Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was supposed to be a fun night. They were celebrating...something. Seth can’t remember what. He can only remember Vanessa, pouring drink after drink, sliding him pills with a twinkle in her beautiful blue eyes, smiling like she knew something he didn’t, like she was going to share all of her secrets with him, giving him a rolled up bill and rubbing the leftover cocaine on her gums. He wanted her secrets. He wanted it all.

He doesn’t remember getting in the car. 

Doesn’t remember speeding  onto the highway.

Doesn’t remember anything until he’s being pulled from his overturned car, ambulances around him lighting the night red and blue. 

Someone sits him on the curb and flashes a light in his eyes, but all he can see is the EMT doing CPR to a woman laid out on the ground. There’s a second car on that stretch of the road. Its windshield is smashed open and if Seth follows the line between this and the woman, he can guess that she was ejected on impact.

He blinks, barely registers the other EMT dealing with the wound on his forehead, wiping the blood trickling down in his eye. 

“Is she…” he starts and his mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton balls, like his voice has to fight through a thick fog to come out. “Is she gonna be okay?” he says, slurring half his words.

The EMT turns to where his colleagues are giving up on the CPR and sighs.

“Nah. You killed someone tonight.” He turns to Seth, his eyes hard and unforgiving. “The kids die and the drunk bastards always get away with barely a scratch. There’s no fucking justice.”

Seth stares at the dead woman and looks away.

-

Behind him, people are crying.

“How do you plead?”

Seth swallows, his voice stuck somewhere between the bile rising from his stomach and the knot tying off his throat.

“Guilty.”

He doesn’t turn around to watch the devastation in Uncle Eddie’s eyes, the anger in Richie’s. The hate on the faces of the girl’s family. 

His lawyer pats his shoulder and just like that, it’s over.

-

He’s alone in his cell. 

He stares at the walls.

He stares at the ceiling.

He closes his eyes and sees the red and blue lights illuminating the face of the kid he killed. 

-

Vanessa never visits. 

-

It’s been five years. Could have been two or eight or twenty. 

He has a scar near his eyebrow and sometimes it itches.

“I’ll come and get you,” Eddie says on the phone. “What time are they releasing you again?”

“Two,” Seth replies.

“Alright. See you tomorrow, son.”

-

Seth can see the sun from the prison courtyard, but somehow, the sun that awaits him outside the prison gates feels a hundred times more intense, more blinding.

His old clothes are too big in some places, too tight in others. Prison body. Less fat, more muscle, born out of boredom and the need to look strong enough that you won’t get threatened with a stabbing too much. 

Seth ignores the way the edges of his sleeves dig into his biceps and takes a step outside.

Eddie is there, in denim overalls tied at the waist and his perpetual Hawaiian shirt, leaning against his old car.

Seth walks over, unsure of how to greet his uncle. He doesn’t remember how to interact with another human that isn’t an inmate or a guard, or seated at a parlor table.

Eddie doesn’t hesitate. He crushes Seth against him in a fierce hug and Seth breathes in his familiar scent. Coffee. Motor oil. Laundry detergent strong enough to wash off grease stains.

“Hello, son,” Eddie says.

Between the touching and his uncle’s voice, it takes all of Seth’s self-control not to break down crying right there and then. Eddie ushers him into the car and drives away from the prison.

Eddie fills the car with music and his own voice, talking about everything and anything. Funny things that happened at the garage, anecdotes about Richie’s latest obsession, about Kisa’s bar, about people Seth barely remembers. 

Seth doesn’t mean to fall asleep slouched against the window, but Eddie’s steady stream of commentary mixed with the rumble of his car is hypnotic and soothing, and soon Seth closes his eyes, only thinking that he’s safe.

He wakes up when the rumbling stops and startles when Eddie puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re home, son,” he says. 

Seth looks up through the window. The garage hasn’t changed at all. The tattoo shop next door looks like it got a coat of fresh paint in the last few years, but other than that, the street is exactly the same.

Seth gets out of the car. The wind brings the smell of the pizzeria down the street, something rich and hearty, miles from the cardboard he ate in prison. His stomach twists.

Richie exits the garage then, wearing the same type of overalls as Eddie, wiping his hands on a rag, beaming from ear to ear, black grease smudged on his left cheek.

“Looking good, brother,” he says and throws the rag behind him. He hugs Seth and pats his back, then keeps an arm around his shoulders as he leads him inside. They walk through the garage and Seth doesn’t recognize the cars being worked on. His hand twitches.

They sit at the kitchen island while Eddie makes coffee. 

“So,” Eddie says. “What’s in store for you?”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “What’s in store for me?” he repeats. 

“Yeah. Who do you have to report to, is there anything you have to do, all that shit.”

“Uh. I’m meeting my parole officer next week,” he says.

Eddie nods. “You got a name?”

Seth reaches into the bag containing his meager belongings and grabs a folder out of it. “Ximena Vasconcelos,” he reads from the first page.

Richie hums. 

Seth glances at him. “You know her?”

His brother shrugs. “I know of her. Word is she’s a hardass.”

Seth sighs and taps the folder. “Yeah well, according to this, I only have to see her every two weeks and go to group every week.”

“AA?” Eddie asks. 

Seth snorts. “AA, NA, whichever deals with the ‘I was so high off my face I killed a kid with my car’ issue,” he says flatly, scratching at a paint stain on his mug. 

The silence that follows is tense and uncomfortable, filled with all the things they never talked about. The fact that he left this town for starters, then Vanessa, his addictions. Him killing a teenager. 

Seth doesn’t know if they ever talked about all of this during his five years in prison because Eddie and Richie didn’t want to twist the metaphorical knife, didn’t want to remind him why he was in prison—as if he could fucking forget when he saw the girl’s face and the blue and red lights, seeing it every goddamn night when he was laying down in his bed. 

Or if it was because they just didn’t want to admit to themselves that the third member of what was left of their family was a total fuck up. 

Neither Richie nor Eddie is looking at him and suddenly the idea of staying in that kitchen a second longer is unbearable. 

“I’m gonna take a walk,” he says as he stands up. 

He doesn’t wait for their response, just gets to the door and walks through the garage ignoring the cars and the feeling that he should know who they belong to. 

Seth walks aimlessly through the tiny town he used to call home, up until nine years ago. He wasn’t even old enough to legally drink when he threw a duffel bag in the trunk of his car and drove to Houston with no intention of coming back, too afraid to become his father if he stayed. The irony of the situation isn’t lost on him. Left not to become an alcoholic piece of shit, became an alcoholic piece of shit anyway, went to prison, now he’s back. 

Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The old church is still standing but the paint is peeling from the siding. The doors are chained shut and the grass around it is patchy and dry. There are no quotes on the message board.

The entire town feels like it hasn’t changed at all and like he doesn’t recognize anything at the same time. Everything feels familiar, but eerily so. Like the uncanny valley of town. It should be home, but it’s not. 

He has no home anymore. 

The smell of Eddie’s chili greets him when he gets back to the garage. 

“See anything interesting?” his uncle asks without turning away from the stove. 

Seth sits at the kitchen island, on the same stool he sat on earlier, and every day from ages 7 to 20.

“The church is abandoned?”

Eddie gives one last stir to the pot. Then he covers it with a lid and turns around. “Yeah. No one came to replace Jacob.”

“He retired?” Seth asks, remembering the pastor and his perpetual hat, his wife with the sad face who ended up killing herself, their adopted son with anger issues, and Kate, their daughter, his best friend back then, only a few years younger than him and Richie.

