Page 127 of Puck You Both

Phase one, dinner. Phase two, announcement. Phase three, absorption. Phase four, dessert, which arrives on a schedule the guests don't know about. Phase five, eviction by eleven.

I control the information, the venue, the seating, and the timing, and if I keep repeating that to myself, it might stay true for one more hour.

The doorbell goes twenty-five minutes early.

Becker's on my doormat in a nice shirt, holding a… whiteboard?

A full-size whiteboard, with an eraser clipped to the rail, and a face that has visibly not slept since the coat check. His left eye is doing a small independent project, and there’s no Kane in sight.

"Don't ask," he says, carrying the whiteboard past me into my hallway.

I wasn’t going to.

"You look rested," I say instead.

He looks over his shoulder and shoots daggers at me. "I have been keeping your secret for four days." He props the whiteboard against my hallway wall, adjusts it, and stands back the way Jinx stands back from candles. "Do you realize the lengths I had to go to? I left the group chat twice. I told Kane I had a dentist thing. I don't have a dentist thing, Wall."

"One more hour, man."

"One more hour," he repeats, breathing in through his nose the way an app once taught him, and goes to stand in the corner of my kitchen, facing the wall, doing the exhale part.

The rest of them arrive in waves, and every wave says some version of the same thing at my door, which is that I've never hosted anything, which is true, and also my preferred state of affairs. But a man who’s about to hand his team the biggest news of his life wants them on his own ice for it.

Also, the seating chart doesn't work in a restaurant.

Ace and Devon arrive with wine. Groover and Mateo come in right behind them, Mateo already mid-spiel about how unusual tonight is as a data point, and an outlier of this size implies an occasion, and Groover kisses him on the mouth without breaking stride.

Jinx hands me a candle at the door. "In case there's a moment."

"There's no moment."

He shrugs. "Then it's just a candle."

Petrov brings a potted plant with a bow on it. He presents it with both hands and ceremony. "For the funeral. Or party. Signals unclear."

"It's just a dinner, Petrov."

"I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive."

Washington and Leila show up last. Leila stops in front of me for one moment on her way in. She doesn't say anything, but does some private arithmetic that visibly comes out even, and pats me once on the arm.

Dinner itself goes fine, I think. At least that’s what the rate at which the food disappears suggests, and the conversation stays in safe zones while the entire table quietly monitors me, checking my face between bites like I'm a scoreboard about to update, except for Kane. Kane is monitoring Becker instead, who’s at the far end, not eating, doing his nose-breathing.

I break at 8:25, which is five minutes ahead of schedule, because the pressure gauge says waiting five more minutes costs more than it buys.

I stand up and tap my glass once, purely for the sake of form, because they all cease talking before my ass has fully left the seat.

My pulse is a disgrace, but my hands are steady, and so is my voice. This is the most ready I’ll ever be.

I clear my throat. Here goes nothing. "I'm seeing someone. It's serious." I let them have a single second. Then, "It's Grześkowiak." The name comes out clean, both halves. The app would be proud. "And Moreau."

I sit down and resume eating.

The silence holds for three entire seconds.

Then Petrov jumps to his feet so fast his chair goes up with him.

"I CALLED IT!" He points at me, then at the ceiling, then at everyone. "SOMEBODY PULL UP THE CHAT!"