I tilt my head in her direction. “Three doors down.”
“Tell her I said hi.”
My hand stops halfway to the door. I don’t turn around.
“Sure.”
I walk out.
Three doors down, and the Sunday sun is out to play. Hell, it feels nice on my face.
Petey sells condos.
Three of the five of us are at our girlfriends’ houses right now.
The whiteboard isn’t a joke. I’m still following the rules.
I stop dead on the sidewalk for a second.
Where the hell is Rowan, though?
I start walking again. I get to her porch and knock on the front door this time. She opens the door, and I see her face before she fixes it.
Aspen Linwood holds things together the way other people breathe — automatically, constantly, without appearing to work at it. To anyone who doesn’t know her, she’d look completely fine. To me, I know something’s wrong.
“Linwood.”
“You took your time.”
“Clean hoodie was important to the brand.”
She steps back, welcoming me inside. I walk in, and she closes the door behind me. I follow her into the kitchen, sit down at the island, and let her pour me a coffee I didn’t ask for. I take a big sip.
“So, Thanksgiving with Coach. Do I wear a tie, or just my—”
I don’t get to finish. She’s looking at me like she’s hit her quota of jokes. The grin slides off me. I put the mug down.
“Okay.” I look at her.
She crosses her arms. She doesn’t sit.
I ask the question because the silence is worse than the question.
“How did your dad find out, Linwood? Walk me through it.”
She exhales. She’s clearly been turning this over for some time.
“He called me at eleven-fifteen this morning, and he already knew. So somewhere between roughly midnight last night and eleven this morning, somebody put it in his ear.”
“That’s an eleven-hour window.”
She looks at me. I look at her.
“You were right,” she says. “I wonder if he texted his entire team.”
“He has a big mouth. Half their front office talks to half of your dad’s front office on a normal Tuesday. If Gavin texts a trainer, trainer texts an analyst, analyst texts a guy. Or Gavin texts his agent about something else and his agent slides it into a call with your dad’s people. Or Gavin just straight up texted somebody in your dad’s building last night. I mean, all he had to do was text his group chat. Everybody knows your last name.”
“Why is he like this?” she asks.