Eddie shakes his head. He grabs the coffee pot and refills his mug, then fills a second one that he slides in front of Seth. “He died, couple months back,” he finally replies. 

Seth’s mouth dries up. It’s not a surprise the old pastor is dead. He was already in bad shape before Seth left, eaten alive by guilt and bad whisky. 

“Did, uh, did Kate come back? For the funeral or something?” he asks, fiddling with the mug.

“She’s still here.”

Seth glances up at Eddie. Surely he heard wrong. Kate was the first to leave. Graduated high school and got fed up with waiting for him to convince Richie to leave with them.

“Came back to deal with the funeral and ended up staying. She’s in the old house.”

Seth clears his throat. “She okay?”

“You can ask her yourself. She’s coming to pick her car up tomorrow morning.”

-

Seth shouldn’t be stressed at the idea of seeing Kate again. They had been friends, before, talking about leaving this town in their rearview and living a grand life in a big city. Leaving behind the specter of his father, the expectations on her shoulders, the gossips and the nasty stares that followed him anywhere he went. 

He didn’t want to leave Richie alone, but Richie had never said anything about leaving, had been happy with his girlfriend and the prospect of working with Eddie. Family business, he’d said. Richie didn’t care about the gossips and the nasty stares.

Kate had left first. It felt like a betrayal. The plan was to leave together. You were supposed to stick to the plan. 

But her mom killed herself and her brother ran away with his band and her preacher of a dad had started drinking himself into oblivion and Seth was still telling her that he had to talk to Richie. He couldn’t blame her for leaving as soon as she had been able to. 

At first he wished she had stayed in touch. Then he was too busy with drugs and parties and Vanessa to remember to miss her. And after that, he was just glad she wasn’t around to witness the pathetic wreck he had become. Was glad that he couldn’t see the disappointment in her eyes.

The clothes he borrows from Richie still don’t fit, but it’s all he has to wear. He throws one of Eddie’s few flannel shirts on top of Richie’s white undershirt, ties his brother’s overalls at his waist, laces up his boots and goes to the garage, pretending that his hands aren’t slightly shaking.

Kate’s car is ready, or as ready as a twenty-five year old pile of junk can be. Richie is working on another car and Eddie is gone for the morning, so Seth is the one in charge of the front. He suspects it was Eddie’s and Richie’s plan all along.

He tidies up the shop, grabs one tool or another when Richie asks him to, ignores the curious glances that random passersby throw at him. He wipes his hands on his thighs and pretends his intestines aren’t twisted into knots. 

“So the rumors are true,” a clear feminine voice finally says from the entrance. 

Seth puts down the pile of suppliers catalogs that he’s been trying to figure out if they’re still relevant or not (the year on the one on the top of the pile starts with 19, so he’s thinking no) and swivels around.

Kate is standing there. Her cheeks are leaner than he remembers, her cheekbones slightly more pronounced, her hair longer, but she’s still the girl he was friends with, all those years ago.

“The prodigal son has returned,” she continues with a smile as she walks closer to what serves as the front desk. 

Seth snorts. “I think the prodigal one is you. I’m just the town pariah,” he replies and the corners of his mouth curls up to match hers. 

“Welcome back,” she says.

He’s glad for the makeshift desk between them. He’s afraid he’d try to hug her if it wasn’t there.

“Hello, Kate!” Richie hollers from under a car.

“Hi, Richie!” she replies in the same tone, leaning a bit on the side in the direction where Richie’s legs are poking out. “So when did you get back?” she asks in a lower voice, righting herself up. 

She asks that like he just went on some vacation. 

He clears his throat. “Yesterday evening.”

“You planning on sticking around?”

Seth shrugs. “I have nowhere else to be.”

She smiles. “We can have nowhere else to be together, then.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She gives him her credit card to pay for her car repairs, then tells him her phone number is in her file and he should use it. He nods and gives her her car keys and then she shouts goodbye to Richie, smiles at him one more time and then climbs in her car.

It’s only when she’s gone that he realizes she was wearing the band t-shirt he bought at a concert when he was 15 and that she definitely stole from him a couple years after.

“You’re gonna call?” Richie asks, still tinkering under the car.

Seth blinks, shakes his head and turns his attention back to the supplier catalogs. “Yeah. It’ll be nice to be able to talk to someone that doesn’t have your ugly mug.”

“You’re just jealous because I don’t have any gray hair.”

Seth absent-mindedly scratches at his temple, more silver than black now, and dumps a catalog in one of the trash cans. 

-

“Hey, it’s me, uh, Seth,” he says when he calls the next day from the garage landline.

Kate lets out a breathy laugh. “You called!”

“Said I would.”

“You could’ve been just a poor mechanic humoring the customer who was harassing you,” she replies and he can hear the cheeky grin on her lips.

“That what you are now? Just a customer?” he asks with a laugh, pushing the real possibility that that is just what she is now to the back of his mind.

“I don’t want to assume anything,” she says in a detached tone, but Seth still hears the concern behind her words.

He lowers his phone from his face and takes a deep breath in. Then he brings the phone back up and decides he’s fine with whatever answer she gives him next. “How about this poor mechanic invites this customer for a coffee, see where we go from there?” 

There’s a silence and Seth is afraid he came on too strong.

“I, uh,” Kate finally says just as he’s about to apologize and hang up. “I’d love that.”

They meet at the only diner in town and grab a booth next to a window.

They order coffee from a bored looking teenager and Seth pretends not to see the dirty looks the older waitress throws in his direction. He remembers her. She already hated him when he was a teenager with a patchy beard and acne spots.

“You might not make many friends, being seen with me,” he tells Kate.

She looks at him over her mug and raises an eyebrow. “I’m the daughter who didn’t heroically sacrifice her youth to try and save her alcoholic preacher of a father. I’m already a black sheep.”

“And hanging out with an addict who’s fresh out of prison isn’t gonna help you win any points.”

Kate shrugs, lowers her mug, both hands wrapped around it. “It’s not like I’ve ever cared about being liked by the people of this town anyway.”

Seth stirs his coffee, even though he hasn’t added any cream or sugar. “Yeah, but that was when we were planning on leaving everything behind.”

“We did. And look at us now. Back where we started. The one place we swore we’d never end up.”

She looks through the window, observes the movements on the street outside. Her green-gray eyes are serious, reflecting something like hard-earned wisdom and experience.

“Where did you go?” he asks after a beat.

Her eyes find his again. She picks up her mug, takes a sip. “Followed Scott to Austin first. Stayed with him and his band for a while. Then Dallas. Couple of years in New Orleans. Met a guy, almost got married in Mexico, and then my father died and I came back here.”

His heart climbs in his throat hearing about that almost marriage. Which is stupid, he and Kate were never a thing. “You still engaged then?” he can’t help but ask, looking down at her ringless hand.

She follows his gaze, turns the back of her left hand toward her. “No.” She takes another sip. “What about you?”

He clears his throat. “San Antonio. Houston. Made terrible decisions, got mixed up with the wrong people, partied too much, landed in prison. Now here I am.” He picks up a container of cream, fiddles with it for a bit. “Was it worth it? Leaving I mean. Was it worth it for you?”

Kate pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “I mean I didn’t travel the world the way we used to talk about, but I’m happy I didn’t stay here.” She looks up at him. “What about you? Prison aside.”

