"Your hands," I say. "They're shaking."
She looks down. Her left hand is on the coffee pot, and there's a fine tremor running through her fingers. She pulls the hand back and puts it in her apron pocket.
"Bad week," she says. "Can I get you anything else?"
"Stay."
"I'm working."
"After."
She looks at me. The tapping in her apron pocket is rapid. "After what?"
"After your shift. Stay with me."
She cocks her head to the side. I can see her mulling it over, deciding what it means.Stay with me. Not at the restaurant. Not on the walk home. With me.
"Okay," she says.
She closes at ten forty-five. Javi left early, something about his sister's boyfriend and a family emergency that sounded manufactured to give Grace the closing shift alone. She doesn't seem to mind. She moves through the routine on autopilot. Mop, register, locks, lights. The restaurant goes dark in sections.
I'm at the bar when she finishes. She comes out of the kitchen with her jacket and her bag, and she walks straight to me andstands between my knees where I'm sitting on the barstool and puts her hands on my chest.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
"You said stay."
"I did."
"Where?"
"Your place."
She picks up her bag and walks to the door without looking back. I follow.
Three blocks. She doesn't walk beside me this time. She walks ahead, fast, her stride purposeful, and I match her pace two steps behind because she's leading and I'm following and the reversal of every dynamic we've had is happening on a Tuesday night on a cold street in South Philadelphia and I let it happen.
At her door, she unlocks it without turning around. She walks inside. She leaves the door open behind her. I step through and close it and lock it. Her apartment is dark and small and smells like her shampoo and some incense shit in a bowl on the hallway table.
She drops her bag on the kitchen counter. Her jacket goes on the chair. She turns to me and the apartment is so small that there's four feet between us and the only light is the streetlamp coming through the window and the green glow of the microwave clock.
"I haven't slept in three days," she says.
"I know."
"I don't know why. The pills aren't working the way they used to. Or something is changing. I keep having these..." She stops. She is tapping the counter beside her hip, fast. "It doesn't matter."
"Tell me."
"Flashes. Images. Things I can't explain. Feelings that don't belong to me. Or they do belong to me, but I don't know where they come from." She laughs, but it comes out strangled. "I sound insane."
"You don't."
"I called my foster mother six times this week. She hasn't called back. She always calls back about the pills. Always. And now she's not, and I'm running out, and I can't sleep, and I'm seeing things that aren't there, and the only thing that makes any of it quiet is..."
She stops again. Her eyes are on mine.
