Page 48 of The Faceoff

“Okay,” she says, gently. “That’s real. That’s a real con. But can I push on it?”

“You’re going to anyway.”

“The people who’d be asking what’s he doing with her are not people whose opinion you have ever once cared about. You don’t care what Bella thinks. You don’t care what the puck bunnies think. You spent two years not knowing Beau Sorensen existed in any way that mattered to you, and you were fine.” She tilts her head. “Who, specifically, are you afraid is going to ask the question?”

I don’t answer right away.

The honest answer is me. The honest answer is that the question what’s he doing with her is one I’ve already asked, on the sidewalk, in the exact moment he said fake dating — I looked at him and looked at myself and did the math in front of him, out loud, told him no one would buy it because he has a type and I’m not it. The fear isn’t that other people will ask. It’s that they’ll ask and they’ll be right.

But I’m not saying that to Margo with chicken in my lap. Some things are true and still don’t need to be said out loud at seven on a Tuesday.

“Next con,” I say instead.

Margo lets me have it. She files the dodge — I watch her file it — and moves on. “Sex,” she says.

I choke on a mouthful of quinoa. “What?”

“Is sex included?” She’s completely serious. “It’s a real logistical question, Sloane, don’t look at me like that. People fake-date and then the lines get — you know. Blurry. It’s a whole genre. So. Is it on the table or off the table, because that changes the entire risk profile.”

“Absolutely not.” It comes out faster and flatter than anything I’ve said all night. “Off the table. Nailed to the floor under the table. He’s a manwhore, Margo. He said himself he’s not hurting for hookups, which is a sentence a person only says about themselves if it’s load-bearing. The entire reason this works is that it’s a transaction. The second it’s anything else, it’s not a transaction, it’s just me making a catastrophic decision with a person who’s congenitally incapable of —” I stop. “No. The answer is no. It’s a no.”

Margo studies me with the mild, knowing patience of a woman who has watched me protest things at length before.

“That’s a very long no,” she observes.

“It’s an appropriately sized no.”

“It’s a no with a lot of supporting documentation.”

“Margo.”

“I’m just saying. When you actually don’t care about something you say no and then you talk about something else. You just gave the no a thesis and three footnotes.” She holds up both hands before I can fire back. “Filing it. Moving on. Con three, real one: you’d have to spend time with him. Actual time. You can’t fake a relationship from a distance — you’d have to be at the games, at the parties, around the team, around him, convincingly, for weeks. Maybe months. And you don’t like athletes, and you don’t trust easily, and you’d be signing up to perform intimacy with a near-stranger in front of a campus that gossips for sport.” She lets that sit. “That’s a lot. That’s genuinely a lot, and I don’t want to talk you into something that’s going to cost you more than it gives you.”

And that’s the one that’s actually true. Not the spotlight, not the sex, not the casting problem. The time. The proximity. The slow accumulation of hours with a person whose face does something when a clipboard comes out, who matched his stride to mine without making a thing of it, who said I’m offering to be the thing plainly, no performance in it, in a way I have not been able to stop turning over since.

Spending time with Beau Sorensen is not a con because it would be unpleasant.

It’s a con because I’m not entirely sure it would be.

I don’t say that either.

“Pro,” I say. “Counter to your con. It’s time-limited. It’s not forever. It’s — a season, maybe less. Until Evan gives up and Bella moves on. There’s a built-in exit. Nobody gets attached to a thing with an expiration date stamped on it.”

Margo gives me a look that could curdle the lemon sauce.

“Sloane. Sweetheart. The single most attachable thing in the entire world is a thing with an expiration date stamped on it. Have you met humans?”

“I’ve met enough of them to know better.”

“You’ve met enough of them to be scared, which is not the same as knowing better, it just feels the same from the inside.” She says it kindly, which is the only reason I let her say it at all. “But fine. Exit clause. Pro. I’ll allow it.” She picks her plate back up, takes a bite, chews thoughtfully. “Okay. Where are we. Pros: Evan stops, cover for Yale season, built-in exit. Cons: you’d be more visible, you’d have to spend real time with a guy you’ve decided not to trust, and there’s a non-zero risk the whole thing gets complicated in ways neither of you can plan for.” She looks at me. “That’s a fair ledger?”

“That’s a fair ledger.”

“How’s the Evan situation, actually? Not the principle of it. The reality. How bad is the texting?”

I don’t say anything. I pick up my phone from where I’d set it face-down on the arm of the sofa, and I unlock it, and I pull up the thread, and I hand it to her.

Margo takes it. She scrolls. I watch her face move down the screen — the texts from tonight, and the ones from this morning, and the ones from last night, and the ones from the four weeks before that, the steady drip of them, we need to talk and you can’t avoid me forever and I made a mistake and call me and come on Sloane and the times he showed up rendered into the times he said he was just nearby, the whole archive of a man who has decided my no is a negotiating position.