Page 45 of The Tiger in the Sack

He didn’t.

The city glittered across the water and a boat moved slowly down the river and somewhere behind us that couple was laughing at something and I sat with the silence and the stone wall and the weight of being right about something you desperately wanted to be wrong about.

I picked up my helmet. “I gave you the whole ride to tell me yourself.”

I stood up.

“Just take off the helmet, Kingman.”

OH LOOK, THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY ACTIONS

ISAK

The sound of my last name hit somewhere below my sternum. Not a crack, not an explosion. Just a hand pressing flat, slow and deliberate, holding something in place that had been trying to move.

My whole system went still. Not calm. The kind of still that happens when everything redirects at once.

A boat moved somewhere on the river below us. Slow. Unbothered. The city was the same across the water, still doing its whole thing, lit up and gold and completely indifferent to the fact that she had just called me Kingman, like she had on the practice field, and the word landed in me like a pin through a map.

She knew on the ride.

That moved through me the way cold water does. Slow and everywhere at once.

She had known. Behind me on that bike, cheek pressed against the back of my helmet, arms around my ribs. She had known and she had still come to the overlook. She had still taken her helmet off and sat on the wall and talked to me about the city and she had known the whole time.

She was standing now.

I stayed where I was.

The bad choices were right there in front of me, both of them. Door number one, play it like this was nothing. Like she was nothing, like six nights of texts until midnight were nothing, like the way she had held on to my jacket on the curves of I-275 was nothing. If all of this was nothing, it wouldn’t hurt.

Door number two, take the helmet off and try to explain to a woman who had already made her decision that I had real, actual reasons.

Neither of those doors was a winner.

She deserved the truth. Jules echoed in my head, but this time she was calling me a dumb asshole. I picked the option where I was at least honest about it.

My hands found the helmet and I pulled it off.

The air hit my face cool and sharp, the river smell underneath everything. I set the helmet down on the stone wall next to hers and I looked at her.

She looked back.

Right now there was nothing between us and nowhere to look except at each other. And I already knew I was fucked.

Not in the fun way.

She had the expression of someone who had already won the argument and was not going to celebrate it.

“The helmet is off.” What I didn’t say was what it cost me to do that. This was me going all in for her.

“I know exactly who you are.”

“I get that.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. “I’m not saying⁠—”

“Then say what you’re saying.” Her voice wasn’t cold, wasn’t angry. Just precise.

I found the words the only way I ever found anything important, which was by saying the wrong thing first and working backwards.