“We’ll split the difference.”
A beat. “Take care, Farrow.”
“I always do.”
I stepped into the hallway and didn’t look back.
I took the steps two at a time and came out onto Charles Street on a November morning. The brick was wet, and the gas lamps were still lit. The gold leaf on the State House dome dulled to brass under a low cloud.
A jogger went past in a Bruins beanie, splashing through standing water at the curb. Somewhere a block away, the T emerged from underground; the rumble traveled through the soles of my boots before the train itself broke the surface.
I crossed the Common at an angle, cut through the Public Garden, and came out onto Arlington Street. A man I sometimes nodded at lifted his coffee cup to me from his bench, and I lifted my chin back. I went down Boylston and stepped around the bronze marker set into the sidewalk—one of the two from the 2013 bombing—the way I always did. Most people walked over it without seeing it. I never did.
I caught the Red Line at Park Street. The car was half-full. I stood near the door, one hand on the pole, and watched the windows go black as we dropped under the Charles.
I exited the train, and three blocks off the main drag, my street narrowed. Triple-deckers leaned shoulder to shoulder. A handwritten sign was taped to a streetlamp: LOST CAT, ORANGE, ANSWERS TO MISO, CALL ANYTIME.
My building sat at the end of the block, narrow and three stories high, leaning just slightly to the left. The bakery downstairs was already going. The scents of warm bread, sugar, and coffee drifted up through the stairwell.
My key stuck for a second before it turned.
Inside was my home. It was neither tidy nor messy. I called it lived in.
I kicked my boots off near the door and hung my jacket over the back of a chair. The pothos in my window had grown another six inches down the wall since the last time I’d looked at it.
The walls were what most people noticed about my apartment. I’d mounted a black-and-white print of the Longfellow Bridge in fog. It was near a small oil painting a friend had given me when she moved to Berlin, three massive brushstrokes that somehow read as a body in motion.
I crossed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. The contents were sparse: eggs, hot sauce, almond milk, and half a container of takeout that needed to go.
I cracked two eggs into a pan, leaned against the counter, and scrolled through my phone. Nothing urgent. Two missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize.
My friend Sterling texted and asked if I was still alive. There was a reminder about a college class reunion I had no plans to attend.
I responded to Sterling.
Blaise:still alive. busy week.
I flipped the eggs, slid them onto a plate, and ate standing at the counter. My shirt smelled like Dane’s apartment. I dropped it in the hamper and told myself to forget about it.
That didn’t work. While the hot water rained down in the shower, I thought about his kiss, pecs, and dick in that order. I knew the taste of all three.
I braced one hand against the wall and let the water run down the back of my neck.
I told myself not to think about when I’d see him again. I almost believed I could stick to that plan.
***
Three weeks later, I was deep in a discussion with my latest principal,Globereporter Wiley Priest. He didn’t like being told what to do. He barely listened when I explained what might happen if he didn’t.
We were on the edge of Boston Common, with morning traffic inching past on Tremont. The park was still damp from the overnight rain. Wiley had his hands in his coat pockets and shoulders slightly hunched against the weather.
He was smaller than newspaper readers would have expected. He barely cleared five-eight in boots, and he was built narrow through the shoulders.
He wore a wedding band on his left hand, plain and worn smooth. His hair was longer than it was in the photo on hisGlobebio, pushed back off his forehead.
“You don’t need to be on top of me all the time,” he said.
“I don’t need to be,” I agreed, “but I want to be close enough to reach you before anyone else does.”