We didn’t look at each other. Instead, we both watched the dying fire pit through the window. The coals glowed against the black, a heart refusing to quit even as the world conspired to kill it.
I waited for him to say something clever, or damning, or even just mean. Instead, he asked, “You keeping well?”
It was such a nothing question, such a blunt force tool for breaking the silence, that I almost laughed. “Better than last week,” I said, which was a lie. “You?”
He stretched, the bones in his shoulders cracking like ice. “The usual. Club’s a mess, but the work keeps the lights on.”
I watched the shape of him against the dark—the way his arms hung loose, the faint shimmer of tattoo ink up his forearms. Every inch of him was a ledger of past violence, written in scars and bad habits. I wanted to ask what he’d come for, but I suspected he didn’t know himself.
The wind shifted, blowing pine and distant smoke up onto the porch. The floodlight went out, leaving us in silhouette.
“What’s going on at the lab?” he said.
I tensed, felt the sweater bite into my elbows. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“You want some?” I nodded at the wine.
“Na.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and for the first time, really looked at me. “You scared?”
I turned the question over in my mouth like a cracked tooth. “Only of what comes next,” I said. “I don’t like not seeing you in two weeks.”
He nodded, but his jaw worked side to side, like he wanted to argue. Instead, he fished a cigarette from his cut, lit it with the thumb-flame of an ancient Zippo, and blew smoke toward the motionless yard.
We sat like that for a while. The only sound was the creak of the porch and the faint, chemical hiss as the wine oxidized in my glass.
Eventually, he stood, stretching to his full height, the shadow of him looming over the deck. He stepped to the edge of the door, then turned back. “I’m not going to be the reason you lose your career. But call if you need anything. Or if you just want to get out of your own head.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. He stepped out onto the porch and tossed the butt, ground it out on the top stair, then started down to the bike.
I watched him go, the floodlight tripping on as he crossed the lawn. The world flashed white, then snapped back to black. He mounted the Harley, but didn’t start it. Instead, he sat for a minute, head down, hands on the bars, like he was lost in the math of his own failure.
I drank the rest of the wine in one go, then stood, the cold biting my ankles. I stepped down into the yard, toes raw against the dead grass, and made my way to the fire pit. I poked at the coals until a fan of sparks shot up, then knelt and held my hands to the heat. The embers glowed, red and stubborn, refusing todie just because the air demanded it. I shouldn’t have bothered him.
I heard the Harley start up, the sound vibrating through my chest and into the bones of my arms. I looked up as the headlight swept the yard, and for a second, the world was reduced to just that: me, the fire, and the cold, mechanical animal crouched at the curb.
I wanted to run to him, to drag him off the bike and into the house, to let the night collapse into something other than waiting. Instead, I watched as he turned the throttle, rolled off, and disappeared into the darkness, the taillight shrinking to a pinprick, then nothing.
I sat there until the embers cooled to black, my hands numb, the wine gone, the world exactly as I’d left it. Only the memory of his voice lingered, a low, persistent hum in the empty night.
I told myself he wouldn’t come back.
After the world spun down to zero, after the last security light blinked out and the glass of wine turned flat, I huddled at the edge of the fire pit, the night closing in like a tightening vise. I’d tried to make it inside, tried to do the adult thing—wash my face, turn off the porch lights, shut out the static—but inertia pinned me to the bare Adirondack. The embers were almost dead, a low orange filament under the bone of ash, and the air clung to my sweater in wet, predatory knots.
I pulled the old blanket from the pit’s edge, shaking loose a bouquet of pine needles and dirt. It was rough, synthetic, the kind you find at a thrift store, but it still held the heat from last summer’s bonfires. I wrapped it around myself, cradled my knees, and stared at the blackened logs. I counted the beats of my pulse, the microscopic detonations of my nervous system, and tried not to think about the man who’d just ridden away.
I failed.
The world shifted, almost imperceptible, and then he was there, shadow loping from the side of the house, boots silent in the dew-wet grass. He didn’t say anything. Just dropped onto the opposite chair, hands dangling between his knees, and stared at me through the gap in the fire pit.
“You okay?” he asked, voice softer than before. “I couldn’t leave. I won’t leave.”
I shrugged. The blanket slipped from my shoulder, catching on the rough spot where last week’s bruise was still blooming. “Not really. But I’ll survive.”
He laughed, a single involuntary bark, and the sound made my teeth ache. “That’s what I like about you. You don’t bullshit.”
He leaned forward, elbows on thighs, and I noticed for the first time the cut on his knuckle, the way the dried blood flaked against the tattoo beneath. I wondered if it hurt or if he even felt it.
We watched the coals. A breeze funneled through the yard, and the heat under the chair dissipated, replaced by a clean, sharp cold. I tugged the blanket tighter, shivered. He noticed. Didn’t move.