He snorts. “Kinda hard not to include it.” He puts the cream container back in the little basket. “Was it fun at first? Sure. But even if I pretend the accident didn’t happen, can I actually say I don’t regret what I did during those years? No. I got drunk and high and I was surrounded by people who didn’t care about how bad it was getting. There was no real connection or anything.” He scratches at his stubble, then rubs the back of his neck. “I should’ve left with you, like we talked about.”

Kate shakes her head and leans over a little. “You weren’t ready to accept that Richie didn’t want to leave. And I didn’t give you the time to accept it.” She takes his free hand and her fingers are soft and warm against his. “I’m sorry about that, Seth.”

He swallows around the knot in his throat and turns his hand in hers so he can squeeze it. “Nothing to be sorry for, Kate. Really. We were kids,” he says. He grins. “You more than me,” he adds, hoping to lighten the mood. 

She laughs and squeezes back his hand before releasing it. “You’re still a dick, I see.”

He shrugs, unrepentant. “Not my fault you’re three years younger.”

She points at his graying temples. “Yeah, your old age is really showing.”

He huffs a laugh, but he knows he looks older than twenty-nine. Alcohol and drugs and prison and guilt and lack of sleep will do that to you. 

She tells him about her brother and his band. Her opinion is that their music is terrible, but somehow they still have a dedicated fanbase. She talks about walking the street where JFK was shot and eating the best tacos next to the grave of Clyde Barrow, about Mardi Gras in New Orleans and moving to Mexico and becoming a translator. She doesn’t talk about her former fiancé. He doesn’t ask.

He pays for their coffees and they leave the diner, the weight of the older waitress’s stare pushing them out. 

He walks her back to her house. The yellow paint is peeling from the sliding but the yard is neat and tidy. Her car is parked out front. Seeing it out of the shop makes him wonder how the hell it’s still running.

They stop walking when they reach the front gate. Kate plays with her keys and he keeps his hands firmly in his pockets, neither of them knowing how to say goodbye.

“It was nice seeing you again,” she offers tentatively.

He nods. “Yeah.” She opens the gate. “Why did you stay?” he asks, a bit impulsively, and she turns around to look at him. “You could’ve left again after the funeral. Why did you stay?”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and bites down on her lower lip before answering. “I guess I needed to sit down and breathe for a minute. I had a house in my name and nowhere else to go, so…” She shrugs and looks away.

“Are you planning on staying?”

She meets his eyes. “For now, yeah.” Then she keeps looking at him, and he doesn’t know what she sees on his face, but her expression softens. “How are you really, Seth?” she asks, and something in her tone tells him she wants to know the truth, doesn’t want to see him put on a brave face and pretend everything is fine.

It’s his turn to look away. “Hanging in.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess that’s the thing. I don’t know. In prison it was easy, you know. I was a number, I was told what I was supposed to do. I knew what to do. Count the days. Eat. Sleep. Work out. Everything’s spelled out for you. And most days I was fine with that. Some day I hated it, I wanted to be out, free. But then I’d see the face of that kid I killed and I was glad to be inside. No risk of me hurting another kid, if I’m inside. And now I’m here and, uh… I have nothing. I have no money, no prospects. I’m probably gonna work at Eddie’s garage and it’ll be like I’ve never left. Except that a kid is dead and I can’t even have a beer. It’s a fucking waste. I just… I just exist now. That’s it. I have absolutely no purpose at all. I’m just at Eddie’s garage, breathing, useless. Eddie and Richie were fine without me. They don’t need me and I’m just… I’m just living.” He scoffs. “And that’s the worst part. Because I shouldn’t even be alive. That kid should’ve lived and walked away from that car accident with just a scratch on her forehead. Not me.” He pauses. Kate is still looking at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “So I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing here. How I’m doing.” He shrugs. “I’m gonna go home. Clean another corner of the garage. Eat dinner. Go to sleep.”

“There you go,” Kate says. He looks up, frowns. “That’s a plan,” she continues. “Do that and then tomorrow, you find another project. And another the day after that.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

-

Seth goes back home.

He follows Eddie’s instructions to make their dinner and as they’re eating, Richie and Eddie talk about what needs to be done at the garage the next day, about customers and suppliers, the well-oiled machine of their business.

Seth hears them without really understanding everything. Like he’s watching a movie after arriving too late at the theater to be able to piece together the beginning.

He lets them be, cleans the table in silence after they’re all done with their food. He steps outside to the backyard to smoke a cigarette, the only addiction he didn’t even try to kick. Inside, Eddie and Richie are still talking and joking and laughing, and Seth wonders how long he’s going to stay outside so they can have an after dinner beer without worrying about having alcohol around him.

The back door opens with a creak. 

“Hey,” Richie says.

Seth inhales the smoke, nods. 

“You okay?” his brother asks. 

“No clue,” Seth answers truthfully.

Richie makes a noncommittal noise, something between a hum and a grunt. “How’s Kate?”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you know?”

Richie shrugs. “We haven’t really hung out since she came back,” he says as he lights a cigarette.

“Why not?”

“She was always more your friend than mine. I don’t know. It just felt weird without you, I guess.”

Seth finishes his cigarette in silence. “She’s okay,” he finally answers. “I think.”

Richie hums. When he’s done smoking, he goes back inside. 

Seth stays out and watches the stars light up one by one in the sky.

-

He goes with Eddie for a supply run to the neighboring town the next morning. They stop at Target and he uses part of what’s left of his money to finally buy himself clothes that actually fit and a cheap prepaid phone. 

“Hey, Eddie,” he starts as he’s pushing the cart in the plywood aisle of Home Depot. His uncle doesn’t stop examining a plank, but he grunts something sounding vaguely like a yes, so Seth continues. “When you told me I could work at the garage, is it because you actually need a third mechanic?”

Eddie turns away from the neatly stacked planks. “What do you mean? This garage is your home. You know that. There’ll always be a place for you there.”

“But do you need me there?” Seth insists. His throat is closing and he can already hear all the possible answers. The “it’s not like you have any other choice” and the “are you qualified to do anything else, truly?” and the “if you’re working then you’re not using.”

But Eddie steps closer and grabs his shoulder firmly. “Listen to me, son. I offered you work at the garage because I know how not having anything to do with your day can fuck with your brain. But you do not have to work. Ya hear me? This house is your home, and there’s no condition that you have to meet to stay there. So if you wanna work at the garage, you can. If you wanna take your time to reacclimate to life, you take all the time you need, alright? Me and this garage, we ain’t going nowhere.”

Seth looks down at his feet, nodding and doing his best not to cry like a lost little boy in the middle of a DIY store.

“Thank you,” he says hoarsely.

“You don’t have to thank me. It’s what family’s for.”

-

Kate calls a few minutes after he sends her a text from his new phone.

“Was it today’s plan?” she asks when he picks up, foregoing any kind of greeting.

“Was what?” he replies, getting up from his twin bed and leaving his bedroom.

“Buying a phone.”

Seth huffs a laugh as he gets downstairs. “I guess. And buying new clothes too.”

“And here I was, hoping to see you in one of Uncle Eddie’s infamous Hawaiian shirts.”

He rolls his eyes as he pushes the back door open, sits on the stairs leading to the backyard.

“I don’t have the swagger necessary to pull off the Hawaiian shirt.”

“Not with that attitude, you don’t.”

He laughs again and pulls his pack of smokes out of his pocket. “Hey, uh,” he starts, putting one cigarette between his lips. “I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Unloading on you, last night. You didn’t need to hear all that shit,” he says then lights his cigarette. “Won’t happen again.”

