7. Beau #2
“You’re better at this than I expected.” She sits back on her heels.
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation. I’m reserving judgment on whether it’s a good thing.” She goes back to the box. “What do you get out of the story?”
“Bella sees I’m with someone. The whole thing she’s running — wait him out, he’ll come back — stops working, because there’s nothing to wait for. She moves on. Loudly, probably, but she moves on.”
“And the actual hooking up you’re allegedly not hurting for?”
“Pauses.” I say it flat. “For the duration. That’s part of it. You can’t fake-date someone and get caught leaving someone else’s room. The whole thing falls apart and we both look worse than when we started.”
She raises an eyebrow. “That’s a real cost for you.”
“It’s a manageable cost.”
“Is it?”
“Sloane.” I hand her the last book from the stack. “I’m not as much of a problem as you’ve decided I am.”
She takes the book. Holds it for a second without putting it down. “I haven’t decided you’re a problem. I’ve decided you’re an unknown variable, which is different, and which I’m allowed to be cautious about.”
“Fair.”
“I’ve also decided your grandmother thinks the sun rises and sets on you, and Margaret is the smartest person I know, so.” She sets the book on the pile. “That buys you some benefit of the doubt. Not all of it. Some.”
It lands somewhere under my ribs, that — Mormor’s good opinion translating into something for me, the two people in this room who matter most to her, sitting on the floor of her back room passing books back and forth.
I don’t say any of that. I breathe out, slow, and pick at the tape on the second box instead.
“What do you get out of it?” I ask. “Since we’re doing logistics.”
She’s quiet, sorting.
“Evan stops,” she says finally. “Maybe. If it works. He sees I’m with someone and the story he tells himself — that I’m coming back, that I just need time — stops being available to him.
He’s not —” she chooses the word “— he’s not someone who likes being made to look foolish.
If I’m visibly with someone, especially someone like you, it costs him too much to keep pushing.
He’d have to do it in front of people. In front of you. ”
“He’d back off.”
“He’d back off.” She sets the box cutter down. “Probably. I don’t actually know. I’ve never tried this approach. My previous approach was endurance, which —” the corner of her mouth again “— hasn’t been a resounding success.”
“Endurance is a bad strategy for that.”
“Is it?”
“You can’t outlast a guy who’s decided you’re a project.
He’s not on a clock. He’ll wait you out.
” I hear myself say it and realize it’s the same thing I said to Cash on the porch, almost word for word, and I don’t know when I got so sure about it.
“You have to change the math. You can’t just hope he gets bored. ”
She looks at me.
“That’s exactly what Margo said,” she says. “Last night. Almost word for word.”
“Margo sounds smart.”
“Margo is terrifying.” She stands, brushing dust off her jeans, and looks down at the half-sorted boxes. “I’m going to need more than forty minutes.”
“Take all the time you want.”
“I will.” She picks up the box cutter, sets it on the desk, and there’s a shift in her — the work-mode falling away, something more guarded coming up to replace it. “I have rules. If I do this. Which I haven’t decided.”
“Tell me the rules.”
“I’ll tell you the rules if I decide to do it. The rules are not a free preview.” She crosses her arms. “But I’ll tell you one of them now, so you can decide if it’s a dealbreaker.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t get to be nice to me when no one’s watching.”
I look at her.
“I mean it,” she says. “If we do this, it’s a performance, and I’m very good at performances, but they only work if everyone stays in their role.
So when we’re seen, fine, you can do the — the hand on the back, the looking-at-me thing, whatever sells it.
But when it’s just us, we’re not — this isn’t —” she stops, restarts, and I notice she’s using more words than she needs, which I file without knowing why I’m filing it.
“We’re colleagues. Business partners. You don’t buy me chai when there’s no one around to see it.
Because that’s how people get confused, and I don’t get confused, and I’d like to keep it that way. ”
It’s quiet in the back room. The alley light has gone more amber. Somewhere out front the bell rings, a customer, Mormor’s voice rising in greeting.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“That’s a reasonable rule.” I stand up. My shoulder pulls and I ignore it. “Colleagues. Business partners. Got it.”
She studies my face like she’s checking for a catch.
I let her. There’s no catch. It’s a reasonable rule, the kind you’d write into a contract, and the fact that something in me notes it as a rule rather than just agreeing to it — the fact that I notice myself filing no chai when no one’s watching like it’s information I might need later — is not a thing I’m going to look at right now.
“I still haven’t said yes,” she says.
“I know.”
“This was a hypothetical conversation about a thing I might not do.”
“Understood.”
“Stop agreeing with me so easily, it’s unnerving.”
“Sorry.”
“And stop apologizing.”
“Sor—” I catch it. “Okay.”
And she laughs.
It’s quick, and she shuts it down fast, like she’s annoyed at it for getting out — but it happened, a real one, lower than her speaking voice and surprised out of her, and I notice that I want to hear it again before I’ve finished noticing that it happened at all.
Late, as usual. My awareness running a beat behind the rest of me.
“Go finish your coffee,” she says. “Before Margaret decides you’ve abandoned her and starts narrating it to the customers.”