My left hand found the CharlieCard in my pocket. Orange stripe, Boston T, the kind that cost three dollars at any station in the city and worked until you stopped needing it.
I had no idea what the balance was. I'd never checked. I'd moved to Chicago before I used up the balance.
I thought about the bar. Heath's laugh took up space without apologizing for it. The corner stool sat empty for the last rounds, shaped by someone's absence.
My building appeared on my left. In the fourth-floor hallway were the same two doors, with the same plates at eye level. I'dwalked into the wrong one twice. I stood in front of the right one now, with the key in my hand.
Nora's comment stayed with me.He watched you the way people watch something fragile that they want to carry without breaking it.I didn't know where to put that.
Bryan would have laughed.
Sul, he would have said—nobody else ever called me Sul—you are completely cooked on this guy.And I would have saidI'm not cooked on anythingand he would have given me the look, the one that meantI have known you since we were nine years old, and I know exactly what cooked looks like on you.
I unlocked my door and went inside. Everything was where I'd left it. The printer was in its box in the corner, and two plants waited on the sill, doing their best.
I dropped my keys on the counter and didn't put music on.
That was a tell. The music was always first. Walk in, hit play, and give the condo a pulse—even at 2:30 am. I'd done it every night for two years without thinking about it.
I stood in the kitchen and let the quiet be what it was.
My fingertips could still feel his shoulder, the density. They remembered him absorbing the contact without comment.
I took the CharlieCard out and set it on the counter. I looked at it. Then I picked it back up and slid it into my pocket.
I went to bed and lay in the dark without putting anything on, listening to the silence on the other side of the wall.
