Chapter Text
Chevrolet Malibu glides through the darkness.
He cracks the window open. His fingertips are trembling. Night air lashes against the glass and rushes into the car, sweeping away the sticky metallic smell. Blood still seeps from the stab wound in his side, and the ivory jacket he’s wearing has long since been stained red.
He doesn’t know where he’s driving.
The road is empty. Everything around him is pitch black.
Inside his head, fragments whirl together in violent circles — the last phone call, the way Irene’s lips had felt when he kissed her, the look in her eyes when she looked at him.
At the center of the storm is her expression. The look on Irene’s face before the elevator doors closed. Those frightened eyes staring at him.
He knows he’ll remember them until the day he dies. Other memories may blur together, may fade beneath the weight of time, but this one will remain motionless at the eye of the vortex, silent and unmoving forever.
He presses harder on the accelerator. Wind pours through the open window and dries out his eyes as it strikes his face.
Eastward.
Further east.
She sits on a barstool, resting her chin in one hand as she flips through a page of her book. Then she flips back to the previous page.She’s already repeated the process three times.
With her free hand, she idly twists at the ends of her faded green hair, dry and rough from too much bleach and dye.
The diner sitting off the roadside leading into downtown is always quiet. Most days, the owner dropping by to complain about meaningless things and ramble about his life counts as the busiest customer traffic they get.
Sometimes she worries the diner might shut down soon if things keep going like this. If she loses this job, next month’s rent becomes a problem immediately.
Her work mostly consists of taking orders and running the register. But usually — like today — there’s barely anything to do.
Tom, who works in the kitchen, stands near the doorway with his phone in hand, tapping his foot to whatever song is playing through the speakers. Sometimes she wants to yell at him to turn it off. The only reason she doesn’t is because Tom’s the owner’s younger brother.
To her, this town feels colorless. Not in the sense that it’s a bad place to live. It’s quiet, safe, the kind of small town where people are reasonably kind and there’s even a fairly large park nearby. Other people probably see it painted in bright colors.
Maybe the problem is just her. It’s been a long time since anywhere felt like anything other than dull static pressing against her skin.
This place is far from home. Very far. That’s exactly why she chose it. She needed to leave. That’s why she went away for college too. It had been the major she wanted all throughout high school, but once she got there, studying it suddenly felt meaningless.
After graduating with decent enough grades, she moved here. ‘You could just stay in the city where your university is’, the career counselor had suggested. She said nothing. She didn’t want to stay there anymore.
So this was the problem.No matter where she went, she always felt like she was being ricocheted from place to place, and she felt like she could barely breathe.
Her feet were supposed to stay planted on the ground, but instead it felt as though her whole body kept floating loose and untethered.
When she first arrived in this town, she’d felt hopeful. She thought maybe she could settle here. Maybe she could finally be surrounded by the feeling that this was where she belonged. Maybe someday she’d even get a dog or a cat.
A year has passed, and nothing has changed.
She is still an outsider, and the idea of home remains so distant she can’t even reach for it. Home used to be the place where she lived with her mother, father, and older brother.
Back then, everything seemed easy. There are many ways for a life to slip off its tracks.
In her case, the tracks shattered the moment her brother sat down on the bed in his room at the end of the second-floor hallway, pressed a Sig Sauer against his temple, and pulled the trigger.
It was the first day of her summer vacation of her senior year of high school.
He nearly blacks out several times. Whenever the headlights catch the occasional reflector standing along the pitch-dark highway, his vision smears and he’s forced to slow down.
He exits the highway and drives toward the nearest city.
Finding someone willing to practice medicine illegally in the slums without a license isn’t particularly difficult for him.
He spots the mark attached to a narrow door leading into the basement of a run-down building covered in graffiti and pulls the car over.
To people who live their lives beneath sunlight, it would look meaningless. He’s spent more than half his life in places untouched by daylight.
Even getting out of the car takes effort now. The pain from the wound has dulled into something heavy and distant, but staying upright is difficult. He stumbles his way toward the building.
He sits on a couch in the basement office of the unlicensed doctor, the air thick with the smell of weed. The couch is a deep green color — dark enough that stains probably wouldn’t show. An old man with brittle-looking hair finds his glasses, slides them on, and threads a needle.
“You’re alive because it missed the organs,” the old man mutters as he pours disinfectant over the wound.
He grits his teeth. The man doesn’t ask a single question about how he ended up like this. Leaning back against the couch, he closes his eyes. Each pass of the needle pulls torn flesh shut again.
After returning to the car with gauze taped over the stitched wound, he drives for several more hours.
