She takes it.
She looks at it for half a second.
She sets it on the rail beside the flowers without looking at it again.
Todd doesn't sit. She doesn't offer.
He shifts his weight on the porch boards, settling in like he plans to stay a while. "How you been, honey?"
I watch his right boot find a comfortable angle. Watch Hadley's grip tighten on the sweet tea glass.
"I've been fine, Todd."
"Garrett's mama's been worried about you. She hasn't heard from you in a while."
Hadley's chin lifts a quarter inch. "I called her two weeks ago."
"She said it's been longer than that."
"It hasn't."
He laughs, soft, and waves a hand like he's clearing smoke. "All right, all right. I'm not gonna fight you on it. I just told her I'd check on you while I was through here." His eyes track down her body and back up before he speaks again. I notice it. "You doin' okay out here, honey? All these men around?"
I'd put money on the count being just one man he's actually worried about.
The one standing six feet behind him.
"I'm doin' fine."
He steps a quarter step closer to her. "You look tired."
"I'm not."
Another quarter step. The porch boards creak under him.
"You've lost weight."
Hadley's free hand goes flat against the rail behind her. The other hand has gone white on the glass.
"I haven't."
Five times he calls herhoneyin ten minutes. I count.
I also count the steps he's taken toward her since she greeted him.
Three. Three quarter-steps, each one disguised as a shift of weight, each one closing the distance between his body and hers by a few inches.
He doesn't know I see him doing it.
He probably doesn't know he's doing it himself.
But his body ismovingtoward her the way a dog moves toward a meal, and the woman against the porch rail has run out of porch to back up against.
I take one step up onto the bottom porch board.
Not a full step onto the porch. Just enough that Todd hears the wood take my weight.
He stops moving.
