Page 55 of We Are Just Us

SIXTEEN

His skin was still buzzing, restless and too warm in a way the morning sun couldn’t explain and he couldn’t turn off.

From this morning.

From the way Rory had kissed him goodbye at the door like they’d been doing it for years.

He stared at the sink, hands in soapy water, scrubbing the same mug for the third time. The dogs were asleep in the living room. The house was quiet. His brain was not.

He tossed the sponge and grabbed his phone.

KIERAN: Remember when I said I wasn’t going to do anything stupid?

EMORY: yes

KIERAN: I did something stupid

EMORY: How stupid???

KIERAN: Two times

The three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

EMORY: I need details now

KIERAN: LOL. I’ll call you later

EMORY: Kieran Doyle. You absolute slut. I’m SO proud.

Kieran let out a small, disbelieving laugh that had nowhere to go in the empty kitchen.

Mabel licked the back of his knee, demanding breakfast and attention in equal measure. He fed them, scratched behind their ears, and pulled up his Substack dashboard on his laptop.

Seventy-nine subscribers. He’d gained twenty since last week.

He tried to focus on the draft he’d been meaning to finish, on the emails sitting unanswered in his inbox. None of it stuck. He had pent-up energy with nowhere to go. The good kind. The kind that made sitting still impossible.

He needed to post soon, and he had nothing. Or rather, he had plenty, but it was all tangled up in feelings he wasn’t ready to write about yet. He needed new material. New inspiration. Something that wasn’t I’m sleeping with my neighbor and I think I’m in trouble.

He grabbed his keys.

Time to wander.

Leucadia had the kind of energy Kieran was still learning to trust—unhurried, unpretentious, a little strange. He walked south along the 101 with no particular destination, past murals and taco shops and a yoga studio with a hand-lettered sign that read Breathe, Bitch.

He was half a mile in when a thrift store caught his eye.

Second Wind. The hand-painted sign in the window read Local Art Inside. Probably Weird. Definitely Cheap.

He liked it.

The door chimed when he walked in, and the smell hit him first—old books, worn fabric, something faintly incense-adjacent.

The store was packed but organized, shelves crammed with dishes and picture frames and mysterious kitchen gadgets no one had used since 1987.

“Help you find anything?” A voice called from somewhere near the back.

Kieran turned. A woman emerged from behind a bookshelf, wiping her hands on an apron. She was maybe fifty, with silver hair pulled into a messy bun and paint stains on her jeans.