“Seth. I asked, didn’t I?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, but—”

“Nuh-uh. No but,” she cuts him off. “We’re friends. Friends share.”

“Okay…”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Friends share.”

He snorts. “Alright. Friends share.”

“Thank you,” she says primly.

“You’re welcome.”

He inhales his smoke and waits for her to speak some more. She’s the one who called, right? Truth is, he’d be fine just staying on the phone without even talking. Just hearing the noises from her end, the rustling of fabric and her breathing. It’s enough to start soothing the loneliness eating away at his chest. 

“What are you doing today?” she asks. 

Seth looks down at his watch. It’s barely 1 pm. “Gotta catch a bus in an hour.”

“Oh, going on adventures already?”

“Eh, not really. I got a meeting with an addict support group in San Angelo.”

There’s a pause on her end. He braces himself, waits for her to say something about the fact that he’s a junkie, or about him taking the bus. He scratches at the scar above his eyebrow.

“Do you want me to drive you?” she asks instead. “I don’t want to intrude or anything, but taking the bus there will take at least an hour and a half. If the bus shows up at all. And it’s just a forty minute drive.”

“I’m sure you have better things to do,” he croaks and blames the hoarseness of his voice on the cigarettes and absolutely not on the emotions tying up his throat.

“I offered,” she replies simply. “Look, I’m not gonna force you to accept a ride, but I’d be happy to do it.”

He clears his throat, forces a smile on his lips. “You sure your pile of junk will survive the trip?” he jokes. 

She gasps in outrage. “How dare you,” she says flatly. “My car is perfectly fine.”

“Your car is holding on with duct tape and your sheer force of will.”

“Your brother fixed it up.”

“One more reason to be afraid.”

“I’m gonna recall that offer,” she says in what she probably thinks is a threatening manner, but the laughter in her voice betrays her.

“Nah, too late for that, you’re stuck with me now.”

She laughs openly this time. “So when should I and my pile of junk come and pick you up?”

“Meeting starts at four.”

“Perfect. I’m picking you up at three fifteen and we can have coffee in San Angelo afterwards. My treat.”

“Kate, you don’t have to—”

“Try objecting one more time, Gecko. I fucking dare you.”

Seth chuckles. “Alright. Three fifteen it is.”

“That’s better. See you then.”

Kate honks when she pulls up in front of the garage and Seth leaves the front desk, pointedly ignoring the look shared between Richie and Eddie.

“Hey,” he greets her as he sits in the passenger seat. “Thanks again.”

“Wait until you’ve spent forty minutes listening to my music before you thank me,” she smirks then starts the car.

Seth rolls his eyes. “I swear to God, Kate, if you’re planning on making me listen to Taylor Swift the whole way, I’m getting out and walking there.”

Kate snorts. “Oh please, I’m not gonna torture myself just to annoy you.” Seth just raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” she amends, “I could, but I’m not that good of an actress to pretend to enjoy Taylor Swift for forty goddamn minutes.”

She pushes a tape into the audio system of the car, presses the play button and blues music fills the car.

She drops him off in front of the building hosting the meeting, a community center, not a church, and thank fuck for small mercies.

“I’m going to sit in a coffeeshop to try and get some work done,” she says. “I’ll text you the address and you can meet me there afterwards, sounds good?”

“Sounds good,” he replies and closes the car door. 

He watches her drive away before turning to the front door of the community center. He passes a hand on the lower half of his face, scratching his too long stubble, and makes his feet move and climb the few steps to the entrance.

The donuts look stale and the coffee will probably be terrible but Seth gets a cup anyway, just so he has something in his hands. He sits on one of the plastic chairs arranged in a circle and watches the steam rise from the paper cup as the other participants arrive and greet each other.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” an older man with a Mexican accent says, “let’s begin, yes?”

People take their seats, and the man who seems to be heading the meeting sits on the chair directly opposite to Seth. 

Just his fucking luck.

“Seems like we have some new faces today,” the man says. “Welcome. My name is Celestino, and I’m an addict. Your turn,” he adds after the predictable chorus of “Hi, Celestino”, his eyes on Seth.

Seth clears his throat. “I’m Seth,” he mumbles. “I’m an addict.”

Chorus again. 

“You wanna tell us more?” Celestino asks.

Seth clenches his jaw, drops his eyes to the coffee. He clears his throat. “Maybe later,” he replies, his voice hoarse anyway.

Celestino doesn’t press and moves on to the other newcomer. 

Seth doesn’t end up talking at all, but just listening is already a lot. His experience isn’t unique. Other people have felt all the bullshit he’s feeling. There’s a way out. It will take time. And work. But it exists.

He joins Kate at her coffee shop afterwards. She tidies the pile of papers in front of her, closes her notebook and her laptop and crosses her arms on top of them, leaning toward him.

“How was it?”

He shrugs. “It’s not a Jesus freaks’ program so it’s already better than the one they had in prison.”

Kate raises her eyebrows. “Low bar.”

“Very.”

“I need a refill,” she announces as she stands up. “What do you want?” she asks, and something in her eyes warns him not to tell her he’s good or that she doesn’t have to pay for his coffee. It’s the same look she gave him the first time her brother made them listen to his music. Something that said I know what you want to say but if you say it I will murder you and no one will find your body so BEHAVE.

“Uh, a large Americano. Black, no sugar.”

“I should’ve guessed,” she says with a smile.

He snorts. “Yeah, yeah, I’m predictable,” he says, waving her off. 

She comes back with his coffee, hers — a monstrosity that’s more whipped cream than actual coffee — and a plate with two pieces of cake on it. 

She starts demolishing her slice. “Do not pretend you don’t want it,” she says without looking up, even though he hasn’t said anything about the cake. “You can’t tell me the snacks were good at your meeting.” 

She meets his eyes, her expression stern and ready to call him out on his bullshit. 

He huffs a laugh and takes the second fork without protest.

-

“How are you adapting, Mr. Gecko?” Officer Vasconcelos asks him before he has even had the time to close the door to her office. 

She sits at her desk and motions to the other chair. 

He closes the door, sits down, rubs his neck. “I’m doing okay. Went to the addict meeting yesterday.”

Ximena nods and scribbles something in her file. “You’re living at your uncle’s, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you have a job?”

“I’m working at his garage.”

“Family business?”

“Yes. My brother also works there.”

She nods again, then puts down her pen and fixes him with a look that makes him feel like she’s scanning his very soul.

“Have you had any contact with the people you were with prior to your incarceration?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Any socialization beside your immediate family?”

Seth clears his throat, fidgets in his seat. “Uh, yeah. Got in contact again with a friend from high school.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “And they’re not a risk to your recovery or your reintegration into society, are they?”

Seth shakes his head. “No. She’s the one who drove me to the meeting. She also drove me here today actually.”

She writes down on her notepad.

“Are you planning on getting your driver's license back?” she asks, drumming on the paper with her pen. 

Seth looks down at his hands, rubs them against each other. When he thinks about driving, all he can see is the dead girl on the ground, her body illuminated in blue and red, broken glass everywhere around her. His scar is itching.

He swallows. “Not right now, no,” he replies in a strangled voice, willing his hands to stop shaking.

Kate is waiting for him, leaning against her car in the sun. 

“That’s my shirt,” he tells her as he walks to her, then pinches the hem of the same band t-shirt she had on a couple days before.

