Linwood: I need that.
Me: And I need my stick. Funny how the world works.
The three dots come up. They think about it. They go away.
I smile at the ceiling like a man who has won something.
The text goes unanswered all day and all night, and on Monday morning, I check my phone first thing, which is not a thing I do, and find nothing.
I go downstairs, and I stop on the bottom step, because all four of them are at the kitchen table. Benson. Blue. Rowan. Percy. On a Monday. Awake. Together. Looking at me.
“Boys,” I say, throwing my arms wide, because in my heart I am always walking out to an ovation. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Benson and Blue glance at each other. Blue stands and slides a chair out from the table.
“Come here, Sterm.”
I grin at it. “Is that my throne?”
“It’s the hot seat,” Reeve says.
“It’s an intervention,” says Blue.
“An intervention.” I sit immediately and pat Blue’s forearm. “I love these. Who goes first? Is there a talking stick? I’ll volunteer to hold the talking stick.”
Benson goes first. “Stan. What in the hell is happening?”
I settle in. “Reeve, you’re going to have to be more specific, because the world is full of happenings. We’ve got the bees, who are not doing well. We’ve got a soft housing market that, frankly, nobody at this table is equipped to—”
“Aspen Linwood,” Benson says. “Calling you babe Saturday night. You, sleeping at her place. Her, in this kitchen yesterday.” He folds his hands. “You want to talk about that, or do you want me to keep listing things we watched happen?”
I keep the grin on. I shrug, loose, easy, a man with nothing to hide and everything under control. “It’s been a thing, fellas. I just wasn’t ready to make a thing of the thing.”
“Bullshit,” Blue says, before I’ve landed the sentence.
“Baby Blue.” I look at him.
“You are deranged about the house rules. You wrote them in permanent marker. You called a house meeting — with an agenda, with bullet points — because Melly dropped my hoodie on the porch.”
“That hoodie had implications, Blue, and you know it. You only have one, and you gave it to her.”
“Tell us when it started with Aspen,” Benson says.
I turn to him and give him my best one, warm and rehearsed and clean. “Two weeks ago. After a home game. I bought her a coffee. I asked her out. She said yes.” I spread my hands like I’m presenting a painting. A love story. Frame it.
The boys look at each other.
“That’s a line,” Percy says from the corner.
“What line?”
“That’s the line, Stan. The one you practiced. You delivered it like a hostage reading a statement off a card.”
“Pers, you are a paranoid man.”
“It’s not even a real story,” Blue says.
Rowan doesn’t look up from his cereal. “We can do this all morning, Stan. I’ll clear my schedule.”
