5. Beau #2
I’m also aware that Bella just told her friend that I’ll be texting again in a week, which — no — and that Evan is operating on the same confidence that my absence makes space for his plan, which also no, and that both of them are counting on a version of events where I stepped in tonight because it was convenient and walked away because it doesn’t matter, and something in that calculation sits wrong with me in a way that I’m not going to pick at right now.
I run a hand through my hair.
Then I go back inside and find Wyatt.
Wyatt is in the kitchen doing the post-party version of cleanup that he does without being asked — cups in the trash, surfaces wiped down, the systematic competence of someone who was raised to leave spaces the way he found them. He looks up when I come in.
“Porch,” he says.
“Porch,” I confirm.
He hands me a trash bag without comment. I start helping. We work in the easy quiet of people who don’t need to fill it, and for a few minutes I just think about the cups and the counters and the task of making the kitchen functional again.
“The girl,” Wyatt says, eventually.
“Sloane.”
“Wren’s roommate.”
“Cash brief you too?”
“Cash briefs everyone.” He ties off a bag. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
He doesn’t push it. That’s Wyatt’s version of a gift — the door held open without pressure, the question asked once and set down.
I’ve been grateful for it more times than I’ve told him, which is the same number of times I’ve been grateful for anything in this house, which is too many to count and which I keep to myself because some things are better as understood than as said.
I’m still thinking.
The thinking has a shape now. I can feel it the way I feel a play developing on the ice, the pattern assembling before I’ve consciously identified it — positions, angles, where everything is going to be in three seconds.
I’ve been doing this since I was twelve.
It’s the part of my brain that works fast, the part that doesn’t care about the letters on the page, and when it fires on something it’s usually right.
The problem is Evan. Not in the abstract — specifically the Evan who has a plan and a timeline and a read on Sloane that is accurate enough to be uncomfortable. The Evan who is going to give her a week and then show up with flowers and is counting on isolation to do the rest of the work.
The solution, theoretically, is the removal of the isolation.
Which requires — also theoretically — someone whose presence changes Evan’s math. Someone visible, someone he’d have to factor in. Someone who closes the door he’s counting on being open.
Which is a completely reasonable line of thinking that I am definitely not applying to myself.
I finish the trash bag.
“I need to talk to Sloane Beckett,” I say.
Wyatt looks at me with the calm attention he brings to all information. “Okay,” he says, like I’ve told him the weather.
“I have an idea.”
“Does the idea involve the guy who grabbed her arm?”
“Kind of,” I admit, knowing I can admit something like this to Wyatt.
He is quiet for a moment. Then: “Cash is going to have opinions.”
“Cash always has opinions.”
“These ones are going to be loud.”
“I know.”
He nods once, and hands me another bag, and we finish the kitchen without discussing it further, because Wyatt Calloway understands that some things need to finish developing before they’re ready to be talked about, and this is one of them.
Cash finds me on the porch again at midnight.
I’ve been out here for twenty minutes, the party fully gone now, the house quiet behind me. He comes through the screen door with two waters, hands me one, drops into the chair beside me.
“You’ve got a face,” he opens with.
“I have a face.”
“The thinking face. The one that means you’ve already decided something and you’re just waiting for the right moment to tell us.”
“I haven’t decided anything.”
“You’ve definitely decided something.” He stretches his legs out, studies the lamppost. “Does it have to do with Sloane Beckett?”
I look at him.
He spreads his hands. “I’m observant.”
“You’re annoying.”
“Also true. Both things can be—”
“I overheard Bella,” I say. “On the porch. Earlier. With two of her friends.”
Cash goes still in the way he goes still when he’s actually listening, the performance dropping away. “And?”
“Evan’s going to give her—Sloane—a week and then show up with flowers. Bella said she’ll fold.” I pause. “Bella also said I’d be texting her again within the week, which—”
“Which, no.”
“Which, no,” I agree.
Cash is quiet for a moment. The good quiet — the one where he’s actually thinking rather than loading the next joke. I wait for it.
“So you want to make it harder for him to run his plan,” he says.
“It’s not right that he gets to count on her having no one.”
“No,” Cash agrees. “It’s not.” Another pause. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that Evan’s whole plan relies on me stepping away. On me being the guy who stepped in once because it was convenient and then went back to his own life.”
“And you don’t want to go back to your own life.”
“I want him to not see me coming.”
Cash turns his head and looks at me with the expression he wears when he’s deciding how honest to be. “Beau.”
“What?”
“You’ve known this girl for forty minutes.”
“I know.”
“You stepped in because some guy grabbed her arm.”
“I know.”
“That’s — admirable, genuinely, but that’s captain behavior. That’s not—” He stops. Studies me. “Unless…”
“It’s not unless anything. It’s a practical solution to a specific problem.”
“The specific problem being that some guy is going to use her being alone against her.”
“Yes.”
“And your practical solution is…”
I breathe out. “If she’s not alone, he can’t.”
Cash stares at me for a long moment. Then he makes a sound that is not quite a laugh — more like the exhale of a person who saw something coming from a long way off and has finally watched it arrive.
“Your grandmother,” he says, “is going to be insufferable about this.”
“My grandmother doesn’t need to know.”
“Your grandmother already knows. She’s known for two years. She’s just been waiting for you to catch up.” He shakes his head, but he’s almost smiling. “So what’s the plan? You just show up and tell Sloane Beckett you’re going to be her fake boyfriend?”
“I haven’t worked out the specifics.”
“The specifics matter.”
“I know the specifics matter.”