“I’m cleaning.”
“You’re processing.”
“I’m cleaning while processing. It’s called multitasking.”
Jacks leaned against the back bar and crossed his arms. “What time are you talking to him?”
“After the shift. The 3 a.m. kitchen thing we do.”
“You know what you want to say?”
“I know what I want to say. I just don’t know how to say it without it sounding like either too much or not enough.”
“Say it the way it sounds in your head.”
“In my head, it sounds like, ‘Please don’t stop. Please keep going. Please be real. Please don’t be something I imagined on the floor of the foster room while a hairless cat judged me.’ That’s what it sounds like in my head, Jacks.”
“Then say that.”
“I can’t say that. That’s unhinged. That’s emotionally feral.”
“Peter came to your door and told you his brain was in the kitchen holding a blanket. That’s not exactly measured and composed.”
“That’s different. That’sPeterunhinged, which looks like a man standing in a doorway speaking in complete sentences about his writing process. Benji unhinged looks like a cartoon version of a roadrunner being chased by an angry, anvil-wielding coyote.”
“Taz never chased Buggs. You’re mixing up your cartoons.”
“Did you just . . . correct my Saturday morning childhood recollection?”
Jacks shrugged in his Jacks way. “You were wrong. About Taz. That’s not cool.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, immediately regretting waking up that morning.
Jacks smiled again, picked up a tray, and headed for the floor. “Just say what’s true,” he said over his shoulder. “Peter’s the one person who’s not going to run from it.”
My shift ended at 1:30 a.m. I closed out my tabs, cleaned my station, and restocked the well. Mia hugged me on her way out and whispered, “Call me tomorrow with details, or I’ll come to your apartment and get them myself.” I believed her because Mia’s threats were promises with better marketing.
I drove home with both hands on the wheel and the radio off.
The apartment was quiet when I opened the door.
The stove light was on.
Peter’s door was open three inches. Through the gap, I could see the glow of his desk lamp and hear the faint sounds of a man who was awake and waiting.
I went to the kitchen and sat on the counter. I didn’t pour cereal or get the mixing bowl. I just sat in the stove light and waited for Peter to hear me and come out, the way he always came out, the way we always found each other in this room at this hour.
His chair creaked, followed by footsteps in the hall, then he was in the kitchen doorway in his pajamas and his glasses, holding nothing, bringing nothing between himself and whatever was about to happen.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
I watched him make tea. The kettle, the mug, the tea bag, the pour, each movement precise and unhurried, a ritual that preceded every honest conversation we’d ever had.
He sat at the island. I sat on the counter.
Four feet of kitchen sprawled between us, chargedwith everything that had happened in this space and everything that was about to.
