Page 40 of Knot the Plan
So when Josie texts me Tuesday morning that she'sfine, just tired, don't worry about today, we can skip,I do not skip. I readfineandjust tiredanddon't worry,three separate lies stacked into one text by a woman who cannot lie.
I close the shop an hour early and drive to her place with no plan except the one I've had since roughly day two. Find out what's wrong, fix it, and don't let her see how much I want to.
She opens the door in an oversized shirt with her hair up and a look on her face like she's been losing an argument with herself all day.
“I said skip,” she says.
“You saidfine,” I say. “You're a bad liar, Porter. It's my favorite thing about you. Get your shoes.”
“Where are we going.”
“Nowhere. Out. I'm taking you to do nothing in a different location than the location you've been doing nothing in.”
She sighs and steps back to let me into the entryway, which is a victory I do not gloat about out loud. She goes hunting for her shoes, finds one, and starts hopping around swearing about the other.
It's under the side table, half kicked behind a basket. In plain sight if you're tall enough to be looking down at the right angle, which I am. I fish it out and hold it up.
She stops. Looks at the shoe. Looks at me. And I watch her decide not to make it a thing.
“Come on. You can be tired in my truck. The truck doesn't care.”
What I don't say is that she's been off all week, wound tight, running warm. I can smell it on her, brown sugar gone a little sharp at the edges, a scent doing something it isn't supposed to do, and every alpha instinct I own has been standing at attention about it for two days.
I'm not going to mention that either. She's got enough going on without me reading her like a paperback.
So I take her up to the overlook instead, the long way, windows down, no agenda. Somewhere around the second song she stops gripping her own hands in her lap and starts arguing with my music. Somewhere around the third she's laughing at me, really laughing, the wound-up thing in her face loosening a notch at a time.
I keep my eyes on the road and feel like I've gotten away with something enormous.
We endup sitting on my tailgate watching the valley go pink, a bag of the gas-station snacks she pretended she didn't want, her sock feet up on the bumper. And it's easy. Nobody warns you that's the part she'll get you with.
The bit was supposed to be the easy part. The flirting, the performance, themake it convincing.This isn't the bit. This is just sitting with her while the light goes, and it's the easiest thing I've done in years. And that scares me more than any of the rest of it.
“Okay,” she says, pointing a pretzel at me. “Settle something. You keep turning up with Sutter's bread. That's an eighty-minute round trip for a loaf. I've decided that's unhinged and I need to understand it.”
“It's not eighty,” I say. “It's seventy-five if the light at Carver's is with me.”
“You'vetimedit.”
“Of course I've timed it.” I steal one of her pretzels, which earns me a look of genuine betrayal. “Somebody told me once that Sutter's sourdough ruined her for all other bread. Stuck with me. So now I'm a man who drives seventy-five minutes for a loaf, and I blame her entirely.”
She goes still for half a second, like the math is trying to add up and she won't let it. Then she shakes it off. “Well. Whoever she is. She sounds like a woman of excellent taste.”
“The best,” I agree, and watch her decide not to look at me. “Point is, you can't call me unhinged. You'd drive seventy-five minutes too. You'd drive ninety.”
“I would not drive ninety minutes for bread.”
“You drove to that orchard stand in October and came back with so many cider donuts you had to give half to the staff room.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. “That'sseasonal.The donuts are only there in October. That's not a craving, that's awindow.”
“Listen to yourself, Porter. Listen to the passion in your voice.” I'm grinning. She's trying not to. “We're the same. It's tragic. You should accept it now and save us both the time.”
“We arenotthe same. You wrestled a man for a pie.”
“Different conversation, but yes, and I'd do it again.” I knock my shoulder into hers. “Your turn. Tell me a thing. Something you'd never tell anybody you were trying to impress.”
“That's a trap. If I tell you, that means I'm trying to impress you.”
