Page 16 of The Faceoff

My jaw unclenches slowly.

I breathe out.

A hand comes down on my shoulder from behind, and I don’t startle because the footfall is Cash’s. Cash moves heavy. He always has.

“So,” he says.

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I know what you’re saying.”

“Bullet.” He pauses for effect. “Dodged.”

“Cash.”

“I’m being serious.” He comes around to stand next to me, which takes some navigation because the hallway is narrow and Cash is not small. “She would’ve poked a hole in the condom and saddled you for eighteen to life, I’m telling you. I’ve thought this since November. I said it to Wyatt. Wyatt agreed.”

“Wyatt’s too nice to agree with that.”

“Wyatt said, and I’m quoting, ‘I see what you’re saying.’”

“That’s not agreement, that’s acknowledgment.”

“With Wyatt, those are the same thing.”

A low whistle from the kitchen doorway. Wyatt, materializing with a fresh beer and the expression of someone who witnessed everything from a sensible distance and has decided the sensible distance is no longer necessary.

“That was something,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You okay?”

I take the beer he’s holding out before I register he was holding it out for himself. He doesn’t say anything about it. That’s the thing about Wyatt — he gives things away and makes you feel like it was your idea.

“Yeah,” I say again.

Cash grabs himself a drink from the counter behind him. “She’ll be fine,” he says. “She doesn’t actually want you. She wants the idea of you. There’s a difference, and honestly it’s a relief, because the idea of you is way less of a pain in my ass than the actual you.”

This is sharper than Cash usually runs. I look at him.

He shrugs. “I pay attention.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. You just never notice because I’m entertaining.”

This is true, and it’s also more than he usually gives away at a party at eleven on a Thursday, and I let it sit without pulling on it. There’s something under the surface of Cash’s summer that I haven’t gotten to yet, and I’m not going to get to it in the hallway. He knows that. He said it here because he knew I’d leave it here.

“She said something about three other girls,” I say.

“She was fishing.” He says it without hesitation. “She wanted you to ask who they were. Don’t ask who they were.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”