Page 114 of Puck You Both

He watches the fight happen on my face for a moment, then asks, "Anything else except quoting idiots?"

The speech folds.

I sign before my eyes can blur any further. The pen skids on the last stroke and the signature comes out drunk. It doesn't matter. Two years counts in any handwriting.

I put the pen down and reach blindly to my right, and my hand lands on a tissue box sitting exactly six inches away, clearly pre-positioned, because a grown man looked at his morning and penciled in my breakdown between coffee and the deadline.

***

"—AND ANAHEIM CAN eat my entire ass. Respectfully. No, actually, disrespectfully. And the rumor goblin can print his little list and eat that too, alphabetically. I am structural glue! I am cost-controlled chaos! I am—"

"Standing on my coffee table."

Third performance of this speech tonight, and Patrick keeps fixating on the staging, which I’m in no rush to change. From up here I have an excellent view of my audience. Patrick sits at one end of the couch, beer bottle resting against his thigh, eyes tracking my socks. Wall occupies the other end, plus most of the middle, following me back and forth with only his eyes. My copy of the extension leans against the takeout wreckage somewhere on the kitchen island. I've checked it four times since dinner.

Still says two years.

"—a Milwaukee Viper standing on communal victory property," I continue.

"This is my property."

"—and you two! My, my—" My judgment arrives almost as fast as my next words. The almost is critical. "—my boyfriends were so weird about it all day, and Patrick texted in complete sentences and—"

The second I hear myself, I clasp my mouth with both hands, the slapping sound ringing cartoonish amid the sudden silence.

Patrick's bottle stops halfway to his mouth. Wall's eyes slide off me and onto Patrick. Mine go hunting for a fire exit.

I step down, slowly. Maybe if I move slowly enough, time will feel bad for me and give the last ten seconds back.

"I would like to enter a plea of adrenaline," I mumble.

On the couch, Patrick and Wall exchange one, long look. The look has entire paragraphs in it, and I can't read a single word.

Then a corner of Patrick's mouth twitches, Wall's follows, and neither of them corrects me. I watch the not-correcting happen in real time, like its own separate event, with both eyes and every organ in my body. No flinch, no well, actually. Nobody throws me through a window, either. The word just sits there in the middle of the rug, being allowed to exist.

"We'll discuss sentencing later," Patrick says.

I look between Patrick and Wall twice, then I push my luck. "Sooo. It's not a no?"

They exchange one more look, before Patrick says, "It's not. But not today. Not as a thing you blurted because Berg made you cry."

"I did not cry! I teared up, it’s totally different."

Wall leans forward, forearms on his thighs. It's maybe his ninth sentence of the evening, so Patrick and I both shut up for it. "I need to tell my team first. They're family. I'm not making them find out from a gossip website."

For a second I forget how standing works.

First.

First means something happens after. First has sequence. First owns a little clipboard and a plan.

My eyes fill again, which at this point is just ridiculous. "You're both going to make me say it sober and on purpose, aren't you?"

"Yes," Patrick says while Wall says, "Obviously."

I sit down on the edge of the table before my legs turn it into a scene. In the span of a few hours I got kept by my team and un-corrected by my two…whatever, and my chest feels too tight to embrace both.

So I do what any emotionally responsible adult would do. I dash and go through Patrick's recycling.