Benson nods once, the way he nods before a face-off. Then he leans forward and plants his forearms on the table. “We’re going to help you.”
I put both hands flat on the wood. “Boys. Whatever is said at this table, in this fraction of time, never leaves this table. Aspen would end my life. She has the means and the motive, and she keeps a notebook.”
“Does she like you?” Blue asks.
I laugh, full and easy. “She loves me.”
Benson and Blue look at each other.
“How much does she hate you, Stan?” Benson says.
“Fellas.” I press a hand to my chest. “I just told you she loves me. You don’t need to worry about a single thing. I’ve got this completely handled.”
“You do not have this handled,” Blue says.
“I got it.”
“Stan, you are spectacularly fucked.”
“Then it’s a good thing,” I say, standing up and pointing at the whiteboard mounted on the wall, “that we’re a hockey team and I am very, very good at drawing up a play.”
Nobody moves for a second.
Then Blue, because Blue can never resist a project, gets up and lifts the whiteboard off its hooks and carries it over and props iton the back of a chair, the Hawthorne House Rules still written across it in my own handwriting in permanent marker.
I look at the rules. I look at the room.
“Stan,” Benson says as a warning.
“It’s a living document, Reeve.” I uncap the marker. I draw a center circle, two nets, and a little stick figure with a number eleven on its back.
“That’s me,” I narrate. “Obviously the handsome one.”
“Why are there nets?” Rowan says.
“Rowan, we are breaking out of our own zone under forechecking pressure, and the forecheck is two NHL families and a head coach. Stay with me.” I tap the board. “Thursday. Connecticut. I land. I walk into the Linwood house. Objective: be the boyfriend they’ve been praying for, for one dinner, without leaving a single fingerprint that says it isn’t real.”
“You’ve eaten at that table a hundred times,” Blue says.
“As a guest.” Percy, quiet. “Not as the boyfriend. The whole table will be watching the two of you the way they’ve never watched you before. Every look. Every time you don’t touch her. Every time you do.”
I point the marker at him. “See, this is why Percy’s on the top line. Percy gets it.” I draw a little eye on the board and label it COACH. “Rule one. We never get caught not knowing each other. Married couples finish sentences. We don’t have to be in love, we have to be fluent. I need her coffee order, her mother’s middle name, the thing she’s allergic to, and one fight we’ve already had, because real couples have had those.”
Benson stares at me. “You’re actually good at this.”
“What do you bring?” Rowan says. “To the house. You don’t show up to Coach Linwood’s empty-handed.”
I write WINE??? on the board and put three question marks because I do not know anything about wine.
“Pie,” says Blue. “Everybody loves the guy who brings a pie.”
“He can’t bring a store pie to a coach’s house,” Percy says. “It reads cheap.”
“Then he bakes one,” Blue says.
“I’m not baking a—” I stop. I write PIE (BAKE???) under the wine. “Rowan. You quit cooking, but you remember how. You’re on pie.”
“Absolutely not,” Rowan says. “I have said from the start of this conversation that I am not implicated. I will deny this meeting under oath.”
