Page 39 of The Tiger in the Sack

I stared at her. “How do you⁠—”

“Check your phone.” She looked at Fox. “Three weeks ago I sent him an article.”

Fox looked at me wide-eyed, fifty-two emotions passing through them as he searched for something to say. Dude better have my back. He processed. I watched him connect the dots, the building, the team, the texts all week, the content shoot, the dropped snaps, all of it, and I watched the moment it finished calculating. “Dude.”

I shot a raised eyebrow of death at him.

“Uh...did you read it?”

Okay, better than blurting out that I’d been keeping one hell of a secret about who Cheerleader in a Tree girl was. I shrugged. “I hearted it.”

Jules closed her eyes for exactly one second. When she opened them again she had the patient expression of a woman who had grown up with seven brothers and the selective attention that produced.

“Gabrielle Jackson hired a plus-size dance coordinator two weeks ago,” Jules said. “Former captain of the Chadwick University cheer team. Engineering degree.” She looked at me steadily. “She’s been running body positivity workshops at cheer camps and dance studios for years, Isak. It was in three different sports media outlets. It was a big deal. I sent you the article. You hearted it.”

“I was going to re⁠—”

Fox looked like a little kid about to burst, and couldn’t hold it all back any longer “You’ve been — she’s been — they’ve been in the same building all week⁠—”

Jules was the one with the eyebrow that could kill this time, and it was aimed right at me.

Fox stood up and started pacing, his mouth on a real roll now. I must remind myself never to keep a secret like this from him again. He could have been my ally here and instead he was a walking time bomb of hot tea. “And she works for the team⁠—”

Jules gave him a cute little grin, like she approved of his mental breakdown.

“And they aren’t just neighbors, no... HE OWNS THE BUILDING SHE LIVES IN—” Fox turned to me with the expression of a man for whom three hours of dropped snaps and one Roper intervention had just become completely explained. “That’s why you were a disaster at practice.”

Jules held up a hand. “Back up. How long has this been going on?”

“It’s not⁠—”

“Fox,” Jules said.

Fox, without a flicker of hesitation let more tea flow. “He met her last Sunday. Rescued her cat from a tree outside the building. Kept the helmet on the whole time. She saved his number as Cat Daddy.”

Jules blinked. “Cat Daddy?”

“She has no idea who he is,” Fox continued, with the energy of waiting days to debrief someone about this. “He’s been texting her all week. Every night. Goes pretty late.”

Jules looked at me. “How late?”

“That’s not⁠—”

“Midnight,” Fox said. “At least.”

“Fox.” I was going to pee in his Cheerios.

“He named her contact Cheerleader in a Tree,” Fox said to Jules, like he was reading from a report. “He hasn’t told anyone her name. He told me to mind my business when I asked.”

Jules’s eyebrows went up. “And she still doesn’t know who he is.”

“She knows him only as Cat Daddy,” Fox said. “Man on motorcycle, helmet always on, cat in a leather jacket.”

“And she agreed to go on a ride with this person?” She waved her hand in my general direction as if I was a dog or a rat.

“Tonight,” Fox confirmed. “She also,” he added, because apparently he’d decided to be completely thorough about this, “had a full debate with him about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.”

Jules stared at me but this time I could see my utter doom in those eyes. “You like her.”