I took a long pull of the beer. It tasted awful—lukewarm, slightly skunky, the kind you grabbed from a gas station because it was the only thing open—but I drank it anyway, letting the bitterness anchor me in something solid instead of the images still looping behind my eyes.
Riley didn’t push. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t check her phone or make small talk or fill the silence with noise. She just stayed.
And somehow, that was exactly what I needed.
And eventually, words came.
Not about the call. I couldn’t talk about that—not yet, maybe not ever. Some things you carried alone, not because you wanted to but because sharing them felt like spreading the damage around. Like making someone else see what you’d seen, feel what you’d felt.
But there were other words too. Ones about what we’d been building together—the truths I’d kept tucked away, never spoken out loud. Not because I didn’t feel them, but because saying them meant risk. Meant admitting how much there was to lose.
But I let them out anyway.
“This is what I wanted with Claire.”
The confession came out easier than it had any right to, surprising me as much as it must have surprised her. Even then, Riley only shifted slightly—close enough to listen, angled just enough to give me room to keep going or stop.
Then I continued.
“Someone who shows up. Someone who stays even when it’s ugly.” I took another pull of beer, watched the sun climb higher. “She couldn’t do it. The job, the hours, the way it changes you. The calls that followed me home, the nightmares, the nights I couldn’t talk about what happened because talking about it made it real again.”
The words kept coming, loosened by exhaustion and cheap beer and the strange intimacy of sitting beside someone in the early-morning quiet.
“She wanted the idea of a firefighter. The uniform and the truck and the stories you tell at parties. Not the reality. Not the 3 AM calls and the missed dinners and the days when you come home smelling like smoke and can’t stop shaking.” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She wanted a hero. Not a man who sits on benches at dawn trying to forget the things he’s seen.”
Riley was quiet for a long moment. The sun had cleared the mountains now, painting everything gold, burning off the morning mist.
“Some people can’t handle it.” Her voice came quietly, eyes still on the horizon. A beat. “That’s the reality of it. Sadly.”
“Yeah.” The word came out flat. I had nothing else to offer it.
I waited for more—for questions, for reassurance—but this was Riley.
“Doesn’t mean no one can.”
I turned to look at her. She was staring straight ahead, her profile sharp against the brightening sky, her hands wrapped around the beer bottle like she needed something to hold onto.
“I know what that’s like.” Not looking at me. Not needing to. “Coming home carrying things you can’t unload. Weight no one can see.” Her thumb traced the condensation on the glass. “Wanting someone nearby who doesn’t try to fix it. Who doesn’t turn it into a story about themselves.”
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.
In that quiet space between us, I thought about everything she carried—Todd, her mother’s death, the years of raising Mia alone. The constant fight with a system that always seemed one step away from failing them. The calls she took too. The bad shifts. The people who didn’t make it.
Different weight. Same kind of ache.
“You drove across town at four in the morning with gas station beer.”
“Five.”
I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh and shook my head. “Still.”
She shrugged, like it was nothing. Like showing up for someone in the dark hours wasn’t everything.
“You’d do the same for me,” she said.
It wasn’t a question. And she was right
We sat until the sun climbed higher, until the gold faded to white and the day began in earnest. Somewhere behind us, the station was waking up. Shift change coming. The world moving on the way it always did.