One of her eyebrows rises up behind her oversized aviator glasses. “Is it?” she says in a falsely innocent voice. “I doubt you could wear it now,” she adds, patting his biceps as she rights herself up. He snorts. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice earlier actually.”

“I think I was too stressed to notice anything,” he mumbles as they get into the car. 

She doesn’t turn the key immediately though. Instead she’s looking at him, her face full of concern, all traces of the humor present five seconds earlier gone. “How did it go?”

Seth rubs his face. “Okay, I guess? She didn’t make me feel like a total fuck up, so that’s a win.”

“Anything you gotta do?”

He leans back in his seat, angles his head to look at her. “Keep going to the meetings. Stay away from alcohol and drugs.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

He shrugs. “Good, I guess.”

Sometimes it’s hard to put a name to what he’s feeling under the blanket of numbness and perpetual fatigue. He knows he should call that blanket what it is. Depression. But somehow, he feels like he doesn’t deserve to call it that. Depression is for people who’ve had terrible things happen to them, who have lost loved ones, who are traumatized. Depression isn’t for him, who made terrible things happen to him by his own sheer stupidity. 

But Kate smiles at him and pats his arm again and he knows how that feels. It feels good. He smiles back and she starts the car.

“What did you do?” he asks after she’s been driving in silence for a few minutes with the windows down.

She glances at him. “Hm?”

“When I was in there. With the parole officer. What did you do.”

“Oh you want the Kate Afternoon Special?” she asks with a grin, a loose piece of hair flying on the side of her face. 

Her smile is contagious and Seth can’t help but grin back. “Can’t be worse than the Seth Afternoon Special.”

She laughs and tucks her wild strand of hair behind her ear. “Well,” she starts. “I dropped you off, obviously.”

“I know, I was there.”

“Shh, don’t interrupt me,” she says, waving a hand in his general direction, her eyes on the road. He raises his hands in the universal gesture for surrender. “Then I went to a coffeeshop, ordered a frankly disgusting americano, sat down at a table and worked. Or tried to. Some guy with a mustache tried to talk to me even tho I had my freaking headphones on, I told him to fuck off, he called me a bitch, left, then I left and waited for you to be done.”

“Uh, I see. So does the mustache make it a special or is it the calling you a bitch?”

Kate huffs a laugh. “The bad coffee.”

“Ah, right. I should’ve known.”

She smiles at him and in that moment, he wants to believe that he’s going to be alright.

She drives them back home and it’s easy, being with her. If he closes his eyes and just let the sun warm his face through the windshield, just listen to her mixtape and the rumble of her car, he can pretend he’s nine years younger and they’re leaving town together, like they planned, and there will be no drugs, no alcohol, no Vanessa, no accident, no prison.

She parks in front of the garage.

“Thank you,” Seth says and she smiles at him, a small, tight lipped smile, like she wants to say something but is trying to stop herself.

“You’re welcome,” she replies.

He waits a beat longer, in case she wants to tell him whatever it is she’s keeping in.

She doesn’t.

-

Kate takes a sip of her cappuccino. “You okay?” she asks, barely lowering the cup from her lips.

Today is the first time he has actually said something during the group meeting. It took four meetings for him to open his mouth, but when he started, it’s like he couldn’t stop. 

Seth shrugs. “I don’t know.” He looks out the window. People are walking down the streets. Cars are stopping at the light. A group of kids crossing. A teenager is walking her dog. The whole world continues turning and his perpetual existential crisis is his and his only. He looks back at Kate. “I feel raw, I guess. Scraped from the inside. Not necessarily in a bad way, you know?”

Kate hums and puts her cup back on its saucer. “That’s how I used to feel after therapy.”

Seth quirks an eyebrow. She wasn’t going to therapy before she left. Her father didn’t believe in it, which was precisely the reason why her mother had taken her own life.

“I started going after leaving town. Didn’t need to be a genius to figure out I had a shit ton of trauma from everything that had happened and I didn’t want to risk ending up like my mom.”

“Makes sense.”

She nods. “Yeah. The first sessions were awful, like someone was sandpapering inside of me. But after a while, it became more a feeling of scooping up the toxic shit and throwing it out than being an open wound. More like excavating the trauma and dumping it overboard.”

The corner of his lips curls at her mixed analogies. “Yeah. I think I’m halfway from open wound to archeological dig.”

She chuckles. “Good.” She takes her cup back and takes a sip. 

-

His days are a blur of group meetings, doing whatever he can at the garage, cooking with Eddie, smoking with Richie, hanging out in coffeeshops with Kate. 

She talks about her latest work project, complains about untranslatable expressions. Sometimes she gives him the latest update on Scott’s band. He can sense that there’s some lingering tension between her and her brother, and when he asks her if she’s ever visiting or if Scott’s planning on coming over, her only answer is that it’s better if they don’t spend too much time together. Calling and texting is enough. 

“He hates that I’m back here,” she says one day. “This town was horrible to him.”

She pinches her lips together and Seth knows they’re remembering the same things. Kids bullying Scott the minute he stepped foot in the school, the preacher and his wife proudly exhibiting him as the proof that they were good altruistic Christians, an adopted kid more accessory than proper child. Kate having to protect her new brother from the blatant racism of an entire town because her parents were too busy doting on their congregation to take care of their children. Chrstian hypocrisy at its finest, they used to say between them.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”

-

“Do you wanna grab dinner?” he asks one day, on impulse. 

She just drove him back from a group meeting, has parked her car on the street next to the garage. There’s surprise in her eyes, but she’s also smiling, so he doesn’t feel like backtracking. For all the time they spent together in the last weeks, they’ve never had dinner together. Just coffees, and slices of cake, car rides with the same five tapes. He walks her back. She drives him to the garage. He hasn’t been inside the yellow house and she’s never offered. Maybe that’s why he never invited her to stay for dinner with Richie and Eddie. Or maybe he didn’t want to deal with the potential embarrassment that this dinner could be. His brother and uncle were not known for their subtlety. Or maybe he was just a coward afraid of her saying no, of her rejecting him, of her pushing him away, of finally seeing some sense and realizing she deserves better than him. 

“Maybe not tonight,” he continues, focusing on her smile and what he thinks is joy in her eyes, “you probably have stuff to do but if you want, one of these days, we could grab something to eat and go to the reservoir?” he offers, picturing in his mind the old reservoir lake in the hills where they used to hide from the adults in their lives. He has no clue if it’s still there, if it has been drained by climate change and poor water management, if the road is even still accessible. 

Kate chuckles. “Watch the sunset, like old times?”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds great.”

“Great. The pizza is on me.”

She makes an impressed face. “Seth Gecko, you are spoiling me.”

He rolls his eyes good naturedly. “I’m a goddamn prince.”

He opens the car door and steps outside.

“Hey, Seth,” she calls, leaning over the console.

He leans against the window. “Yeah?”

“I, uh. I’m glad. That you came back here. Even if the circumstances were shitty. I’m glad we’re together again,” she says, ending with a shy smile and a shrug.

He offers her a shrug of his own. “Never thought I’d say that, but I’m glad I came back too.”

She bites her lower lip. “Have a good evening, Seth,” she says, then straightens up in her seat.

“You too.”

He watches her drive down the road until she makes the turn and her car disappears.

-

The road to the reservoir hasn’t changed.  Neither has the lake. They sit on one of the wooden piers, a pizza box open between them. They eat in silence, watching the sun set behind the woods surrounding the water. 

