CHAPTER NINE
Wren had spent four days incorporating Freddie's feedback into a revised booth map that was now, objectively, better than the original, and she had done this thoughtfully and with genuine professional consideration, and if the result happened to reflect several of Freddie Gallagher's suggestions, that was simply the nature of good collaborative planning. She had redrawn the entrance flow twice. The result was excellent, and she was going to present it with the confidence it deserved. And the knowledge that if she missed anything Freddie would likely catch it and suggest how to fix it.
She liked that about him. Liked that he didn't throw her mistakes in her face. Liked that he spotted her shortcomings and only offered ways to strengthen them. Liked that he had her back.
Too bad he didn’t have much to say to her face.
The committee room was exactly as it had been the week before. Including the fact that Freddie was already there. He had his notebook open, his root beer — she had started to find the root beer funny — and the self-contained stillness that she was beginning to suspect was not indifference but something morelike concentration. He looked up when she came in, and she got the brief, direct quality of his attention before he looked back at the page. She set her folder down and told herself that was a perfectly normal way for a person to look at another person.
"Right," Wren said, because she was a woman who began things. She unclipped the sage tab and spread the revised map across the table. "I've reworked the layout. The entrance flow is improved — I've moved the craft booths back one row so the main walkway opens up immediately, and the food vendors are now on the western side, which resolves the—" she caught herself, "—the issue we identified last week. I've also adjusted the positioning near the music stage."
"You moved the florist," he said.
"Yes."
"It's better."
"I know," she said.
He looked up at her then. There was something in it — brief, unreadable — before he pulled the map toward him and made a note in his own notebook. His handwriting was small and precise from what she could see; the letters slightly slanted, controlled. There was something almost familiar about the slant of it, the way the letters sat close together without crowding; like she'd seen it somewhere before, in some other context she couldn't immediately place.
The door swung open.
"Wonderful." Mrs. Patel swept in. "You're both here. Good. I have updates."
The meeting found its rhythm quickly, which was either a sign of growing professional compatibility or a sign that they were both too organized to waste time. Wren was choosing to believe the latter. Mrs. Patel contributed, deferred, and occasionally said things like "Wonderful, that's the spirit" in thetone of someone watching something go precisely according to plan.
Freddie agreed with Wren on nearly every point. He gave her the considered nods of a man who had looked at the same problem and arrived at the same answer and saw no reason to manufacture conflict about it. He saidyesto the welcome banner placement andyesto the entrance florals revised height specification andyesto the children's corner afternoon light positioning. Every time he said it Wren felt the meeting move forward cleanly and efficiently and found herself wanting, slightly irrationally, for him to push back on something so she'd have somewhere to put the energy she'd brought in with her.
He didn't push back. He made notes. He asked one question about the mulled cider booth and accepted her answer immediately.
By seven forty-five, Wren became aware of an imbalance. She had spoken for approximately eighty percent of the last hour. She had the folder and the map and the color-coded tabs and the revised logistics timeline she'd drafted Tuesday evening, and she had presented all of it while Freddie sat across the table making annotations and saying yes. She was doing, it occurred to her, essentially everything.
"You know," she said after Mrs. Patel had left and she was packing up her folders, "this is meant to be a partnership."
Freddie nodded, not quite looking at her. "I've made notes of everything you need. I'll have it taken care of by the end of the week."
"Oh." A pause. "You will?"
"I may not say much, but everything you've written down — I'll handle it. All of it. The supplier calls. The vendor confirmations. The marquee company — I've already looked into them; the one you had listed had a complaint filed last spring. I've found two alternatives. I'll send you the details." He turneda page in the notebook. "The lighting equipment needs to be sourced this week if we want it in by the market. I'll do that tomorrow."
Wren hadn't asked him to do any of those things. She hadn't gotten to those things. They were on her list for next week, color-coded in a tab she hadn't even opened yet.
"Oh," she said.
"Is there anything else you need, Wren?"
The question threw her completely off guard. Wren had led a privileged life. That didn't mean she hadn’t been expected to do everything for her fiancé and the home they had planned to build together. She'd been drowning in wedding plans and house shopping by the time she'd called everything off. Preston had deferred everything to her without comment or aid.
Is there anything else you need?
Wren didn't answer. The words sat in the air between them, and she let them. For one entirely uncharacteristic second she thought: what if — She shook her head.
No. Freddie Gallagher was a man of approximately forty words per meeting. He was efficient and surprisingly useful, and he smelled, she had recently discovered against her will, like cedarwood and espresso in a combination that was objectively unfair given that she had to sit across a table with him for two more weeks. But he was not the man who wrotelet him love you from the shadows. He was not the man who knew the soul of Cyrano or the hope of the Cowardly Lion. He did not write in metaphors. He wrote supplier alternatives and logistics notes.
Oliver was good with words. Oliver had readThe Wizard of Ozand talked about courage and October and found the exact phrases that lived in the letters. Oliver was warm and approachable, and clearly needed a woman to take the initiative. Which Wren was going to do just as soon as she had confirmed her theory sufficiently.
Freddie was her co-chair. That was what Freddie was.
"I think that covers it," she said, and gathered her folder.
The night had gone properly cold by the time they filed out. Wren buttoned her coat to the top and fell into step down the main street, already composing the follow-up email she'd send in the morning, already thinking about next Wednesday when the first raindrop landed on the tip of her nose.
Before she knew it, and without asking, Freddie unfolded an umbrella over her head.