At some point he stops at a gas station, fills the tank, and buys two bottles of water. He doesn’t realize how thirsty he is until cold water touches his tongue. He drains the first bottle without taking a breath, then tosses the second into the back seat.
Inside the gas station restroom, he rinses the blood-soaked white jacket and t-shirt as best he can. The red staining the jacket fades into ugly brown marks instead.
By the time the sun begins to rise, he pulls onto the shoulder of the road and closes his eyes. Everything feels unbearably exhausting. For a brief moment, he imagines simply falling asleep like this and never waking up again.
Sleep reaches him before the thought can fully finish forming, dragging his consciousness under. When he wakes up, he’ll have to keep driving.
The city he arrives in is small. He needs somewhere to stay. Driving slowly through town, he searches for lodging, but there’s nothing suitable downtown.
Once he leaves the city center and drives a little farther, he finds a diner on one side of the road and an old motel on the other.
He parks in the motel lot and walks inside, trying not to limp too noticeably. The jacket with the scorpion embroidered on it is still in the car.
Right now he’s wearing only a navy short-sleeved shirt. The bloodstained area is darker than the rest of the fabric, but not obvious enough to draw attention.
The middle-aged woman sitting behind the front desk looks up. She seems momentarily startled by his exhausted face and disheveled hair, though she hides it quickly.
“Hello there,” she says kindly, slowly pushing herself to her feet. “How can I help you?”
He answers a beat too late. “Any rooms left?”
“Of course we do. Hardly any tourists come through this town. Honestly, it’s terrible for business.”
The woman chatters like she’s been desperate for conversation. “Good for guests, though. Fewer people means a quieter building. Whenever we’re fully booked, somebody always complains about the noise. Should’ve built the walls thicker in the first place.”. She clicks her tongue dramatically.
He wishes she’d stop talking and hand him the room key already.
“So, how long are you staying?” she finally asks.
This time he answers immediately. “Two weeks for now. Might extend it later.”
She visibly brightens at the realization that he’s a long-term guest.
“Well, sure. Sounds good.” She rummages through a drawer and hands him a key attached to a wooden tag marked with the number 8. “Room eight. Second floor, end of the hallway.”
After paying for two weeks in cash, he heads upstairs.
The room smells faintly of mold and mothballs. The bathroom is old, but the shower works fine.
The unlicensed doctor warned him not to let water touch the wound for a while. He ignores the advice. He strips off his clothes, peels away the gauze, and steps beneath the showerhead.
Every time water runs over the stitched wound, a raw burning ache flares through him. He stands beneath the pouring water for a long time.
When he was young, he used to fix the shower whenever it broke in the house. His father was drunk whenever he was home, and it was better not to provoke him if possible.
Careful not to make too much noise, he would dig through the toolbox for wrenches and screws and repair it himself.
Later, once he got older, he learned mechanic work at the auto shop where his father worked. His father wasn’t drunk there. He just chain-smoked instead.
After school on weekdays, he’d go to the garage to practice what he’d learned or teach himself something new. His father didn’t even work all five weekdays consistently, but he still went anyway. Going home only meant the vibrating smell of alcohol and liquor bottles rolling across the floor.
The owner of the garage paid him little attention and didn’t care whether he came or not. Sometimes he’d send him on small errands. Maybe he secretly liked having free labor around.
Steam fills the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, he wipes away the fog with his palm. Before the clear patch clouds over again, he stares at his reflection.
He is both the frog and the scorpion.
Nino wasn’t the only one who failed to cross the river.
I’m a frog. Why did you sting me? I’m a scorpion. It’s in my nature.
She eventually figures out which car in the motel parking lot belongs to him.
Not intentionally. Her shifts are usually boring, and the words in her books tend to blur together after a while, so she often ends up staring blankly out the diner’s wide front windows instead.
The sunset behind the old motel across the road is beautiful.
More than once, she’s watched that strange silver-gray car — somewhere between silver and blue-gray depending on the light — pull into the lot, come to a stop, and watched him step out of it.
She thinks the car looks analog in a way that’s oddly cool. Her own car is a used Honda Accord. There’s nothing cool or analog about it.
She lets her thoughts drift wherever they want. Where did that man come from? Why is he staying there for days when this town doesn’t even have tourist attractions or local specialties worth seeing?
The thoughts spiral further before she can stop them. What would he think if he knew how her life had unraveled? At what point it all went wrong?
She abruptly stands up. Tom, who’d been halfheartedly working on an old Sudoku book, startles violently.
“I’m gonna get some air,” she says, pushing open the diner door. Tom waves a hand lazily in response.
