Page 22 of Knot the Plan
“Don't make me regret saying that.”
I'm not done, though, because the people-pleaser in me can't leave it lopsided. “And it goes both ways. If I do something and one of you isn't into it, same deal. Say so. I'm not going to be wounded that you don't want to hold my hand by the potato salad.”
Hudson opens his mouth, presumably to declare himself a very willing participant, but it's Logan who answers first, quiet, not looking up from the pad. “You won't have to worry about me.” Then, like he's heard how that sounded, he adds, “I mean, I'll tell you. If it's ever a problem. Which it won't be.”
“Smooth,” Hudson tells him.
“I wasn't going for smooth.”
Hudson lets it go, but he's grinning now, slow and entirely too pleased, and he turns that grin on me. “You said surprise you, by the way.”
“I saidif it sells it.”
“You said surprise me, I was there, three witnesses.” He's writing something on the pad and I cannot see what and I already don't trust it. “For the record, I'm an excellent reader of a room. You're in extremely capable hands, Porter. Some of them mine.”
“This is already a mistake.”
“Too late. Page one.” He turns the pad around. HER CALL, in his neat block capitals, underlined twice. “See? I made it official. The whole thing hangs off that line. Surprise included.”
And then it's Finn, and the room sort of turns toward him without moving, because he's the one nobody can predict.
He doesn't do the thing I expect, which is make it difficult.
“You'll tell us if you're not into something,” he says. Not a question. The voice is flat. The eyes aren't.
“I'll tell you.”
“Then we're fine.” He holds my gaze one beat longer than is comfortable. “And if either of these two can't read a room as well as they think they can, I'll handle it.”
“I can read a room,” Hudson says, wounded.
“We'll see.”
I sit back down, a little unsteady, and Hudson claps his hands once to break the moment, which is the most useful thing anyone's done all night.
“Beautiful,” he says. “Rule one, locked. Now. Logistics. How does a pack of four operate, for four people who have never done this before, fake or otherwise?”
It turnsout planning a fake pack is mostly arguing about details that don't matter while avoiding the one that does.
The coffee order's easy, because Logan already knows it. “Oat milk, extra cinnamon, and you hold it with both hands even when it's not cold,” he says, not looking up from the pad, like he's reading it off the side of the cup.
Hudson stops writing. “How do you know that?”
And Logan opens his mouth, and nothing comes out, because there is no way to answer that question that doesn't sound like exactly what it is. The back of his neck goes pink. He makes a small sound, the start of a word that doesn't make it.
“Anyway,” Hudson says, smooth as anything, already moving us along. “Coffee's locked. How we met, that's the big one, that's the one your family will dig into.” He taps the pad. “I'm thinking farmers market. You drop a peach.”
“We are not doing the peach.”
“You didn't even let me finish.”
“We did the peach on Wednesday, Hudson. I shot it down then too. The peach is dead. Bury the peach.”
He takes a moment, like he's burying the peach. Then, undeterred, “Fine. No peach. But we needsomething, and it should be boring enough that your aunt can't poke a hole in it.”
“It should be true,” I say. “You're all from the Hollow, I moved up from Pine Valley for the teaching job, we met around town. That's it. Nobody can poke a hole in a thing that actually happened.”
“That's not a story, that's a census form.”
