Chapter 10
First Week Jitters
Gary arrived back at the apartment late Tuesday evening with the same prickling feeling on the back of his neck that had followed him across campus that morning — except now he knew enough to give it a name.
He took Marv out for a quick loop around the block, scanning the parked cars and doorways with the casual attention of a man trying not to look like he was scanning anything, and found nothing obvious.
Which, he was beginning to understand, was not the same as nothing.
He fed the dog, opened his coursework, forced himself to stay with it for two hours — the kind of studied normalcy that was less about genuine focus and more about giving himself something to do with his hands while his mind worked the problem from a different angle.
He set up office hours in the student portal for Tuesday and Thursday mornings, seven to nine, figuring that staying visible and occupied was better than the alternative, that Professor Jenkins would appreciate the initiative.
His phone had two messages he hadn't answered.
One from Sarah, a follow-up to the lake — brief, careful, the tone of a woman who had said the important things already and was giving him room to sit with them.
One from Belle: Are you around campus this afternoon? Following up on last night's adventure with a smile that Gary could hear through the screen without trying.
He stared at Belle's message for a moment.
He had meant to respond hours ago and hadn't, which was both true and convenient.
He typed something brief — sorry, the day ran away from me, still getting my footing on everything — sent it before he could revise it into something more honest or less honest, either of which would have been worse.
He put the phone face-down on the desk.
Everything inside him understood that Belle was dangerous — not in the way Passer had been dangerous, not the specific threat of a man with a grudge and a fire department behind him, but the quieter, more complicated danger of a woman caught in something she hadn't fully chosen who was using Gary as the first available door out.
He knew this. He could map it clearly. And he also knew, with the equally clear-eyed self-knowledge of a man who had made this particular category of mistake before, that knowing it and acting on it were two different things.
He called Lou.
The conversation was brief. Thursday still worked for him, he said. He'd be there in the afternoon to help move product. Lou sounded genuinely pleased, which made it slightly worse.
Gary fell asleep with the ceiling fan going and his mind still running the geometry of the situation — Sarah on one side, Belle on the other, Jed and Brett somewhere in the tunnels underneath all of it, Bill at the Sunday dinner table with his patient, unhurried eyes seeing everything and reporting to whoever was currently paying him.
One thing he was certain of: Stu couldn't know any of this.
Not yet, maybe not ever. Stu had a pregnant wife, a five-year-old, and a career that was supporting all of it.
Gary had walked into this alone and he was going to have to navigate it the same way.
Keeping Stu's family on the other side of whatever door this was turning out to be felt like the only clean decision available to him.
He fell asleep spinning and woke up in a cold sweat.
? ? ?
The nightmare dissolved the moment he opened his eyes, leaving only the residue — the specific, unpleasant film of a bad dream remembered in sensation rather than detail. But one line had survived the transition into waking, arriving fully formed and unmistakable.
You fucked my wife.
Not Jed's voice. Passer's.
Gary sat up in the dark of his Renton apartment and sat with that for a moment.
Steve Passer, fire captain of Rosetown, had apparently followed him to Texas in his subconscious, which felt both unfair and entirely consistent with Gary's track record of leaving places that hadn't entirely let go of him.
He rubbed his face, looked at the time — four-fifty-three — and decided sleep was finished.
Marv, sensing the shift, raised his head from the foot of the bed with the expression of a dog prepared to participate in whatever came next, provided it didn't involve stairs.
"Come on," Gary said.
They went out into the pre-dawn dark of the campus, the air finally cool enough to feel like a different season than the afternoon, the paths empty and lit by the kind of overhead lighting that makes everything look slightly more cinematic than it is.
Gary walked without a destination, letting the movement do the work, Marv threading alongside him at the measured pace of a dog who understood that some walks were about the human rather than the smells.
By the time he got back to the apartment, made coffee, ran through the first chapter of reading for Jenkins' seminar, the sky had gone from black to the particular grey-blue of early morning.
He showered, checked his bag, walked to the gym with the settled, deliberate energy of a man who has decided that the only response to a complicated situation is to stay busy and wait for the shape of it to become clearer.
He was coming out at six-thirty, still pulling his jacket on, when Sue materialized on the path ahead of him.
She took one look at his face and said, "You want to tell me something?"
Gary laughed, which was not what he'd intended. "Sarah?"
"I know everything that happens with Sarah. I've known her since high school." She tilted her head. "I'm sorry you got dropped into this so fast. In my defense, I blame Marv."
Gary thought about Friday night — the screech, the stampede of women, Marv's imperial patience in the middle of it all. "He really did start it."
"He absolutely started it." She shifted her bag on her shoulder.
"I have two classes this morning, but I owe you breakfast and a proper conversation.
Thursday — Café Texas, before your office hours.
I might be able to help make some of this less catastrophic.
" A pause. "Or at least explain how it got this complicated this fast."
"You think you can?"
"Probably not entirely. But I know more than you do right now, which is worth something."
Gary looked at her. In a few days, Sue had gone from the tall blonde at the divorce party to the person who seemed most likely to actually be on his side in a situation that was rapidly developing sides.
He trusted her in the particular, instinctive way you trust someone who could have caused you more trouble than they did and chose not to.
"Thursday," he said. "Six."
She nodded, already moving. "And Saturday."
"Sue—"
"Line dancing." She said it with the cheerful finality of a woman who considered this non-negotiable. "Six at the café, line dancing at eight-thirty. I run a tight schedule."
She was gone before he could construct a reasonable objection.
? ? ?
Wednesday moved fast in the way days do when you fill them correctly.
Class and working as a graduate assistant, a lunch he ate at his desk, an afternoon of reading that he got further into than expected.
Leftovers from the Steele dinner for an early supper — brisket that had, impossibly, improved in the fridge — homework until ten, at which point he closed the book with the specific satisfaction of a man who had kept his head down for an entire day and found it productive.
Marv approved of the quiet day. He'd spent most of it sleeping in different locations around the apartment in a rotating schedule that seemed to be optimizing for afternoon light, and came to bed at ten with the settled ease of a dog who had no outstanding concerns.
Gary lay in the dark and thought about Thursday.
? ? ?
He left Marv at the apartment Thursday morning — a decision that Bryan's expression at the counter made immediately correct.
"No Marv?"
"He's taking the day off. I'll take a bag to go though."
Bryan shook his head with the exaggerated disappointment of a man who had made his position clear.
He pulled a coffee and assembled a bag of biscuits without being asked — proper Texas biscuits, tall and flaky, the kind that required no improvement — set them on the counter with a small container of gravy alongside that Gary hadn't ordered and wasn't going to refuse.
He took the corner table, the one with a clear sightline to the door, and sat with his coffee and tried to remember the last time he'd walked into a conversation fully prepared for what was in it.
He was still trying when Sue came through the door.
She moved through the café with the easy confidence of a regular — nodding at Bryan, scanning the room without looking like she was scanning it — and found Gary in the corner.
She hugged him when she reached the table, the full version, both arms, the kind that lasts two seconds longer than a casual hug and means something different.
Gary found himself leaning into it more than he'd expected.
"I needed that," he said, when she stepped back.
"I could tell from the look on your face when I walked in." She sat down, poured coffee from the carafe Bryan had already delivered, and looked at him with the direct, unhurried attention of a woman about to say something she'd thought through. "Bad news first, you said?"
"You only know half of it," Gary said. "So yes."