Halfway up, Bo stopped and looked through the wire-reinforced window into the garage below. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “You got a goddamn museum in there.”
He wasn’t wrong. The floor was laid out like a surgeon’s table: tool chests lined up military straight, every lift and bench scrubbed down, everything with its own place. The bikes—my bikes—sat in a row, polished to mirror shine even in the low light, like they were waiting for the next world war.
“Don’t touch anything unless you can put it back better than you found it,” I said.
He gave a crooked smile. “Maybe I’ll tag the bathroom. Just to keep it humble.”
We kept climbing. At the landing, I unlocked the door—thick wood, reinforced hinges, good deadbolt. Bo shuffled in behind me, blinking like a man surfacing from a cave.
The loft wasn’t much, but it was mine: open beams, high ceilings, kitchen to the left, living space straight ahead. The furniture was a mix of leather and thrift, but every surface was clean, the rugs vacuumed in straight lines, the counter clear except for a couple bills and my keys. Big windows looked out over the valley; I liked waking up to the fog boiling off the river in the morning.
Bo stood in the entry, uncertain. “You want me to take my boots off or is this a shoes-on kind of cult?”
I jerked my chin toward the hooks by the door. “Leave ’em. You’re not bleeding on my floors, are you?”
He checked his hands, the knuckles scabbed and healing. “Not today.”
I moved past him, flicked on the lights. The place warmed up instantly, yellow bulbs turning the cold dusk into something softer.
Bo wandered into the living room, eyeing the bookshelves and the walls, which I’d lined with old shop calendars, a few abstract paintings, and two framed photos: one of me and my dad, elbows deep in a ’69 Charger, and the other of my first dog, Bandit, grinning with a socket wrench in his mouth.
“Nice digs,” Bo said, but I could tell he was trying to see if there was any trace of someone else—a girlfriend, a roommate, a secret family. There wasn’t. Just me, my mess, and whatever I could fix with my own two hands.
I watched him limping a little, the effort it took not to favor his bad side. He was proud, but the way he kept looking to see if I’d noticed told me everything.
I grabbed a chair from the kitchen and set it near the window. “Sit,” I said. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”
He obeyed, but made a show of doing it his way—sitting sideways, one knee hooked over the arm, like he was afraid the chair might bite if he got too close.
I watched him for a minute. The light from the window caught the fading bruises on his face, the yellow and purple leaking down his neck like watercolor. He wasn’t pretty, not in the way people meant when they said the word, but he had a kind of raw, cut-glass beauty that was hard to look away from.
Especially when he was hurting.
I walked to the kitchen, grabbed two glasses, and poured water from the Brita pitcher. “Want something stronger?” I offered, nodding toward the bottle of Jameson by the sink.
Bo shook his head. “Just water. Head’s still spinning.”
I handed him a glass. “Drink. You’ll need it if you want to get through tonight.”
He took it, sipped, then eyed me over the rim. “You planning to sleep or are we gonna watch each other until morning?”
I almost smiled. “You’re staying here. That clear enough?”
He set the glass down, but his hand shook a little when he did. “You always this bossy?”
I leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, and let him stew in the silence. “Just with people who need it,” I finally said.
Bo looked out the window, but I could see the way his body relaxed, just a shade. Like maybe he didn’t hate the idea as much as he wanted me to think he did.
The valley outside was filling with mist, the whole town going silver and dark. We stood in that small, warm circle of light for a long time, neither one of us wanting to break it.
When the silence got too thick, Bo reached into his jacket and pulled out his sketchbook—the one rescued from the wreck. He flipped it open, found a blank page, and started to draw.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I do my best work when I’m held hostage.”
I grunted, but there was a flicker of pride in my chest. “Just don’t draw me naked. Or do, but make me look better than real life.”
He snorted, but didn’t stop sketching.
