Evan has been watching this act his whole life. He knows when I'm phoning it in, and right now I'm not even dialing.
"Aren’t you supposed to be back in Manhattan by now?" Evan says, still scrolling. "Col and I figured we’d be watching your taillights retreat up the drive on Tuesday, tops. It's Thursday. You're still here. You haven't mentioned Colorado once. And you've retensioned every trellis wire on the south block."
"They needed it."
"Colton. Did they need it?"
"They did not," Colton says, hanging the saw on its hook.
Evan's grin shifts from playful to forensic. "So what's keeping the great Finn Bardot in Mattichogue when he could be wingsuiting a tax write-off somewhere?"
I could answer that. I've got a whole roster of answers. Evan's leg, the vineyard, the release party. Every one of them is true and none of them is the reason.
The temptation to call or text her is one I’ve been battling since Sunday night. But what would I say? I voice-memoed several messages in the middle of the night earlier this week. Couldn't sleep, couldn't stop composing, couldn't figure out how to make honest sound different from desperate. I killed every draft before I was stupid enough to send them. Each version was either a punchline or a confession, and I don't have the margin to guess wrong about which one she'd be willing to hear.
So the math is simple. She's a teacher. She saw a struggling reader and she was kind, because that's what teachers do. Then they go home. The hand on my arm was compassion, not interest. I'm reading it as something else because I want it to be something else, and wanting has never once changed the math.
I've known Darcy Gable since we were kids. Half my life. She's the one name that never quite went away, the face that showed up uninvited on the drive back to Mattichogue last week.
I told a poker table full of men I'd die for that I've never met a woman I couldn't leave by Tuesday. Meant it. That’s still me, butnow there’s a space inside me where Darcy has slipped between those defenses.
She put her hand on my arm and the whole system quit. She looked at the thing I've hidden from every investor, every date, every friend at that table. She saw it. She didn't flinch. She moved closer. And I almost stayed. I almost turned my hand over and caught hers and said something true with no exit built into it. Instead I panicked, said I had a phone call and drove away, because leaving is the only play I've ever run that works every time.
"Earth to Finn." Evan waves his phone. "You just went somewhere for about ten seconds. Where'd you go?"
"Nowhere."
"Does Nowhere have big hazel eyes and headful of thick brown hair?"
"Shut up, Evan."
"That's a yes." He says it to Colton, satisfied, like he's just closed a case. "Note for the record: the defendant has no comeback. The defendant always has a comeback. The prosecution rests."
Colton catches my eye. Same look he had Sunday night when I walked in late and ate my plate of Mom’s food without talking. He glances at my phone on the fence post, then back at me, and doesn't say a word.
"Here's the plan," Evan says, pocketing his phone. "We're going to the pub tonight."
I shake my head. "Nah, I'm good."
"You’re going. Not just for your sake, but for the rest of us. Even Mom said, and I quote, 'Please get your brother out of my vineyard before I have to tie him up and drag him out of it behind the tour wagon.'"
"I'm having a quiet night in tonight." Words I literally have never uttered in my life.
Evan stares at me like I’ve grown three heads. "You've had enough quiet nights this week. Quiet nights are over. We're going tonight. Colton's driving. You're sitting in a room with other human beings and you're going to act like a person whose favorite hobby isn't staring at fence posts."
"I don't stare at fence posts."
"You stare at your phone on a fence post. That's worse." He turns to Colton. "Back me up."
"You have been staring at it most of the day," Colton says, not looking up from the blade.
"Mutiny." I look between them. "This is a coordinated mutiny."
"It's an intervention," Evan says. "A loving one. You're welcome."
I look at Colton. Colton has found something deeply compelling about a pruning blade.
"Fine. One beer," I say.