“I missed you,” Kate says, long after the pizza is gone and the sun has disappeared.

Seth looks at her, but she’s watching the darkening water below them, gripping the edge of the pier so hard her knuckles are white. 

“I missed you,” she repeats softly. “When I left. It was weird not having you next to me. The first weeks, when I was with Scott, whenever he was doing something stupid, I had this urge to turn to you and roll my eyes, like I used to do. I missed seeing you roll your eyes back with that grin you had at the time. There’s so many times where something happened and I thought ‘oh I can’t wait to tell Seth that.’ But I couldn’t. And I only had myself to blame.”

“Kate—”

She meets his eyes then, and hers are glistening with tears. “I feel terrible for having left without you. I can’t help but think that if I had waited for you, if I had just stuck to the plan,  then we wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be living in my father’s old house, surrounded by my family’s ghosts, and you wouldn’t have gone to prison. If I had trusted you just a little while longer, none of this would have happened.”

Seth takes her hand. “I don’t blame you, Kate. I’ve never blamed you,” he says softly.

“You must have hated me.”

He laces his fingers with hers. “I could never hate you,” he replies, his voice strangled but honest. “I was hurt, at first, but I understood. You did what you had to do.”

Kate nods and looks down at their hands. She bites her lower lip, releases it. “Will you stay?” she asks after a moment.

Seth squeezes her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She doesn’t look up. “I mean tonight? Will you stay?”

His throat goes dry. He doesn’t know what she’s asking exactly and he’s terrified of any and all possibilities. 

“I don’t want to be alone in that house anymore,” she adds in a whisper.

“I will,” he replies. “Of course I will.”

She glances up at him, gives him half a smile. “Thanks.”

He swallows, smiles back at her as best he can while his heart is turning upside down. “I’m here now. Whenever you want me to.”

She scouts closer until her entire right side is flush with his left, leaning her head on his shoulder and bringing their still joined hands onto her lap. 

She drives them back down into town, to her house, and he takes the time to text both Eddie and Richie. He knows he can’t just not come back to the house without warning them. As much progress as he’s made, he’s still him. 

An addict. An ex-con. A killer.

Kate parks in front of the yellow house. She kills the engine, offers him a tiny smile before exiting the car. She silently leads him inside, his hand in hers, and the inside of the house has barely changed since the last time he was there, ages ago. 

Family pictures on the walls and unused china in the glass-paned cupboards. The old couch, the threadbare rug. Nothing that suggests Kate herself actually lives there. 

“You want coffee?” she asks, going to the open kitchen. 

“Sure,” he replies, more so he has something to do with his hands than because he needs the caffeine. 

He looks around more as she pours some leftover coffee in mugs and sticks them in the microwave. 

There’s still a cross above the door. It’s simple, made out of wood, no carving, no sculpting. 

“You still believe?” he asks. 

She follows his gaze. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

The microwaves beeps. She takes the mugs and goes to the couch. Seth follows. 

“Sometimes I want to,” she says as she sits down on one end. Seth settles on the other, accepting the mug from her. “It would be comforting to know that I’m not alone. That there’s this presence, this force looking after me, that if I talk to it, it’ll listen and not judge me.”

She glances up at him, bites her lower lip. Seth waits. 

“But it feels…” she starts again. “I don’t know. Childish? Naive? I don’t know. Because if there’s this… thing watching all of us, being all powerful, it means that it has decided not to do anything when awful things happen and I just don’t want to believe in a force that would just be okay with being a spectator to the horrors humanity is capable of inflicting on itself. I don’t want to believe in something that would be okay with that. Being okay with my mom killing herself or my dad drinking himself to death. They believed. That didn’t fucking help them.” 

Kate takes a sip of her coffee, her eyes unfocused, no longer on him. 

“There’s so much suffering in the world. So much. And there would be this so-called higher power who could erase all that pain in less time that it takes to blink and it just doesn’t?”

She looks at him, like she’s really asking him that question, but before he can answer, she shakes her head. “No,” she says. “And the worst part is that it lets people off the hook. People can just stand by, my dad could just stand by and watch my mom drown in her depression because he believed that God works in mysterious ways, like there was a plan, like all that suffering was for a good reason, like something good was going to come out of it. Nothing good came out of my mom killing herself. Nothing good comes out of people killing each other over their religion, over their skin color, over borders, over oil and fucking money. People are miserable and the only thing that lets them stand by, watching all of this, doing fucking nothing, is the idea that suffering is a gift from God. That because they’re suffering in this life, they’re good people and will go to some perfect afterlife.”

She stares at her coffee. Her knuckles are white on the handle of her mug, until she notices it and puts it down on the low table in front of them.

“It’s bullshit,” she says in a quiet voice. She looks up at the crucifix. “I guess it’s still here because of the reason why everything else is still here.”

“What’s that?”

She turns her head to him, shrugs. “Because I’m too scared to change anything in this house. No matter how much I hate most of the memories I have here, I still can’t bring myself to change anything. Because underneath all the bad shit, there’s still some good and I’m afraid I’ll forget it.”

Seth takes her hand in his. She slides closer to him and leans her head on his shoulder. 

“I hated the religious aspect of recovery,” he says after several minutes of silence, their coffees forgotten on the table. “In prison the meetings were held by the chaplain or some other religious guy like that. There was all that talk of trusting the higher power, the Serenity prayer at the beginning. I fucking hated it. ‘God has a plan for us all’ and all that bullshit. Why was God’s plan for me making me an addict? What was the purpose of me killing a teenager?” Kate squeezes his hand. He takes a deep breath. “I asked the chaplain once.”

“What did he say?”

Seth snorts. “God works in mysterious ways.”

Kate scoffs. “Fucking wanker.”

He huffs a laugh at that. “Yeah. Fucking wanker.”

Kate’s room is the only thing that has changed in the house. Not that he had seen a lot of it when they were kids with the parents she had, but there’s no band posters on the walls, school textbooks or sports trophies on the shelves. Her twin bed has been traded for a queen. 

They’re lying side by side under the covers, staring at the ceiling. It used to have glow-in-the-dark stars. Seth thinks he can still see the faint outlines of them on the paint. 

“There’s a new kid at the group,” he says in the dark. “Lazlo.” He hears Kate turn on her side to face him. “As one of the latest arrived, Celestino has asked me to say something to him to start the meeting. Like a welcome speech or something.”

“What did you say?” Kate asks softly. 

“I had no idea what to tell him to be honest. So I just said something like ‘hey, you showed up, it was probably hard, but you did it and for today, that’s enough.’ I felt stupid the whole time, with all the other people watching me do it.”

“Fuck the others. How did he react?”

“Directly after? He just said thanks. But then at the end of the meeting, he came to see me. He talked about how he was feeling and then he asked me if he was ever gonna feel different.” 

Seth pauses, still tracing the faint outlines of the stars on the ceiling with his eyes. 

“I said I don’t know. Maybe if we work hard enough, then we become different. But the feeling itself? I feel like I’ll always be able to sense it, like something will always remain.” Like the outlines of your glow in the dark stars, he thinks.

“Did it help?”

Seth glances at her, then turns on his side, mirroring her position, his hand palm up between them. “I don’t know. He seemed okay.”

“I was talking about you. Did it help to talk to him?”

He watches her hand approach his, her fingers starting to draw patterns in his palm. “Maybe. Kinda took me out of my own fucked up head.”