She feels pathetic. Pulling a tin of mint candies from her pocket, she shakes several into her mouth and lets them dissolve slowly against her tongue.
The urge to tell someone about her life hits her without warning sometimes. Sudden and overwhelming. She often imagines stopping a stranger on the street and spilling everything.
She never actually would, and she never has.
When she was still “the new neighbor” in town, people loved asking questions. Where are you from? What brought you to a tiny town like this? What do you think about the pie at the new bakery?
She answered that the pie was a little too sweet, maybe, but decent enough.
When people asked whether her parents were doing well, she smiled and said yes.
When they asked if she had siblings, she said no.
She crushes the half-melted mint candy between her molars.
Someone steps out from the building across the street, and she squints her eyes toward it before realizing who it is.
The man.
The owner of the car.
She assumes he’s heading toward the parking lot, but instead he seems to be crossing the street, toward the diner.
She quickly slips back inside. She doesn’t want to run into him outside.
He orders an omelet, fries, and coffee. Coffee this late in the evening? she thinks.
When he lifts his head after handing the menu back to her, their eyes meet briefly. She looks away first.
While he eats, he doesn’t touch his phone, newspaper, or even a book. She finds that strange and at the same time, interesting. Modern people seem addicted to drowning themselves in information.
Sitting behind the register on a cheap stool with one leg crossed over the other, she steals glances at him when he isn’t looking. From a distance, she’d assumed he was in his mid-thirties.
Up close, though, there’s something unexpectedly young about his face. At most, he’s only three or four years older than her.
She’s observant. She quietly studies the customers who come into the diner and builds little hypotheses in her head about what kind of people they are.
She never confirms them. There’s no point. She just wants to understand how other people’s lives are built. If she can figure out the pieces that make them function, maybe she can imitate them. Maybe then she’ll finally find her own place too.
Maybe she can pour cement over the shattered tracks of her life and rebuild them into something solid and whole again. Like her parents did.
Like they wanted her to.
She’s absentmindedly resting her chin in her hand when she notices his water glass is empty. She stands up and refills it.
He goes to the diner about once every two days. The biggest reason is convenience — it’s directly across from the building he’s staying in, close enough to walk to. The second reason is that there are rarely many people there.
The food is decent enough too. Not that food matters much to him.
He’d gone into town earlier to buy a few changes of clothes and look around. There’s a small auto repair shop nearby. As he pushes open the diner door, he thinks he should probably ask them next week whether they need another mechanic.
“Welcome back,” she says, setting down her phone and nudging Tom awake beside her. “Customer.”
Tom jerks upright in surprise. The moment he sees him, he grins. “Well, look who’s back. Our regular.”
She leads him to a table and takes his order. He orders the same thing every time. So today, she says it first.
“Coffee, no sugar or cream, an omelet, and fries, right?”
He looks at her for a moment — She wants to look away, but there’s something difficult to resist about the way he watches her — then he answers.
“Yes.”
“Omelet and fries!” she calls toward the kitchen. She’ll handle the coffee herself.
Tom laughs loudly from the back.
“Course it is! This guy orders the exact same thing every damn time!”
She picks up the menu from the table. “You ever wanna try something different?” She isn’t entirely sure why she asks. The words just slip out.
Almost immediately, she regrets it. Small talk makes her feel trapped.
“I don’t know,” he says, lifting his water glass. “I’m not tired of omelets yet.” He never says more than necessary. He doesn’t try to keep conversations going either.
It doesn’t feel rude exactly, but she still ends up feeling awkward for some reason.
She could just walk away. Instead, she asks another question. “So... are you here traveling? Or for work?”
Then quickly adds, “Not trying to pry or anything. I was just curious. We don’t really get tourists here. And you seem to be staying at that motel.” She gestures toward the building outside the window. “Are you looking for a place around here?”
She swallows the rest of the sentence before it leaves her mouth. When I first moved here, I stayed there for over a month because I couldn’t find an apartment. There’s no reason to say that out loud.
He looks up at her.
The fact that he keeps staring without answering makes tension creep into her shoulders. Maybe she asked something she shouldn’t have.
And another thing suddenly hits her; She can’t form a hypothesis about him. The realization unsettles her. What did it even mean that she couldn’t come up with a hypothesis about him.
It wasn’t as though her guesses about other people were ever based on anything real to begin with. She just looked at strangers’ lives and made things up however she pleased.
As she lowers her gaze slightly, he finally answers.
“Maybe.”
His tone is soft. Or maybe she only imagines it that way.
“It’s a quiet town.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She nods quickly.
It looks like she wants to say something else, but a family walks into the diner and she has to go greet them instead.
