I talked into a corner and more like something that might, with enough rehearsal, pass for a pack.
And then Finn sets his fork down, and the room shifts, because everyone can feel him deciding to say a thing.
“Two of my own,” he says. “Since we're doing rules.”
“Lay them out,” Hudson says, pen hovering.
“One. The second that reunion's over, this is over.
We don't drag it out. No slow fade, no keeping it going for appearances, no 'as long as we're already doing it.
' It ends clean, that weekend, and we go back to our lives.” He says it to the room, but it lands square in me, a man making very sure of the way out before he'll agree to walk in.
“Two. My mother never finds out it was fake.
Ever. Not after. Not as a funny story in ten years.
She's going to be so happy about this she'll embarrass everyone, and she gets to stay happy. That's the price.”
The room's quiet. Logan's looking at Finn with something careful, like he's heard the second condition and understood more of it than Finn said.
“Both fair,” I say, because they are, and because the alternative is sitting with how the first one made me feel. “It ends clean. Your mom never knows. Hudson, write it down.”
“Got it,” Hudson says softly, and writes it down. He doesn't make a joke. That's how I know the night just got real.
It's almost nine when Hudson springs the tote on us, and it turns out to be a hoodie.
His hoodie. The fastest way to look like you belong to somebody, he says, is to be wearing their stuff, and if I'm going to walk into that reunion in one of their hoodies like it's the most natural thing in the world, I should get used to it now, on a schedule, for accuracy.