Page 95 of Just One More Thing
“That is Jake’s hoodie.”
“I’m aware.”
“At—” He checks his watch. “Eight twenty-one in the morning.”
“Wayne.”
“In daylight.”
“Yes, Wayne. In daylight.”
He turns toward me in slow motion. “I knew it.”
“You knew what?”
“I’ve been tracking indicators. Eye sparkles. Stance proximity. Emotional lean angles.” He pats his pockets, looks around, mumbles, “Damn it,” then looks back up. “I had a chart.”
“You did not have a chart.”
“I absolutely had a chart.”
He spins in a circle, hopping up and down like that’ll help him see through structures and people, and bellows, “RYAN KNOX. WHERE YOU AT?”
“I’m right here,” Ryan says without moving.
Wayne points at him dramatically. “Tell them I had a chart.”
Ryan pulls the brim of his hat lower. “Yeah. He had a chart.”
Bethany mutters something under her breath. I glance at her. “Did you just call him Chuckie?”
She stares at me for a few seconds before answering. “No. I said fuck me.”
Wayne either doesn’t hear or decides to ignore her.
He leans toward Mo, and his voice loses the performance. “You look happy.”
Mo smiles. Big. “I am.”
Wayne looks skyward and mouths thank you like somebody upstairs finally answered his emails. Then he snaps right back into himself.
“Good,” he says briskly. “Because if this ends in emotional catastrophe, I will not recover.”
I won’t either.
Wayne points at me. “I mean it. I’ve emotionally invested in this relationship.”
“You’re not in this relationship.”
“I always believed.”
“You always bellowed.”
“Jake. Belief is loud.”
Mo gestures toward him as he turns and begins re-measuring imaginary airspace between cones. “Is he going to be okay?”
Before Ryan or I can answer, Wayne whips back around. “I knew it would happen at a public event.”
