Chapter 23 : Hour Forty

Chapter 23: Chapter 23 : Hour Forty

The evening news hadn’t been off the air an hour before the crowd was back outside the dealership. People carried folding chairs and whole cases of Coke, and a few big guys in baseball jerseys had shoved their way to the front of the tape.

The one in front had a buzz cut, and Tyler knew him on sight. Brodie, from the baseball club. Last time, on the lawn, he was the one who’d tossed that ball up onto the stage.

Brodie grinned at him, fished a baseball out of his pocket, and tossed it from hand to hand a couple of times.

"Brodie." Tyler’s voice went tight. "Don’t you dare."

Of course Brodie dared. The ball floated over in a lazy arc toward Tyler’s free hand. Half the crowd had seen the first video and knew exactly how this had gone last time. They came to their feet with a roar.

Tyler’s hand twitched. Six years as a pitcher, and that hand wanted to make the catch all by itself. He gritted his teeth and jammed it into his pocket.

The ball hit the ground at his feet, bounced twice, and rolled under the car.

From the other side of the car, Mac piped up mournfully. "Dawg, my grandma throws a slipper—"

"Harder than I do, I know." Tyler didn’t even turn around. "Tell her to come catch it herself."

The sidelines lost it. Whistles and applause tangled together, and somebody started chanting Tyler’s name. Brodie crouched down with his hands over his head, pounding the asphalt and howling. The tips of Tyler’s ears had gone red again, but this time he was grinning.

Noah poked his head out from behind the viewfinder and gave Ethan a thumbs-up. He’d gotten every frame.

Still, the fight that blew up the comments section that night wasn’t about Tyler. It was about Mac and Owen.

They’d shared a dorm room for almost a month and hadn’t traded twenty sentences. But after two days and a night next to that car, Mac’s mouth just couldn’t sit idle anymore.

"Y’all, lemme introduce somebody." He tipped his chin toward Owen for the camera. "My roommate. We’ve lived together almost a month, and he’s said maybe twenty sentences to me, total. Fifteen of ’em were ’mm.’"

"Mm," said Owen.

The sidelines laughed. Mac slapped the roof. "See that? Number sixteen!"

"Can you be quiet for one minute?"

"Nope. I go quiet, I fall asleep. I fall asleep, my hand slips. You don’t wanna win like that, do you?"

Owen didn’t bother answering. He turned his face the other way.

Mac didn’t care. He kept rambling to the camera, about how his roommate made his bed tighter than a barracks, about how his roommate was out the door at six every morning for his shift at the dining hall. Then, in passing: "Oh, and bro, those blue granola bars in your cabinet are pretty good. Kinda dry, though. Get the chocolate ones next time."

Owen slowly turned back around.

"That was a week of breakfast for me."

He said it flatly, not loudly, but everyone close enough heard. The grin on Mac’s face stalled. He opened his mouth, and for once, no wisecrack came out.

Mac rubbed the back of his neck. "My bad, man," he said quietly. "I didn’t know."

"Mm," said Owen.

The comments section split down the middle. One side said Mac had a big mouth. The other said he hadn’t meant anything by it. Maya scrolled through it all and murmured to Sam, "People are giving them nicknames now."

The showroom lights stayed on past midnight. When Ethan came in to fill his coffee, Bob was in his office going over the books. He looked up at the footsteps, opened the bottom drawer, fished out a slightly crushed pack of Marlboros, and slid it to the edge of the desk.

"Want one?"

Ethan paused. He looked at the cigarettes, then at the half-empty box of nicotine gum on the corner of the desk. "Didn’t you quit?"

"Eleven years." Bob turned the pack over in his fingers. "Kept this one at the bottom of the drawer the whole time. Figured if I ever couldn’t take it anymore, there it’d be." He paused, and his voice dropped. "Already broke one rule this month. Once you’ve broken one, what’s the point of hanging on to the rest?"

Ethan didn’t answer. He reached over, took the pack, and tucked it into his own pocket. Then he picked up the box of gum from the corner of the desk and pressed it into Bob’s hand.

"This one’s not broken yet," he said. "No need to rush it."

Bob looked down at the box in his hand. Then he grunted, unwrapped a piece, stuck it in his mouth, and waved Ethan out.

Across the showroom, Kyle’s pen stopped in midair.

Through the glass partition, he couldn’t make out what they were saying. All he saw was Bob opening that bottom drawer. In six years as Bob’s son-in-law, he’d never known there was a pack of cigarettes at the bottom of it, let alone imagined Bob would hand it to an outsider.

Ethan carried his coffee back out. Bob bent over his numbers again, chewing slowly. Kyle looked down at his ledger. His pen had been resting on the page so long that the tip had bled a blot of ink into it.