Her eyes are brown, and her hair is a faded green washed lighter by time. Whenever he looks at her, he thinks of trees. When she offers him those awkward little smiles, he simply looks back at her.
He knows it makes her uncomfortable. Even so, she stubbornly holds his gaze. For a few seconds, at least.
There’s something about her that’s difficult to find in most people her age.
Sometimes, when he looks at her, he catches glimpses of himself. Like something about her has already been worn down at the edges. She acts as though she’s about to step closer to him, only to retreat back into herself at the last second.
The wall she’s built between herself and the rest of the world — between herself and him — is made of thick glass. He has no intention of climbing over it.
He just finds himself looking at her from time to time.
The owner of the repair shop gives him a baffled look when he asks for work.
“Kid, why the hell would I hire someone I know nothing about?”
Then, suddenly, the man falls silent in thought. Truthfully, it’s about time for him to retire. But he’s been putting it off day after day because he doesn’t want to shut the shop down.
If this random blond stranger could handle the work instead, then maybe the garage could stay open without him having to show up every day. After running through the calculations in his head, the owner jerks his chin for him to follow.
“Well, you’ve gotta have some confidence if you came in here acting this bold.” He points toward an old blue Ford pickup truck caked in grime. “I’ll come back in an hour. Fix that.”
The owner rambles on afterward — tools are over there, parts are here, water dispenser’s in the corner if you’re thirsty, and so on — before patting him twice on the shoulder and disappearing without another word.
He opens the door to room 8. The room looks exactly the same as it did when he left that morning. He never requests housekeeping.
The garage owner hadn’t said much after seeing the repaired pickup truck, but he could tell the man was satisfied. Stroking his beard, the owner had told him to start next week.
The plan seemed to be to spend about a week handing the shop over to this young man before retiring for good. He was tired of the local idiots — the kind of young men who ran around loudly claiming they wanted to learn mechanic work but never stuck with anything. A new face didn’t matter as long as the work got done properly.
He pulls off the t-shirt he’s been wearing all day to toss it into the laundry basket, revealing bruises hidden beneath the fabric. The skin around the stab wound has darkened with bruising, faded now into green.
A familiar color.
Back in his old home, there had almost always been bruises hidden beneath his clothes. Alcohol twisted his father’s mind in strange ways. And afterward, his father would become consumed with a rage he couldn’t contain.
It felt to the man as though everything wrong in his life was somehow his son’s fault. His wife leaving with the younger son. The garage owner treating him like garbage. Being trapped in this shitty house, living a shitty life.
All of it.
His son didn’t respect him. He could see it in the boy’s eyes. So he hit him.
By the time the alcohol wore off, the details always blurred together in his memory. Probably just roughing the kid up a little, disciplining a disobedient boy, maybe slapping him around once or twice. Nothing serious.
The son remembered everything. He had been sober for every moment of it.
And even when memory itself blurred, the mirror remembered for him — split lips, yellowing bruises blooming beneath his ribs, eyes swollen badly enough that opening them hurt.
He endured those years of having memories carved directly into his body while secretly saving money behind his father’s back.
By high school, he’d started acting as a middleman between drug dealers and the people desperate enough to need them — addicts who couldn’t function without another hit, or stupid teenagers just beginning to flirt with the idea of ruining their lives.
He took commissions. Spent none of it. Saved every dollar.
Then, on the day of his high school graduation, he came home, beat the drunken father who still tried to put his hands on him, took the money he’d saved, and left. He never went back.
And it would be a lie to say that rage was the only thing he felt when he kicked his father’s body lying on the floor.
A ten-minute phone call is the perfect way to wrap up her day. Tom mumbled some excuse about needing to leave early, dumping all the diner’s closing duties on her, then disappeared in his ugly truck. She was irritated, but there’s nothing she could do about it.
Halfway through mopping the floor, her phone rings.
Mom.
The word glows brightly across the screen. She doesn’t want to answer.
But she ignored the call two days ago, and four days ago too, so this time she doesn’t really have a choice. She props the mop against a table and steps outside. Night air is cold.The moment she taps the green button, her mother’s voice spills through the speaker.
“Why don’t you answer your phone? You worried me.”
“I was busy,” she lies. “Why did you call?”
“What do you mean, why? A mother’s calling her daughter.” There’s the sound of a paper bag rustling on the other end.
“How’ve you been?” her mother asks. She knows she could end this call quickly by lying and saying she’s fine, that everything’s fine.
Easy.
Simple.
She doesn’t want to.
“Same as always. I’m getting by.”
“You still working at that diner? Listen, one of your father’s friends said he could help you get a job. At a local newspaper. It matches your major too. And it’s close to home.”
