5. Beau #3
“She’s going to say no,” Cash says, not unkindly. “She just spent an hour at a party she didn’t want to be at and her ex grabbed her arm in public and she walked home at midnight. She is not going to be in the market for another male with a plan.”
This is fair. I’ve thought about it. She was composed the whole time — the kind of composed that costs something, the kind you don’t let slip, and she didn’t slip once, not where anyone else could see.
The spine thing, the arm she didn’t reach for, the dry precise sentences delivered to Evan while he got louder and she got quieter.
None of that is a person who wants someone to ride in and manage her situation.
Which means the pitch has to be honest about what it is.
Not a rescue. Not me stepping in again. A transaction — her problem, my problem, a solution that runs in both directions.
“Bella said I’d be texting her within a week,” I say. “She’s counting on it. Evan’s counting on Sloane being alone. They’re both running the same play, which is wait it out, because nothing changed.” I look at Cash. “Something has to change.”
Cash is quiet.
“She has a problem,” I say. “I have a problem. Those problems are different but they’re shaped the same.”
“You have a problem,” Cash repeats. “Bella.” He says her name with the precision of someone identifying a structural issue. “She came to your house tonight. Made a scene in your hallway. Told her friends she’d have you back in a week.”
“Yes.”
“And a girlfriend — a visible, present girlfriend — makes her math wrong.”
“Yes.”
“And conveniently also makes Evan’s math wrong.”
“Yes.”
He sits with it. I let him. Cash processes fast but he doesn’t always show it, and the fast version isn’t always the one worth having.
“It’s a weird idea,” he says finally.
“I know.”
“It requires her to agree.”
“Obviously.”
“And you have to actually talk to her first, which requires finding her, which requires—”
“Wren can get me to Sloane.”
Cash looks at me. “Wren doesn’t like you.”
“Wren tolerates me.”
“Wren finds you acceptable, which with Wren is basically the same as toleration.”
“Can you get me an introduction?”
He’s quiet for another moment. Then he exhales, long and slow, the sound of a person committing to something. “Yeah,” he says. “I can get you an intro.” He points at me. “But you should know that if Sloane Beckett says no, which she might, we never speak of this again.”
“Agreed.”
“And if she says yes—”
“She might say yes.”
“If she says yes,” Cash continues, “you’re going to have to actually do this. Convincingly. Which means you have to be present, and consistent, and you can’t just — go Captainy and disappear into preseason the second it gets complicated.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I look at him. “Yes.”
He holds the look for a second, checking the real answer the way he always does. Then he nods, and picks up his water, and we sit on the porch in the midnight quiet while the maples move in the dark overhead.
“Margaret,” he says again, after a while.
“I know.”
“She’s going to be completely—”
“I know, Cash.”
He grins. Drops it. We sit there for another few minutes, not talking, the campus quiet and the lamppost doing its lamppost thing, and I think about the shape of the plan and the fact that it depends entirely on a woman I spoke to for approximately five minutes agreeing that the plan makes sense.
She might say no.
She probably should say no.
But the thing about tonight — the Evan thing, the Bella thing, the overheard conversation on the porch — is that it painted a very clear picture of what the next few months look like if nothing changes.
Sloane, holding her line alone, with two people and their plans pushing at it from different sides.
Composed, precise, capable — and completely isolated, which is exactly what both of them are counting on.
She’s got no one else. He knows that.
I breathe out.
I press my thumb into the heel of my palm and look at the dark campus and think about Mormor, who has been saying this woman’s name to me for two years with the weight of someone placing a bet she’s confident about.
Mormor, who does not make mistakes about people.
Who reads them the way I read a room — fast, accurate, and without needing to be told twice.
I pull out my phone.
Scroll to her contact.
I don’t call her. I just look at her name for a second— Mormor because I put her in my phone when I was fourteen and never changed it — and think about the bookshop and the bell over the door and the girl who kept the whole place running while Mormor was in Vermont, who redid the new arrivals wall overnight on a Tuesday like it was nothing.
Margaret’s Sloane, I said.
The way she looked at me when I said it.
I put the phone away.
“I’m going to bed,” Cash says, standing, stretching.
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow, Wren.”
“Tomorrow, Wren,” I confirm.
He goes inside. I sit for a few more minutes — the semester six days old, preseason one week in, my shoulder its usual low-grade complaint — and then I go in after him, lock the door, take the stairs.
I don’t sleep great.
But I have a plan.