I turned away and busied myself with equipment that didn't need checking.
This was what life could look like, if you got it right. A woman who showed up with lunch and kisses. Kids who screamed your name like you were their whole world. Someone was waiting when the shift ended. A home that wasn't empty.
I thought about the apartment I'd woken up in this morning, the woman whose name I couldn't remember, the silence of my own place, the hollow where a life should be.
Lucia shrieked with laughter as he tickled her. Marco clung to his neck, refusing to let go.
I wanted that.
The realization hit me like a fist to the chest.
I wanted to be the man someone waited for at the end of the day.
I stopped bringing women home, stopped answering numbers I didn't recognize, and started spending my off days at the gym, or visiting my mom in Astoria, or just sitting in my apartment learning to tolerate the silence.
It wasn't comfortable. But it was honest.
Three months in, my phone buzzed for the dozenth time that hour.
I glanced at the screen. Natalie. Again.
Natalie
Hey stranger, been thinking about you.
And then a photo I didn't open.
"You gonna answer that?" Brian asked from across the table. We were in the kitchen, killing time between calls, playing a card game that neither of us was paying attention to.
"Nope."
"She's persistent."
"She's bored." I set the phone face-down.
Brian raised an eyebrow. "Three months ago, you would've texted back before she finished typing."
"Three months ago, I was an idiot."
He studied me for a long moment.
"Something changed," he said. Not a question.
I shrugged, reaching for my coffee instead of an answer, and let the deflection sit there between us.
"Come on." Brian leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "This is me. What's going on?"
"Nothing's going on."
"You've turned down three numbers this week. You keep staring into space like you're solving world hunger. And you just voluntarily skipped looking at what I'm guessing was avery friendlyphoto." He tilted his head. "That's not nothing."
I could have made a joke, changed the subject, given him the charm-and-deflect routine that had worked on everyone else for years.
But this was Brian. He'd held my hand through the worst calls of my career. He'd seen me cry exactly once, after we lost a kid in a house fire in Astoria, and he'd never mentioned it again.
"I'm tired," I said finally. "Of beingthat guy."
"That guy?"
