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Saturday’s a good day for once not to have anywhere to be.
Beau’s running the grill one-handed, brace and all, which Cash has been giving him grief about since noon.
“You’re going to drop a burger patty on your own foot,” Cash says, from the porch steps, a beer he’s nursing slower than usual because we’ve got morning lifts tomorrow. “One-armed grilling. This is a workplace safety violation.”
“I’ve dropped exactly zero patties.” Beau flips one with the spatula in his good hand, tongs tucked under the brace arm for balance. “Unlike you, who set off the smoke alarm making toast in September.”
“That was one time.”
“It was three times.”
“Twice.”
“Wyatt,” Beau says, without looking up. “How many times did Cash set off the smoke alarm making toast?”
Wyatt, seated at the picnic table with a plate already stacked higher than anyone else’s, doesn’t even look up from his food. “Three.”
Cash throws his hands up. “This is a conspiracy.”
“It’s not a conspiracy if it’s documented,” Sloane says, from her spot against Beau’s shoulder, not even looking up from her phone. “There’s a group chat. There are timestamps.”
“There’s a group chat dedicated to my toast incidents?”
“It’s called Cash Watch,” June calls over from the far end of the table. “I made it in October. It has forty-one messages.”
“Forty-one.” Cash looks genuinely wounded. “I’ve been under active surveillance since October and nobody told me?”
“We’re telling you now,” Wren says.
“This feels late.”
“It’s never too late for accountability,” Beau says, flipping another patty with the specific unhurried calm of a man who has never once in his life set off a smoke alarm and knows it.
The backyard’s full in the good way. Folding chairs dragged out from the garage. A cooler doing double duty as a table. The specific chaos of a group that’s comfortable enough with each other to not need an occasion. Sloane’s got her feet in Beau’s lap between grill-flips, laughing at something on her phone she keeps trying to show June. June waves her off — she’s deep in a debate with Wren about whether hot dogs count as sandwiches, a debate that’s apparently been going for twenty minutes with no signs of resolving.
Margo’s beside me on the porch steps, close enough that our shoulders touch. We’re doing what we do best in public — sitting near each other without making it a thing. The specific choreography of two people who’ve gotten good at closeness that reads as nothing.
River Callahan’s here too. Freshman, walked on in September, been living in Beau’s shadow ever since — the good way. The way a guy shadows someone he’s decided is worth learning from. He’s at the far end of the picnic table, quieter than the rest of them. But every few minutes Beau says something to him directly. Pulls him into whatever conversation’s happening. Makes sure he’s not just sitting on the edge of the group being tolerated. It’s the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. I’m looking for it, because I remember being the guy on the edge of a group, once, before Beau did the same thing for me.
“You scored in Burlington,” Cash says to River, apropos of nothing, mid-argument with Beau about the burgers. “Freshman goal. That’s a big deal.”
River goes a little red. “It was a rebound.”
“A rebound you were in position for,” Beau says. “Which is the whole skill. Being where the puck’s going to be instead of where it already was.”
“He’s not wrong,” I say. First thing I’ve said to the table in a while. “Positioning’s half the job at any level. Nobody puts that in the highlight reel.”
River looks at me like I’ve handed him something he wasn’t expecting from me specifically, which — fair. I don’t say much to the freshmen. Not because I don’t care. Just not my instinct.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Beau says, flipping another patty. “You’ve got a long way to go before anyone’s putting a highlight reel together for you.”
“Noted, Captain.”
“Very profound,” Cash says. “Are we putting that on a poster?”
“I’ll put your face on a poster with ‘three smoke alarms’ underneath it.”