Her fingers still. “Don’t talk about yourself like that,” she says firmly. 

Seth frowns. She probably can’t see it. Maybe she senses it. 

“You’re my friend,” she says. “And I don’t let people talk about my friends like that.” He huffs a laugh. “I’m serious,” she insists, tapping inside his hand. “I don’t care that you’re talking about yourself, you don’t talk about my friend like that. If we weren’t in bed, I’d kick your ass.”

She punctuates her last words with a final tap of her fingers and Seth chuckles.

“Alright then,” he says. “I won’t say that anymore.”

“Good.”

Her fingers go back to tracing swirls and spirals in his palm. 

In the morning, they wake up with Kate’s head on his shoulder, his arm around her back. 

“What are your plans for today?” she mumbles into his shirt. 

Seth rubs his eyes, his bearded jaw. “I dunno. The garage, I guess. You?”

“I’m gonna finish translating that riveting washing machine manual and after that, I’ll treat myself with a milkshake.”

“Sounds exciting,” Seth yawns.

Kate chuckles and punches him in the chest. “I was gonna offer to bring you something from the diner to the garage, but since you’re being a judgmental ass, the offer is rescinded.”

“Uh-huh. Sure it is.”

Kate shows up at the garage in the middle of the afternoon with a whole feast. They close the shop and Eddie makes some of his fancy coffee to go with the muffins, pies and cakes she brought. Richie shows up mostly free of grease.

“How’s the car?” he asks Kate as they sit around the kitchen island. 

“Still running.”

“By some miracle,” Seth mumbles as he unpacks the food.

Kate glares at him “Don’t trash talk my car.”

“I’m not trash talking your car, I’m trash talking Richie’s handiwork.”

Richie snorts. “Dick.”

“Boys,” Eddie cuts. “Be nice or I’ll send you both to the garage and me and this lovely lady will eat everything by ourselves.”

Once all the food is gone, Kate leaves with an open invitation from Eddie to come for dinner any time and Seth ends up alone with his brother and his uncle staring at him from the other side of the counter.

“What,” he says flatly when they don’t say anything. 

“You’re seeing her a lot,” Richie says.

“She’s the only friend I have here.”

“That’s not true. Sonja and Kisa are still here.”

Seth snorts. “Sonja is an ex and Kisa owns a bar. Not really the most recommended company right now.”

Eddie clears his throat. “She’s still driving you to the meetings?”

Seth nods. “Yeah. And to see Vasconcelos.”

“So you’re not planning on driving again?” Richie asks.

Seth’s hands clench over his mug before he can stop them. He takes a breath then very deliberately forces his fingers to relax.

“Not right now,” he says tightly, ignoring the itching of his scar. He looks up. “Anything else y’all wanted to say?” he asks them.

“Nope,” Richie says, grabbing his mug and disappearing back to the garage. 

Seth slides his eyes over to Eddie, who grabs the coffee pot and refills his mug before doing the same to Seth’s.

“She’s good for you,” Eddie says. 

Seth swallows, hoping it’ll make the knot in his throat go away. “Yeah,” he says. “She is.”

“But?” Eddie prompts when Seth doesn’t add more.

“She deserves better than someone like me.”

Eddie snorts loudly. “Bullshit.”

“Eddie—”

“Nah, you listen to me now, son. There’s two things I gotta say. One, don’t be a miserable wallowing asshole. You’re making progress, you’re doing the work, you’re not the same man you were a month ago or five years ago, so get that in your thick fucking skull. And two, for fuck’s sake, don’t make decisions for her. If she wanna be with you, then goddamnit you let her.”

“But—”

“No but. You like her? And I mean like her, not just ‘she’s a childhood friend and she’s there I guess’ like her.”

Seth looks down at his coffee. Does he like her that in more than friend way? Of course he’s thought about it when they were younger. He was a dumb teenage bad boy, she was the pretty preacher’s daughter, the joke practically wrote itself.

If he’s being honest with himself, he hasn’t considered any romantic ideas about anything since the accident. At first he was too sick from quitting all the drugs and alcohol, then he was in prison and fucking depressed and then he was free and fucking depressed. Entertaining the idea of being in a relationship one day felt ludicrous. And undeserved. He didn’t deserve to be loved. He didn’t deserve the comfort of that kind of attachment. Letting someone new know him was also terrifying. Is still terrifying.

But being with Kate isn’t scary. She already knows everything there is to know about it. Even the bad. Especially the bad. 

“Seth?”

He blinks back to the kitchen, to Eddie. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “I guess I do.”

Eddie sighs. “Then for the love of God don’t push her away.”

-

Kate does come to dinner and neither Richie nor Eddie make it weird. They don’t glance meaningfully at Seth, they don’t even share a knowing look when he and Kate laugh at an inside joke. 

It even becomes a regular occurrence, unlike going to her place. 

Until they’re in the car one day, coming back from a visit to his parole officer. They’re almost home, almost at the point where she’ll turn one way to the garage, or the other way to her house.

“Do you have to be back at the garage right away?” she asks. Her eyes don’t go to him and that’s the first sign that tells him she’s nervous. “I could use your help at the house,” she adds like an afterthought, in a voice that’s a bit higher than her normal, the second sign that she’s probably been thinking about it the entire trip back.

“Sure, what’s up?”

She glances at him then, and some tension leaves her shoulders. “I, uh. I’ve been packing stuff up. Like. Parents’ stuff. Old stuff.”

“Okay. Let’s get to your house then.”

Her hands relax on the wheel and she makes the turn.

The house he steps into looks like a cardboard bomb exploded in there. The couch is pushed against a wall, smothered under piles of cardboard boxes, some of them taped, most of them labeled although he can’t pick up any logic on what goes in each one. The rugs have been rolled and tucked vertically into a corner of the room, the old wooden buffet and sideboard have been emptied and more boxes are waiting to be filled in the middle of the room. The kitchen is more or less a disaster free zone, but from what he can see of the top of the stairs, Kate has already attacked the second floor.

“Jeez,” he says, taking it all in. “What’s your battle strategy here?”

Kate smiles apologetically from the kitchen counter. “I kinda just had the urge to do something yesterday and then I couldn’t stop so there’s no definite plan?”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “You did all that yesterday?” he says, twirling a finger around to encompass the sheer chaos of the place. 

“And last night,” she replies with a shrug.

He squints. “How much did you sleep?”

Her only reply is a grin. He sighs and joins her as she makes them coffee.

“What do you need my help with?”

“Well, I thought we could put your muscles to work and put all these boxes—” she gestures at the boxes on the couch. “In my car so we can bring them to Goodwill. And there’s a few suitcases upstairs filled with clothes that we could drop at the shelter next time you have a meeting.”

“You keeping the furniture?”

Kate grimaces behind her coffee mug. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Then I have a better idea. We get Richie and Eddie to help us so we can put all the furniture you don’t want in Eddie’s truck and then we all go to Goodwill.”

Kate frowns. “Are they gonna be okay with that? Don’t they have work to do at the garage?”

Seth takes his phone out of his pocket. “You’re family, Kate, of course they’ll help,” he says, pressing the phone to his ear.

She smiles from ear to ear and his heart misses a beat or two. Then she reaches up on her toes and kisses his cheek and he’s pretty sure this is what a heart attack feels like, but he doesn’t have time to overthink it, because Eddie picks up. 

His uncle and brother show up twenty minutes later, the bed of Eddie’s truck free of its usual mess, except for a pile of ratty blankets. 

