I drink my coffee and enjoy the silence of her house. Maybe I should leave now. I set the mug down and decide not to.
“Linwood.”
She looks up.
I shoot blindly here. “Come back to my house with me.”
She looks up. “Excuse me?”
“Come over, sit on the couch, and drink something out of one of our cups. Be there for an hour.”
“Why?”
“Because Gavin’s in my house. That’s why we’re doing this, right? Gavin is the reason your father knows, and he’s currently killing three hours until a media shoot.” I inhale. “Gavin has brought you up to me eleven separate times since last night.”
She blinks. “Eleven?”
“Maybe four, but it’s still enough. He told me to tell you he said hi.”
She scoffs. “Why?”
Hell if I know.“That’s just what he said.”
She closes her eyes for half a second. “And you think me sitting on your couch fixes that.”
“I think you sitting on my couch ends it. He watches you walk in with me, in daylight, in my hoodie, drinking my coffee — and he stops trying to be relevant to this. He goes to his shoot. He goes back to his city tomorrow. The story closes.”
She studies me. “You’re not steering me toward your house for any other reason.”
I almost make the joke. I have it loaded. I don’t fire it.
“Linwood. Gavin is in my kitchen until two-thirty and then he’s gone. If you don’t come over now, he spends that time talking about you to me. I’m asking you to come close the loop.”
She looks at me for a long second. “I’m busy today. You get one hour.”
“Generous.”
She holds her coffee mug up. “And I’m taking my coffee with me.”
I look at it. “Insulting.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t drink yours.”
“You’ll come around, Linwood.”
She gets up to find her shoes. She comes back in a jacket and a beanie.
I open her front door. She steps out into the afternoon, and we walk three doors side by side. I don’t take her hand. She doesn’t offer it. By every visible measure, we’re two college seniors out for a Sunday walk.
Halfway between her house and mine, she slows down. “If he says anything to me — anything — I’ll handle him.”
I look at her, wondering if she’s serious.She’s muting me?
“That’s a rule. A Linwood-Ermington rule. Number one.”
I blink at the rule. I can do rules, but muting me? “Okay,” I say.
She lifts an eyebrow at me. “I mean it.”
