“We made it about two weeks.” He laughed softly. “Whole speech planned. Timing, location, emotional arc. I’m ready to deliver it, and my manager just looks at me and goes, ‘Sully, we know.’”
I stared at him.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he said. “That was the whole thing. Nothing happened.”
"I should sleep," I said. "It was a long trip."
"Stay." It was a request, not a question.
"Yes."
Sully's bedroom was the same organized disorder it had always been—clothes on the chair, books stacked with no particular logic, and he had the window cracked despite the cold.
What I hadn't noticed before was the photograph on the nightstand: two boys, maybe ten or eleven, squinting into the sun somewhere that looked like a coast. It didn't look new, but I rarely missed things.
Sully was recognizable even then, same wavy hair. The other one I didn't know.
On the wall above the dresser, the seed turkey was still there. I looked at it a beat longer than before.
"What is that?"
Sully glanced up from where he was pulling back the covers. "The turkey?"
"Yes."
"Danny made it. In high school, I was in this program where we hung out with little kids and read them stories." He straightened the pillow on my side. "He did it in school and said his mom didn't want it. I said it looked like a real turkey, and he gave it to me. He thought that was the funniest thing anyone had ever said." He paused. "It looks nothing like a real turkey."
"No," I said.
He looked at it another moment, then got into bed.
"Did you ever do those?" he asked. "Art projects."
"Yes."
"Any good?"
"I made a ceramic bowl in seventh grade. I'd measured the clay thickness at four points around the rim to keep it even. The glaze came out uneven on one side, and my teacher marked it down for lack of control." I sat on the edge of the bed. "It was a deliberate gradient. I'd tested it on a tile first."
Sully propped himself up on one elbow. "What did you do?"
"I learned to avoid people who got it wrong."
He looked at me for a moment, then put his head back down on the pillow. "That tracks," he said.
I turned off the light on the nightstand and got in beside him. He rolled toward me and moved close, placing his cheek on my chest, over my heart. His hand settled against my ribs.
"Goodnight, Pratt. I'm glad you're home," he said.
"Goodnight."
Sully's breathing slowed almost immediately. In the next minute, he was fast asleep.
I looked at the photograph on the nightstand. It was barely visible in the ambient light from the city. Was it there before? Both boys laughed at something just outside the frame.
Sully's thumb moved once against my ribs. I didn't sleep for a long time.
