Evan’s bedroom. The overhead light off, the bedside lamp throwing a warm circle across the comforter and the overnight bag sitting open at its center. A change of clothes. Toiletry kit. Phone charger. The logistics of showing up somewhere unprepared, organized into a bag.
Evan had been standing in front of his closet longer than he wanted to admit.
The blazers ran along the left side of the rod. Nine of them, charcoal to navy to light gray, arranged by occasion because Evan was the kind of person who arranged blazers by occasion.The charcoal was for boosters. The navy was for press. The light gray was for the conference banquet, worn once a year, dry-cleaned immediately after. He reached for the charcoal one. Touched the sleeve. The fabric held its shape the way it was designed to: stiff, structured, professional. The fabric of a man who was always ready to be looked at and never ready to be seen.
Evan took out his phone.
Claire picked up on the second ring. “Have you packed?”
“I’m in the closet.”
“The blazer closet.”
“Yes.”
“Evan. You know what I said.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to listen?”
Evan looked at the row of them. He’d worn the charcoal one to the booster dinner at the start of the semester. The night before Finn walked into his office and closed the entrance and changed everything. He’d been wearing the navy one the first time he’d watched Finn skate the spin sequence on the empty rink. He’d been wearing the light gray one the night he’d sat in his vehicle in Finn’s parking lot and typedYesand hit send.
Every significant moment of this had happened with Evan wearing armor.
“It’s not that simple,” Evan said.
“It is. It’s a shirt. Reach past them.”
Evan reached. His fingers brushed the charcoal sleeve and kept going, hangers clicking. His fingers found a different texture. Softer. Lighter. A blue button-down pushed to the rear of the rod because it didn’t look right at functions. He pulled it off the hanger.
Evan held it in both palms. The collar worn in. The fabric giving where the blazers held stiff.
“Okay,” Evan said.
“Good. You’re going to be okay. Whatever happens.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Evan folded the shirt and set it in the bag. “I think so.”
“He showed up in a parking lot. In the snow. With cold coffee.” Matter-of-fact. “He’ll let you show up too.”
Evan’s jaw ached. He’d been clenching it. Claire had been sitting on everything he’d told her at two in the morning, and she was using it now, the way she used everything: with care and patience and the absolute refusal to let the people she loved lie to themselves.
“You’re going to want to meet him,” Evan said again.
“I know.” The shape of a smile in her voice. “Drive safe. Text me when you get there.”
She hung up.
Evan didn’t pack a blazer. The bag was small for a decision this large. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it. A change of clothes and a toiletry kit and a blue button-down and no plan. Evan had spent his whole career planning everything. Color-coded his wanting and called it work. Built systems to manage the distance between what he was and what he let himself want.
And here he was. Driving to Chicago with nothing prepared to say, because the thing he needed to say wasn’t the kind of thing you could prepare. It was the kind of thing you either said or you didn’t, standing in front of someone who had every right to turn you away, wearing a shirt instead of armor, with your clipboard on a desk in another state.
Evan picked up the bag and set it by the entrance.
