I am not sleeping.
Just lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, replaying every second on the porch.
His voice. Low and rough, worn down from disuse. The way he answered my questions. Not with the polished ease of someone who’s practiced at conversation, but with the careful, almost reluctant honesty of a man who doesn’t give words away and was giving them to me anyway.
You learn to need it. And then you can’t go back.
I’d asked about the quiet. He’d answered about something else entirely, and I don’t think either of us acknowledged it.
I roll onto my side and pull the blanket tighter. The clock on the nightstand says 11:47. I’ve been in bed for an hour.
I think about the way he looked at me when I said I wasn’t good at loud. That quick, assessing glance that felt nothing like the way other people look at me. Most people hear I’m not good at loud and hear I’m shy and move on. He heard something else. I could see it in his face. He heard the part I didn’t say.
The part where loud isn’t the problem. The part where the problem is that I’ve spent my whole life making myself quieter and smaller and easier to leave, and I’m so good at it now that sometimes I forget there’s a version of me that isn’t performing.
He looked at me, and my skin prickled. Not from exposure. Not from being stripped bare. From being recognized. From someone looking at me and finding the thing I hadn’t been showing anyone else.
I press my face into the pillow and make a small, frustrated sound that no one hears.
This is not how I planned to spend my Saturday night.
Riley picks up on the fourth ring. Her voice is groggy and amused, which means I woke her up and she’s already decided it was worth it.
“It’s almost midnight, B.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t sleep.”
A rustle. She’s sitting up. I can picture her in her apartment in Evergreen Lakes, pushing her hair out of her face, reaching for the glass of water she always keeps on the nightstand. “Talk to me.”
“I went to a dinner tonight. At the B&B. Nora organized it.”
“The woman who adopted you. Okay.”
“And there was…” I trail off. Stare at the ceiling. Try to figure out how to say this without it sounding like what it is. “There’s this man in town. He delivered firewood to the clinic last week. He was at the dinner tonight.”
Silence. One beat. Two.
“Bianca St. James.” Riley’s voice has changed. The sleepiness is gone. She is fully, dangerously awake. “Are you calling me at midnight because of a man?”
“No. I’m calling because I can’t sleep.”
“Because of a man.”
“Because of—” I close my eyes. “It’s not like that.”
“Tell me what it’s like.”
I pull the blanket up to my chin and stare into the dark, trying to explain something I don’t understand myself. “He’s quiet. Really quiet. He barely talks, and when he does, it’s… careful. He doesn’t waste words. And he has this dog, this German Shepherd, who’s the same way. They move together. They’re both…”
“Broken?”
“Careful,” I say. “They’re both very careful.”
Riley is quiet for a second. When she speaks, her voice is softer. The real Riley. “What happened at the dinner?”
“We ended up on the porch. Both of us needed out of the noise. And we just… stood there. Talked a little. He asked where I was before, and I told him the burn unit, and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t give me that look people give, the one that’s half pity and half, oh God, I don’t know what to say. He just said it was a hard place to be. And that was it.”
“That was it.”
