Page 83 of The Tiger in the Sack

“The Tiger Grannies.”

The whole table laughed, the real kind, even Warner, and for one breath the dinner was only a family delighted by something, and Tory’s face had gone open and young, and she said, “Oh, I want to meet them,” in a voice that had nothing to do with grandmothers, and Clover looked at her mother like a door she hadn’t known was in the wall.

I didn’t speak. I watched Clover smile at her mom, and my chest did the falling-elevator drop, and I thought I felt lightning in my soul. A hot, brilliant strike.

Warner worked an angle all through the back half, leaning in when she talked, finding the old shorthand, building a private two-person room out of references I wasn’t allowed into, and around dessert he made his move.

“Take a walk with me, Clo. Just a walk. Catch up.” He glanced at me, friendly, the same decency he showed across the line. “Kingman won’t mind. I am sure he understands how important you are to me.”

I watched the carefully grown light in Clover’s smile fade as she opened her mouth to make some gentle excuse.

I stood. I hadn’t decided to until I was on my feet.

“Actually, I’ve got her tonight. We made plans before the table-for-four happened.” My voice came out easy, came out like I did this daily. “Mr. Freeman, Mrs. Freeman, this was the best night I’ve had in a while, and I’m counting games.”

They’d find out soon enough that I’d called ahead and had the restaurant put everything on my card.

Tory made a small sound into her napkin.

“Bishop, see you at the facility.” I held my hand out to Clover, palm up, no rule two within fifty miles. “Come on. Vito and Tig probably want a romantic dinner of their own.”

She looked at my open hand a half-second too long, the engineer pricing the risk, and I braced for the polite managed exit, the thank-you-for-dinner, the I’ll-call-you. I’d have taken it. I’d have ridden home and said nothing to Fox and eaten cereal at midnight like a grown man.

Then she put her hand in mine and stood, and she didn’t let go in the doorway, and she didn’t let go in the lobby, and out on the sidewalk under a streetlight buzzing about nothing, she turned and looked up at me wearing a face I’d never once seen her give another living person, no smooth, no managed, no list, only her, wide open and a little frightened of it.

“There’s no audience out here, Kingman,” she said.

“I know.”

“Rule two says we don’t exist when nobody’s watching.”

“I know what rule two says. I was there. You had a spoon.”

She was still holding my hand. She hadn’t let go even for a second. “So what are we doing?” she whispered.

I could’ve been smart. I’m good at it. I had three jokes loaded and a fourth about the cats. Instead the truest sentence I owned came straight up out of me with no lie in front of it to slow it down.

“I think rule two is dumb. I think you wrote it so that if I ever stopped showing up you could tell yourself none of it was real anyway. I think you’ve been writing rules like that your whole life. And I think the same thing about your no dating football players rule too. I’ve been working around it like a blitz because…”

“Isak,” she said.

“What?”

“Stop talking,” Clover said, and reached up with her free hand, and pulled my face down to hers, and kissed me.

Her mouth was soft and she tasted like the two sips of dessert wine she’d allowed herself. Her hand came to the side of my neck and her thumb traced my jaw in a slow drag I was going to be thinking about for the rest of my natural life.

I’d wanted this since roughly the moment I saw her barefoot in a tree.

I slid my hands to her waist and she made a small sound into my mouth that rearranged my whole skeleton.

It was real. This kiss, this feeling, this was everything. One hundred and one percent genuine. No part of this was scaffolding. Scaffolding doesn’t make you forget your name on a public sidewalk. Scaffolding doesn’t taste like dessert wine.

And I knew right then, my jaw under her hands and streetlights buzzing, the fake was finished and the real had started, and I was happy, so stupidly happy.

But then I opened my eyes.

And saw Tiki Barbra Jackson.