Page 15 of Love All
From Charlotte Astor, quiet is a notarized document. She doesn’t do it for effect. She does it because the part of her that fires a comeback every nine-tenths of a second has briefly run out of objections, and she’d rather you didn’t notice. I notice. I always notice. I stand on an empty court and watch the most relentless person I’ve ever met run out of reasons to say no to a good thing, and I get that mid-point feeling, a ball hanging at the very top of its arc, the suspended instant before it picks which way everything goes.
“What?” I say, all wounded innocence, because I am physically incapable of leaving a silence alone while I’m winning. “You don’t love love?”
“What can I say.” She huffs it out, rolling her eyes at the darkening sky like it has personally let her down. “I love love.”
“So youdolove love.”
“I love when you’re quiet. You’re so handsome when your mouth shuts.”
“I know a couple of ways you can keep it shut.”
“That’s a threat, not an offer,” she informs the sky.
“With me they’re frequently the same thing. It’s a feature.”
“It’s a personality disorder with good cheekbones.”
“You think I have good cheekbones.”
“I think you have a gate to move out of, and a plan to go write that isn’t charming.”
She rolls her eyes hard enough that I fear for the muscle. But she doesn’t say no. She doesn’t say yes either, Charlotte Astor would sooner be waterboarded than say yes to me out loud on a first ask — but she hitches the bag higher, turns for the gate, and says over her shoulder, in the flat tactical voice she saves for terms:
“If we did this —if— it would be for her. Not for you. There is no version where it’s for you.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“And you’d do exactly what I said, when I said it, with no improvising, because improvising is—”
“Two people making separate mistakes at the same time. I was listening. I always listen to you. It’s the best part of my day and I resent it.”
“Ground rules.” Still walking, ticking them off the way a prosecutor reads counts. “One. Indie never knows we touched it. If it works, it works because two people found their own way to each other, and they get to believe that for the rest of their lives, because they’ll have earned the belief. Two. We do not lie. Not to either of them, not once. We arrange the room; we do not fake the feelings. The first time you forge a text or invent a feeling that isn’t there, I’m out, and I take a swing at you on the way.”
“Vicious. But reasonable.”
“Three.” Her voice changes — the steel goes quieter and somehow harder. “If at any point this starts hurting her instead of helping her, we stop. That second. However close we are to the end. Her, over the plan. Every single time.”
“Her over the plan. Every time.” I mean it, and I let her hear that I mean it. “I mean it.”
“I know you do. That’s the irritating part.”
She stops at the gate. Doesn’t turn around. And eventually I’ll learn this about her, the way you learn a serve by getting aced with it: when Charlotte stops with her back to you and takes one extra second before she goes, it isn’t hesitation. It’s her deciding to let you see that you got one past her. From anyone else, nothing. From her, the whole stadium on its feet.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “After practice. Bring a plan that isn’t charming. I’ll bring one that works. We’ll see whose survives contact.”
And she’s gone, through the gate and into the dark, and I’m standing on empty court four with a basket of balls I still haven’t picked up and the specific, disqualifying lightness of a man who has just been toldnoin the exact tone other people use foryes.
Here’s the thing I’m not going to say to Julian, or Cole, or the inside of my own head if I can help it.
I wanted to win that more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time. Not the bet,that.The argument. And I won it the only way that counts with her: by putting the angle down and meaning it. By being, for ninety seconds on an empty court, a man with nothing up his sleeve. She saw me with no rail to grab, and she didn’t laugh, and she didn’t run.
She gave me terms.
I told Julian I didn’t know whether I could survive being sincere at Charlotte Astor. Turns out I can. Turns out it’s the best ninety seconds I’ve had in years, and the dangerous part is that I already want to do it again.
I pick up the basket. I’ve earned the right to clean my own court. I’m smiling at a net post like it said something kind.
Julian is waiting by the gate when I finally haul the basket off, which means he watched at least the back half from somewhere, because Julian doesn’t loiter. Juliansurveils.
