Page 44 of Man Advantage

Leo would swap. Leo wouldn’t even ask why. That was the problem. Leo wouldn’t need to ask, and by morning, Dawson would know, and by the weekend, the whole town would. Halsey would ask. Halsey would ask loudly, at breakfast, in front of Riggs. No version of it didn’t end with twenty guys knowing something Ford had told exactly one person, nine hours ago, on a porch.

He’d figure the rooms out. Not tonight. Tonight, there was a hallway and a rookie between them, and nothing he could do about either one.

He picked up his phone.

You awake

Cole

Leo snores. So yes.

Ford’s thumb was over the keys. He could feel his pulse in it.

I told Nadine about us.

The screen stayed empty. Ford lay there, watched it, and felt his stomach start to go. Then the dots.

What did she say?

She’s happy. Said I should’ve told her sooner.

She’s right

Wish I was there

Me too.

He turned the phone face-down on his chest and lay there with Halsey breathing in the next bed.

Sunday. He ran it in his head like a shooter coming down the wing, looking for the angle. After dinner, when she was full and easy. Both of them at the table, so she’d see it was the two of them. He’d say it plain. Cole and I are together. She’d know what that meant. She’d been to Leo and Dawson’s for a barbecue. She’d seen them hold hands.

What he couldn’t run was what her face would do. Whether she’d go quiet, like she did when a thing was too big to ask about. Whether she’d look at Cole differently. Whether she’d look at him differently.

He’d told Nadine. He’d told her in the plain words and Nadine had said, “I’m glad,” and the roof hadn’t come down. That was the only thing he had to go on, and he held on to it in the dark until he fell asleep.

Charlotte had been talking for ten minutes about a hamster.

It wasn’t hers. It belonged to a girl in her class, and it had done something at show-and-tell that Charlotte found so funny she’d had to stop twice to get her breath. Cole was leaning on his elbows across from her, listening like the hamster was the most important thing that had happened in the county that week.

Ford wasn’t listening. He’d stopped eating twenty minutes ago. His knee was going under the table, and he couldn’t make it stop.

He’d had the whole weekend. He’d had Friday, Saturday, and all of Sunday, and every time he’d opened his mouth there’d been a reason not to. She was tired. She was cranky. She was in the middle of something. Now the plates were empty, she was happy, and there was no reason left.

Cole looked at him over the top of her head. Ford saw him see the knee.

Cole gave him the smallest nod.

“Bug.” Ford’s voice came out wrong. He cleared it. “I want to tell you something.”

She stopped mid-hamster story. She looked from him to Cole and back, and Ford watched her read it, like she read everything. Six years old and she already knew that voice meant a grown-up was about to be serious.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. Nobody’s in trouble.”

Ford laid his hand on the table. Cole, after a moment, set his down next to it, close enough that their fingers touched. Ford watched her see it.

“Cole and me,” Ford said. “We’re together. Like a couple.”