At hour forty, Tyler fell asleep.

He’d held out on his feet the whole time, refusing to lie down, afraid that if he did he’d never get up. But deep into the night, leaning against the door, his chin sank toward his chest by degrees, and the hand on the roof sank with it. It slid down the window, past the door handle, and settled softly at his side.

Hendricks walked over quietly. He tapped Tyler on the shoulder, and Tyler jerked upright, looked down at his hand, then up at the car, and didn’t move.

Mac spotted it from the other side of the car and called out, "Ayy, pitcher’s coming off the mound?"

Tyler didn’t fire back. He just gave a helpless little laugh, shook his head, picked up his sleeping bag, and walked off.

Mac stood there with his mouth open. He’d had a few more lines lined up behind that one, and he didn’t get to use a single one. Since when was this guy so different from last time?

The light in the editing room stayed on all night.

Ethan dug a blanket out of one of the equipment cases. For two days, Maya hadn’t said a word to him. Even the coffee he’d brought her had gone through Sam. The company had barely gotten off the ground, she was the only one who could write code, and this freeze couldn’t go on. He tucked the blanket under his arm and pushed open the editing room door.

Sam was asleep facedown on the keyboard. Maya was curled in a folding chair in the corner, lit by the glow of her laptop. At the sound of the door she looked up, saw who it was, and went rigid.

Ethan draped the blanket over the back of her chair. "It gets cold at night."

"...Thanks."

He pulled over a chair and sat down. "Maya, you haven’t said a word to me in two days. Is this about last time? You still haven’t figured it out?"

Maya’s heart skipped a beat. Last time. Under the door-desk. We’re going to be together for a long time. He’d come for his answer.

She took a deep breath. She’d rehearsed this in her head at least twenty times over the last two days.

"I’ve figured it out." She kept her eyes on the screen, not daring to look at him. "I think... the way things are between us right now is good."

Ethan let out a breath. The agreement was signed, the roles were clear, and if she thought things were good the way they were, she wasn’t planning to quit. "I think it’s good too."

Maya froze and stole a glance at him. There wasn’t a trace of disappointment on his face. "You... don’t mind?"

"Mind what?" Ethan laughed. "If that’s how you feel, I couldn’t ask for anything better."

Couldn’t ask for anything better. Maya turned the words over and over in her head. Turned down, and he could say that? Either the man was unusually gracious, or... She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

"Right now I just want to do a good job with what’s in front of me." She got out the second line she’d rehearsed. "Everything else... later."

"Exactly." Ethan nodded with total sincerity. "Get what’s in front of us done first. The rest can come along slowly. I’m in no rush."

He meant the company. The next video, the next round of money, one step at a time.

What Maya heard was: he was in no rush. He could wait.

Her ears went hot. She ducked her head and started typing, a string of characters even she couldn’t have read back. "Then... then it’s settled."

"Settled." Ethan held out his hand. "To a great partnership."

Maya looked at the hand for two seconds before she shook it. A handshake. Turned down, and he wanted to shake on it. For a moment she actually admired him a little. So dignified. So grown-up about it.

Ethan was pleased with himself, too. Good to have it out in the open. Kids that age took everything to heart. She’d signed the contract and was still worried she wouldn’t measure up. He got up and headed for the door, then turned back halfway there.

"Oh, and from now on, if something’s bothering you, just tell me. Don’t bottle it up," he said. "We’ve got a long time together ahead of us."

The door closed.

Maya didn’t move. Then, slowly, she pulled the blanket up, all the way over her head, until she’d disappeared underneath it.

Over at the keyboard, Sam rolled his head to the other side and mumbled something in his sleep.

The second night was much harder than the first.

One guy started talking to the car and swore it had just called his name. A girl got a cramp in her leg so bad she was crying, held on another half hour anyway, and in the end the EMTs had to talk her into letting go. One after another, Kevin crossed names off the whiteboard.

Near daybreak, Sierra let go too. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t look back at the car. She walked outside the tape still wrapped in her sleeping bag, sat down next to Dylan, and leaned her head on his shoulder. Dylan didn’t dare move a muscle.

When the sun climbed up from behind the Toyota store, there were only five hands left on the silver BMW.

Mac’s hand was on the hood, and he was dozing against the grille. Owen’s was on the right rear door, his eyes open. Gus had both hands on the trunk and was still muttering something under his breath. The short-haired girl had the sticky note tucked in her shirt pocket. The last was number nine, the guy who’d gone beet red under the water guns on the first day.

Kevin wrote a big 5 on the whiteboard and circled it.