Page 13 of The Faceoff

“You mentioned that too.”

“She’s very talented, Beau.”

“You’ve mentioned.”

A silence. Then Mormor says, with the precision of someone delivering the line she’s been warming up, “She’ll be at the shop on Thursday.”

I wait.

“If you were planning to come see me.”

“I come see you every week.”

“Thursday would be lovely.”

“Mormor.”

“I’m simply telling you my schedule.”

She is absolutely not simply telling me her schedule. Margaret Sorensen has been simply telling me her schedule four times in the last week, and every single one of those schedules has included the information that Sloane Beckett would be there. I don’t know what she expects to happen. I haven’t met the woman. Whitmore is a big school, and despite Sloane working for Mormor, we’ve never crossed paths. But Mormor still talks about her like she invented something.

“I’ll come Thursday,” I say.

“Wonderful.”

She sounds pleased in a way that should probably concern me more than it does.

After I hang up, I stand in the hallway for a second with the phone in my hand. Through the kitchen door I can hear Cash arguing with Theo about the party, Wyatt stirring something, the domestic noise of a house that functions. Outside, through the front window, the campus lights are coming on along the main path — the old iron ones that Whitmore put in three years ago and which everyone complained about at the time and which everyone now takes photos of in November when it snows.

My phone buzzes again.

Bella.

I pick it up. I type:

Hey. Not going to work. I meant it in May. I hope you’re good.

I hit send before I can revise it, which is the only way I can send things that matter. The revision is where I lose sentences. I’ve known this about myself for a long time.

I put the phone in my pocket and go back to the kitchen.

“Pasta’s done,” Wyatt says.

“Beautiful,” Cash replies.

Theo is already sitting at the table, which counts as enthusiasm from him.

Wyatt plates four bowls with the focus of someone who does not half-ass dinner, even when dinner is pasta and cheese, which it turns out is actually good — better than it has any right to be, given the source materials.

“You’re good at this,” I tell him.

“It’s just pasta.”

“It’s really good pasta.”

He shrugs. He doesn’t know how to take compliments, which is something I’ve noticed about Wyatt in the three years I’ve known him, and which I’ve never pointed out, because pointing it out would require explaining that I’ve been paying attention, and then he’d want to know why, and then we’d be having a conversation that neither of us is equipped for.

Cash points his fork at the center of the table. “Okay. The party. We’re doing this.”