“She doesn’t talk about him the way she used to,” I said. “There’s no weight to it anymore. No unfinished business in the way she says it. It’s just done. I can tell the difference.”
Jude nodded slowly, like that matched something he’d observed independently. “She told me the same thing,” he said. “And I’ve known Becca a long time. She compartmentalizeswhen she’s still working something out; she goes quiet and careful. She’s not quiet and careful about Travis anymore. She’s just—done. The way she said it to me, it wasn’t sad or angry or anything. It was just fact.” He reached for another pretzel. “I believe her.”
“You’re her friend,” Asher said. “You want to believe her.”
“I am her friend,” Jude agreed pleasantly. “Which is exactly why I’d know if she was unsure about it. She’s not.”
Cade had been quiet through this exchange, in the way he got when he was deciding how much to contribute. He set his cards down now and folded his hands on the table. “Matt’s not worried about Travis in that context,” he said carefully. “What I mean by that is—the situation with Travis is its own thing, and it’s something we’re paying attention to for reasons I’m not going to get into. But as far as her going back to him?” He shook his head once. “No. That’s not what Matt thinks either.”
The table absorbed that. There was something in the way Cade had said it—the careful separation of Travis as a concern from Travis as a romantic prospect—that landed with a particular weight. I filed it away and didn’t push, because Cade had drawn his line and I knew better.
“Okay,” Asher said, after a moment. He looked at me steadily. “So she’s done with Travis. I’ll take that.” He picked up his cards again. “But you tend to absorb a lot on her behalf without saying anything about it, and we just want you to go into this with your eyes open. That’s all.” He shrugged. “We’ve noticed. Over the years.”
“I hear you,” I said, because I did. They weren’t wrong, exactly. I did have a tendency to absorb things where Becca was concerned. I always had. “But it’s different now. Better. We’re actually talking.”
“Talking,” Jude said.
“Talking.”
“Like,talking,talking, or?—”
“Jude.”
“I’m just clarifying the nature of the talking.”
“We’re talking,” I said. “That’s where we are. And I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you, though?” Asher said, but he said it without heat, almost fondly, the way he asked it when he already knew the answer wasn’t entirely yes and was willing to let that be enough for now.
“More than I did,” I said. “Which is something.”
Asher studied me for a long moment, looking for the thing underneath the thing, the way he’d been doing his whole life. Whatever he found must have satisfied him, because he let out a slow breath and reached for his beer.
“Alright,” he said. “Good enough.” He looked around the table. “Can we please play poker now, because I have been holding a genuinely excellent hand for the past ten minutes and I would like the opportunity to take your money.”
“You’re bluffing,” Jude said immediately.
“I am absolutely not bluffing.”
“You always say that when you’re bluffing.”
“And yet,” Asher said, with great patience, “statistically, I cannot always be bluffing. At some point, the math has to work in my favor.”
“The math has never worked in your favor,” Cade said.
“That is genuinely hurtful,” Asher shot back, huffing a soft laugh.
“It’s also accurate,” Jude said.
“I have won money at this table,” Asher said, with dignity. “Multiple times. There are witnesses.”
“You’re all terrible,” he said. “Every single one of you. I invite you into my home, I make my special garlic bread?—”
“The garlic bread was good,” Jude offered.
“Thank you. I make excellent garlic bread, and this is the thanks I get.” He straightened his cards with great ceremony. “Fine. Raise.”
Cade folded without ceremony. Jude saw it and raised again with the pleasant expression of someone who genuinely didn’t care either way. I looked at my cards—a pair of sevens and nothing useful—and thought about Becca in the trailer park, and the look on her face when she’d taken the smoothie from my hand like she’d forgotten what it felt like to let someone take care of her, and I called anyway.
