Page 8 of Puck Daddies
Quiet, and in that black dress that looks like it forgot how to be fabric and decided to be a decision instead. She smells like rain and honey and a perfume I know because she only wears it when she’s trying to feel like herself in a room. I can’t be objective about any of that. I don’t try. I just keep telling my brain the one true thing.
She’s our best friend, she needs help, and that settles it.
I’ve always loved when she stays with us. That’s the problem I don’t say out loud. After a big win—when the city sounds like it’s breathing louder than usual—she’s ended up in our guest room because the late trains were weird and Hudson refused to let her go home alone. After a bad loss—when everything feels thinner—she’s crashed here and woken up to us already cooking too much breakfast. Those nights were safe.
I could be dumb and happy and loud and then fall asleep knowing she was down the hall. This won’t be different, I tell myself. It can’t be. I can ignore a crush for a few days or weeks, whatever it takes to help her find a new apartment.
I’m not so sure about Hudson. He runs hot. He tries not to, and he’s good at the trying most days, especially with us. But heat sits under his skin. I saw the way his jaw moved when Meg said she hates men and asked if she could stay. If I take my eyes off him, he’ll be halfway across town looking for Luke’s face to rearrange.
None of that matters right now. It really doesn’t. She needs a place to sleep where nobody tells her she’s boring.
Boring. As if Meg Bridges could ever be boring.
I keep replaying the part where she said “our man” in Callie’s voice. I don’t like the way that phrase sits in my head. It feels like someone tried to put a claim sticker on a person. I don’t like ownership words when people use them like flags. I don’t like that Meg had to hear it in a room that was already too much for her. I make a list in my mind of the actual things I can control—sheets, lights, tea, door locks, the seven o’clock alarm so I can set coffee to auto-brew before she wakes up. I do better with lists.
I blame myself for wanting her even when she’s heartbroken. It’s not my fault—want doesn’t turn off because someone you love had a bad night—but it feels like something I should be able to manage better than this. I take that feeling and stick it on a high shelf where I put the other things I can’t use right now.
The bathroom faucet shuts off. There’s the soft thud of cabinet doors. I stand up without making it look like a rush and put thekettle on again. When I return to the kitchen, both Rocco and Hudson are gone, turned in for the night.
Meg comes down the hall barefoot, face washed, hair in a loose knot. She looks smaller and more like herself at the same time. I offer tea she won’t taste and a glass of water she’ll drink half of. “I should try to sleep,” she says.
“Probably. If you need anything, just say so. Don’t worry about waking us up.” I don’t say anything like “it’ll be okay” because she’s too smart for that, and I’m too honest.
She smiles wanly then pads down the hall. Her door clicks. I’ll be fine. I can be a good dog. Sit. Stay. Guard. That’s the job of the best friend.
I don’t sleep much. I lie on my back and listen to the heat tick and the hall pipe complain. I think about the future in small, digestible squares—tomorrow’s foundation pour, next week’s home stand, the list of tiny repairs at Bea’s I can fix without Meg making a big deal about paying for parts.
Calling in favors to fast-track an apartment search crosses my mind. I put that on the high shelf too. No money moves without Meg asking. No fast-tracking without her okay. I repeat that to myself because I need the reminder. Being useful is one thing. Taking over is another. She doesn’t need a fixer. She needs a place to sleep and people who listen.
Morning is unwelcome after a night of no sleep. But it’s another day to get things right.
I get up, pull on a shirt, and head to the kitchen for coffee. Hudson’s already awake because his body is rude. He’s pretending to watch the news with the sound off while he texts his route to himself like he’ll forget it if it lives only in the app.Rocco isn’t awake yet because he’s a normal person who can sleep until the alarm he set on purpose.
Meg is already in the kitchen with bed hair and a determined face. She’s wearing an old team tee that used to be the color navy before it met too much sun, and shorts, and the kind of expression I recognize from a hundred mornings behind Bea’s counter.
I am going to do a thing, and I need it to matter.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand, then looks at the stove like it might be a test and she studied. “I’m making breakfast.”
Hudson and I exchange the kind of glance you only earn after a lifetime of being idiots together. He says, “Yes, chef,” in a tone that is both completely sincere and strategically gentle. Meg nods like she has a plan. She does. The plan is eggs and toast.
Odd. In all the years we’ve known her, I can’t remember Meg ever cooking for any of us. Lattes, drip coffee, pull a pastry from the cabinet, sure. But kitchen time? Nope.
She pulls a carton from the fridge and cracks eggs like she’s angry at them. The pan is too hot. The butter smokes and then surrenders. The eggs go from hopeful to worried in seconds. She attacks them with a spatula the way you fight weeds. The toast goes down. She forgets to change the setting from “last time Rocco made grilled cheese in the toaster and somehow didn’t set off the alarm” and the slices come up pale and oddly damp. She flips them and pretends that’s what she meant to do.
I set plates without comment. Hudson gets cups and pours coffee and hands one to her like he’s lowering a rescue line. She smiles in a way that isn’t about the coffee. It’s about being useful. I understand that look enough to swallow anything I want to say about heat levels or butter timing. She divides the eggs into three alarming puddles and adds toast.
“Looks great,” I lie with my whole heart.
Hudson lies even better than me when it matters like this. He makes a pleased noise and digs in.
I follow, fork ready, mouth ready, every part of me ready to translate effort into being fed even if the food does not want to be what it is. The eggs are bad. They’re watery and dry at the same time, the way only eggs can manage when they’ve been insulted at a cellular level. I’m pretty sure the watery parts are made of salmonella. The toast is soggy in the middle and scratches the roof of my mouth at the edge.
But I do what I do best and I eat like I’m starving. Hudson does too. Rocco shuffles in halfway through, hair doing something only hair can do. He takes it all in at once because he’s quiet and he looks. He sits, picks up his fork, and meets my eyes for one second over the plate.
I give the slightest nod, and he digs in. His gravel voice is rougher in the mornings. “This is delicious, Meg.”