“To protect the corners of the furniture,” Eddie explains when Kate asks.

Kate finishes loading the cardboard boxes in her car while they manage to fit all of her living room furniture except for one bookshelf she decided to keep in the truck’s bed. Eddie also grabs the suitcases full of clothes and tucks them in the front of the truck. 

“I’m going into town tomorrow, I’ll drop them off,” he says. 

Kate bites her lower lip and nods. 

“You sure about this?” Seth asks quietly when Richie and Eddie get busy securing the furniture. “The clothes in the suitcases… They were your parents’, right?”

“Yeah,” she replies, her eyes on the truck. “But it’s not doing anyone any good keeping them just so they can gather dust in a closet,” she finishes, turning to him with bright eyes. 

He grabs her hand and squeezes. “Okay.”

“Ready to go?” Richie calls as he opens the passenger side of the truck. Eddie is already behind the wheel. 

“Let’s go,” Kate calls back.

The people at Goodwill are delighted by everything they’re dropping off, and the middle aged ladies are especially happy watching Richie and Seth unload the sideboard, the buffet, the couch and the several side tables from the truck, while Eddie and Kate take care of the boxes.

“I think you made their entire day,” Kate grins.

Seth rolls his eyes and mops off some sweat from his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. One thing he hadn’t thought about was that it would reveal his abs. 

A little lady very audibly gasps. 

Seth drops his shirt and catches Kate quickly diverting her eyes from his stomach to Eddie, who’s walking back from dropping the last boxes. 

“While we’re here with the truck,” she says, “do you mind if I pick up a couch?”

“Knock yourself out.”

They get the new couch situated in her living room, then Richie and Eddie leave after reassuring Kate that when she wants to take care of the second floor furniture, they’ll be there. 

There’s still boxes and bags lying around, but those are the things Kate wants to keep or sell or send to Scott and she declares it too late in the day to tackle anything else. 

They sprawl on her new second-hand couch, a dark green velvet monstrosity that was way too comfortable not to pick. Eddie almost didn’t stand back up when they tried it in the store.

And now, sprawled on it after a day of hauling and carrying and lifting stuff, Seth can see why. It’s like being hugged by a giant velvet pillow. 

“I’m never moving again,” he moans as he closes his eyes. 

“Mmh. We need to eat,” Kate says. 

He hears a rustle of fabric, then silence. He cracks open an eye just long enough to see Kate scrolling up and down on her phone.

“Delivery?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“What do you feel like eating? My treat, obviously.”

“Anything.”

“Very helpful.”

“Thank you, I try.”

“I should’ve done this a year ago,” Kate says after they demolish two family size pizzas.

“Eating your weight in pizza?” Seth jokes. She huffs a laugh and rolls her eyes. “You needed the right time,” he says more seriously.

She meets his eyes. “I needed the right person.”

He could joke again, say that Eddie and Richie did most of the work, duck his head and wave the deeper meaning of her words away. 

He doesn’t.

He reaches across the cushion and takes her hand, ignoring the anxious knot in his throat. She glanced down at their joined hands.

“I’m glad I was that person,” he says, his voice low and slightly hoarse.

She links their fingers together and smiles. “You’ve always been my person,” she replies and damn if his heart doesn’t break and mend itself at the same time. 

She’s rubbing her thumb over his knuckles and he doesn’t dare to move. She releases his hand but before he can mourn the loss of contact, she lies on her side and puts her head on his lap. Then she reaches for the hand she just dropped and pulls it to her front, draping his arm around her. 

Seth exhales shakily. 

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your bed?” he asks, despite the fact that he never wants to move from this moment. 

She presses her palm against the back of his hand, intertwining their fingers together. “I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”

Seth nods, even though she can’t see him from her current position. “I get that.”

She turns her head in his direction then rolls on her back. She’s still holding his hand. “You’re not sleeping well?”

Seth presses his lips together, shakes his head. “Not really. It’s getting a bit better, but every time I close my eyes I…” He stops, grinds his teeth together. “I’m back on the side of the road with those fucking red and blue lights flashing in my face, and I’m staring at that kid I just killed.”

He swallows thickly and looks down. She’s watching him, her hair a messy halo over his legs, both her hands now wrapped around his. 

He rubs his beard. “You ever heard of that kind of therapy where you get light flashed in your face? Like different colors, rhythm and shit?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I feel like having the cop’s car and the ambulance and all those lights all around me that night permanently burned that memory in my eyes. Like I would’ve remembered it anyway obviously, but all those lights made it even… Even more.  If that makes sense.”

Kate nods. “It does.”

They stay like this, her hugging his hand to her chest, him staring at the dark window in front of the couch for a while, not talking, not needing to talk. 

“I never told you what happened in Mexico,” she says in the quiet.

He looks down but she’s staring at the ceiling. “You didn’t,” he says softly.

“I met this guy in New Orleans. Amancio,” she starts, saying the name like a curse, and Seth already knows he’s gonna want to kill that guy before she’s done talking. “He was nice, at first. Charming. Cultivated. He had traveled a lot, knew all the good places, the tricks to enjoy the city without spending a dime. He made me feel special.” She wets her lips. “After a few weeks, we left for Mexico. At first it was like New Orleans. Exploring and having fun. But then I realized that a couple of months had passed and that I hadn’t been in touch with Scott or any of my friends in a while. Amancio kept saying shit like ‘You’ll call your brother tomorrow, let’s go to this place right now instead’. And if I disagreed with him, he would become cold and distant and say he was so disappointed in me. And still, I stayed. And when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. Not like I truly had the choice, let’s be real.”

She pauses, takes a shaky breath. Her fingers start drawing shapes on his hand. 

“The woman who saved me, her name is Guadalupe. Lupe. She was one of the neighbors of the building we lived in. Fifty years old or so, with big colorful skirts, huge earrings and the blackest hair you’ve ever seen. Amancio left to visit one of his brothers that day. Didn’t ask me to come with him, said they needed to talk between men. Lupe came knocking at my door like half an hour after he left. She asked me if I needed help. I didn’t understand immediately. And then she started talking about her ex-husband. How he was acting. How he started hitting her.”

Seth tenses. “Did he ever—”

“Hit me?” she asks, the movement of her fingers stilling. “No. It was all psychological with him. Not that it makes it much better. But as Lupe talked, I realized who Amancio was. What he was doing. And then she asked again. Necesitas ayuda? And I said yes.”

Her eyes are bright with tears. She looks down at their hands. 

“She helped me pack and drove me to the bus station that same day. She gave me a rosary and the cash to buy a one way ticket to Texas. I crashed at Scott’s, pawned my engagement ring, bought a car.”

“And now you’re here,” Seth says, almost a whisper. He wants to find Amancio and beats his face into a pulp. But more importantly, he wants to be there for Kate, however she needs him, however she wants him. 

Her eyes go to his. “And now I’m here.”

Her hands are just lightly resting on top of his and don’t offer any resistance when he gently lifts it to wipe away the lone tear rolling down her temple. 

“After that I always thought I would never be able to trust someone romantically again. To let myself be that vulnerable,” she says, still watching him. 

He forces himself not to freeze. “Did that… Did that change?” he asks softly, almost afraid of her answer, no matter what it is. 

She nods. “I guess I just needed the right person,” she whispers. 

He doesn’t remove his hand from her cheek. He doesn’t stop the movement of his thumb, rubbing circles on her cheekbone. 

He doesn’t look away.