Then years passed.
He stayed.
He adapted.
He learned when to look away.
He learned when not to ask.
And, perhaps most importantly, he learned who I was without making the mistake of believing he could fix me.
That kind of loyalty was rare.
I also found myself undeserving of it, but I suppose that doesn’t matter.
“I appreciate your consistency,” I told him.
Ben turned his head and looked at me, brows raised. “That might be the most emotionally generous thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t make it unpleasant,” I grunted.
“My point is,” he said, casting a quick glance back at the screen. “I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad you have something to put all of that”—he gestured loosely toward me, as if my entire existence were an inconvenience he could not be bothered to define—“into.”
“All of what?”
“Mate, if I knew how to describe it, I would.”
“Well, that’s not helpful.”
“Look, I just wanted to say that you’ve been calmer recently. Not normal, obviously. But calmer. Since you first saw him, there’s been less… overflow.”
Overflow.
That was one word for it.
There had always been pressure inside me. A restlessness that gathered beneath the skin, quiet and patient until something irritated it enough to require resolution. Most people created noise simply by existing. Too many voices, too many assumptions, and too much incompetence were set loose in spaces I was expected to tolerate.
Occasionally, that pressure required an outlet.
Ben had been useful in the aftermath of such outlets.
“You prefer me preoccupied.”
“I prefer not having to lug bodies to the car and drive around trying to find a good dumpsite while worrying about the cops being on my ass.”
A reasonable preference.
“So yeah, I like having him around. It’s not even just that he distracts you. He redirects you.”
“Redirected,” I repeated. “That feels right.”
Cove had notremovedthe pressure.
He had simplyredirectedit.
Before him, the restlessness had scattered. It attached itself to irritants, to problems, to people who became unfortunate byvirtue of being inefficient, dishonest, invasive, or simply present at the wrong moment.
Now, that attention had narrowed toward one subject with such completeness that everything else seemed less worth touching.
