I keep my face neutral. Feel the thing she’s watching for anyway—a small contraction, somewhere in my chest.
“That’s fine,” I say.
“It’s not fine. It’s an adjustment, and I want you to know it doesn’t mean I’m stepping back from—” she pauses, choosing her word, “—us. It just means I need to redistribute your emotional education.”
“You need to what?”
She picks up her phone, turns it to face me.
The group text has forty-seven messages in it since this morning.
I take the phone and scroll. The contact list at the top reads like a Sorrowville census: Shep, Boone, Brogan, Mom, Joely,Virgil, Coach Duff, Lynsie, Britt, Holden, Nurse aggie, Doc lindy, Pru, and a contact simply labeled Slammy that I choose not to examine too closely.
“You added Slammy to a group text,” I say.
“Slammy is very supportive.”
“Gisele.”
“Operation Soft Boy support team,” she says, with the calm confidence of a woman who has thought this through and made peace with it. “They’ve all agreed to help with your continued emotional development while I’m handling the Luxe chaos. Shep wants you after practice today.”
I look up from the phone. “Shep. As in Sawyer.”
“He has an activity planned.”
“That’s the most frightening thing you’ve ever said to me. And you once made me do a breathing exercise on a gym mat.”
“He cleared it with me.” She takes the phone back before I can read the messages in detail, which tells me the messages in detail would not help my anxiety. “I gave everyone specific guidelines. Nobody is going to push you past what you can handle.”
“Has anyone met Shep?”
“He’s enthusiastic, but he genuinely cares about you.” She tilts her head. “They all do. That’s the thing, Bennett. You’ve spent three years convinced you have to hold this team together alone. Half the town wants to help you, and you keep looking at it like it’s an ambush.”
“It is an ambush. It’s a scheduled ambush with a group text.”
“It’s people who love you showing up.” She says it simply, the way she says things that are true and slightly devastating. “Let them.”
I look at her.
She looks back.
The fifteen minutes are probably up.
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine?”
“I’ll go with Shep. I won’t like it. But I’ll go.”
Her face does the thing—that particular softening that she thinks she hides and absolutely does not hide. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Depending on what he’s planned, you may be getting a very pointed Post-it about this.”
“I look forward to it.” She stands, because her next client has probably arrived, and Gisele doesn’t keep clients waiting. She moves toward the door, then stops. Turns back. Crosses the room and kisses me once, quick and certain, her hand briefly on my jaw.
“I’m not going anywhere, Hothead,” she says against my mouth. “I’m just busy. Don’t spiral over this.”
“I know.”
