Typed:Yes.
Deleted it.
Typed:No, I took the night off.
Deleted that too.
They were lies, and I couldn't.
Sully:At Nora's.
I sent it and exhaled.
"Pratt?" Nora asked.
"Yeah."
"You have to tell him."
"I know."
That was too fast. I should have said, "Please don't require this of me." That's where my gut was.
"Sooner rather than later," she said.
I turned around. She hadn't changed her position at all. I realized she was doing what she did for me at the bar every shift. She held the center while everything moved around her, including me.
"He's going to want to fix it," I said. "That's how he's built. He'll want to solve it—" I paused. "And fuck, what if he—damn, I know he's not Bryan. What if he—"
"He's not Bryan."
I went back to the couch and set the phone on the coffee table.
"I don't know how to do this part," I said. "The quiet part. Staying still and letting—letting him in."
"You told me a story about the two of you."
I looked at Nora. "Story?"
"You said you sat on the floor together and built a lamp. It sounded quiet to me."
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
"He sees you, Sully. That's why he's there." She said it directly, with no soft edges. "He's been paying attention since day one."
My hands were in my lap. I looked at them.
The records were at my place, still in the box on the counter. Cath's note. Pratt's two-word text, sitting there having received two words back that told him nothing useful.
"He moves you forward," Nora said. "I don't say that lightly."
I didn't answer. I sat in her comfortably cluttered apartment at whatever hour it was and let the sentence hang there.
For three years I'd stayed in motion because stillness would let Boston catch up. Then someone moved in next door who slowed me down without trying. He did it by being exactly who he was everywhere: next door and on TV.
He was there.
All he asked was that I look back at him.
