Page 41 of Puck You Both

Except when it slips.

Half a second, maybe less. His eyes drop below the laptop and return while I'm still explaining why twelve dollars for decorative moss is ten dollars too much.

Second monitor, maybe. Or his phone. Knowing him, both, arranged beneath the camera in some approved formation.

I drag the vase line into the rejection column. "Agreed?"

Another downward flick. "Yes."

The call rolls on, and somewhere past the fifteen-minute mark my shoulders loosen without permission. So does my mouth. When Patrick edits my delivery window, I change it back while he watches me do it. When he highlights a transport cost that appears twice, he looks entirely too pleased with my silence.

"You put it there," I say.

"You approved it."

"I trusted your numbers."

"Well, that was reckless, wasn’t it?"

His chest moves on a shallow inhale.

Then nothing.

For one long beat Patrick holds perfectly still, and only his eyes move, cutting down toward the counter. When they come back to the camera, the blue in them has gone darker. Compression artifacts, probably. Wisconsin's infrastructure is famously unreliable.

He clears his throat and switches us to the revised vendor list, and I watch the muscle in his forearm flex beside the mug.

Tired. There's my diagnosis. Between games, travel, the launch at Frank's, and practice, we're both running on fumes. Patrick simply hides it better. He’d probably look composed during emergency surgery performed on his own body.

For the next few minutes the diagnosis holds. Kind of. Provided I handle the evidence very badly. His focus stays sharp and his answers stay exact, but every so often a pause opens where no pause belongs. A breath arrives through his nose too measured to be casual. His shoulders draw back, hold, then ease forward like he's talked them down.

My brain starts working overtime, scrambling for answers.

Hungover, possibly. Except Patrick isn’t exactly known for excess drinking.

His phone, then. Theo, texting him something he can't afford to open on a professional call.

That thought is a mistake. It arrives with a full picture attached: a lean body braced against a desk, shirt dragged up over a clenching stomach, eyes finding mine across a lamplit office while Patrick's mouth—

I click the wrong cell and delete the florist's address.

"Careful, Wallace."

One keyboard command restores it. "I know what I’m doing."

"Sure you do."

Gravel catches on the last word and stays there. He reaches for his mug, but his fingers stop against the handle without closing around it. Across his chest, the henley pulls tight, his body settling against some movement the island keeps out of frame.

My cursor sits motionless over a row of centerpiece options. On the screen, Patrick waits.

"Option two," I say.

"The glass cylinders." His gaze dips. Half a second passes before it comes back up. "Approved."

More gravel now, dragged the whole length of the word, and every hair on my forearms lifts.

Then his jaw tightens.