“I’m not moving back there. I already told you.” Her chest already feels tight. Part of her considers hanging up right now.
“How long are you planning to live off part-time jobs?” Her mother sighs. “Why would you turn down a good opportunity? The place you’re living in now is just some nothing town anyway. There are plenty of jobs here besides the newspaper.”
“I’m not going back.”
“I know how you feel. I felt the same way.” That makes her let out something close to a bitter laugh.
Her mother keeps talking. “But you still have to keep living your life. You can’t stay trapped in the past forever, can you?”
Now she feels sick enough to throw up. She should never have answered the phone in the first place.
“I started yoga recently, and honestly it helps a lot. Maybe you should try it too.”
When she doesn’t answer, her mother’s tone sharpens slightly.
“I know you’re hurting. Of course you are. But it’s already been five years. Your brother wouldn’t want you to—”
She hangs up.
She wants to scream at her.
He was your son. Your son died. How can you act like none of it matters?
She’s felt for a long time now that her mother sees her as pathetic. Another burden after losing a son.
Her parents act as though they never had a dead child at all. The living have to keep living, they said. They repainted her brother’s empty room, threw away the bed, replaced the shelves and drawers with brand-new furniture. According to them, it’s a study now.
She has never stepped foot inside it. People say time heals everything. That’s bullshit. Wounds don’t heal.
They rot. They fester. They decay from the inside out.
He looks out through the slats of the blinds. He hadn’t been trying to watch her.
He’d only walked over to the window to close the blinds completely and happened to notice her outside.
She’s pacing anxiously through the diner parking lot while talking on the phone. He can’t hear what’s being said. She’s far too far away for that.
After the call ends, she stands there motionless for a moment.
His hand reaches for the blind cord.
Then he sees her crouch down where she’s standing, and he doesn’t look away. He cracks the window open slightly. The air outside is cold, and she’s still wearing nothing but her short-sleeved diner uniform.
She suddenly hurls her phone against the pavement and buries her face in her hands.
She’s crying.
He leaves the window open as he lowers the blinds.
There are places people like him belong. Trying to leave those places behind is foolish. Reaching toward someone outside of them is foolish too. He learned that lesson again through Irene.
He thinks about the girl’s eyes. The girl who works at the diner. That expression she wears — like she exists here and nowhere at all at the same time.
Existing on the boundary between two worlds is a strange thing. Some people remain trapped in limbo forever.
He knows what he’s about to do is a bad idea. Still, he reaches for the zip-up hoodie hanging over the chair and walks out of the room.
She doesn’t even notice him approaching.
Get up. Finish cleaning. Lock the doors and go home. She tells herself that silently, but her body feels too stiff to move.
The moment a hand touches her shoulder, she startles violently and twists around. It’s the man from the motel across the street. The one she sees every other day.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. She has no idea how long he’s been watching her.
A sudden wave of embarrassment crashes over her, and she hurriedly scrubs at her face with her arm. It doesn’t help much. Bare skin doesn’t absorb tears. He sees her anyway. The tear-stained mess of her face.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Her voice trembles.
She quickly forces herself to stand. Only now do her arms and legs feel like they’re working properly again. He holds something out toward her. Her phone. The one she threw earlier. A crack runs diagonally across the screen from one corner to the other. She takes it and stuffs it roughly into her pocket.
She should say thank you. The words won’t come out.
She stands there in front of him with her head lowered, fidgeting with one hand using the other, and he presses the hoodie he’s carrying into her arms.
“It’s cold,” he says. “If you’re gonna stay out here.”
There’s something in his voice she can’t quite identify.
Kindness.
Pity.
Maybe both.
She knows she’s supposed to hand the hoodie back and tell him she’s fine, that she just had a bad moment, that he can go now, thank you for worrying about her.But she’s cold and exhausted.
And if she’s being honest, she wants someone beside her right now.
Anyone.
Even this strange man standing in front of her.
So, sniffling quietly, she pulls the hoodie on.
They sit on the curb together. The sleeves of the hoodie he lent her are damp with tears and snot. He doesn’t ask any questions, and she stays quiet except for the occasional sniffle.
She thinks the whole situation feels incredibly awkward.
Sneaking a glance at him, she sees him staring off into the distance, both arms stretched loosely over his raised knees. She’s wrapped in a hoodie far too large for her, carrying faint traces of laundry detergent and engine oil. Meanwhile, he’s sitting there in nothing but a t-shirt
“Um,” she says quietly. “Aren’t you cold?”
He turns his head toward her. “I’m fine.”
Then she realizes he’s looking at the damp sleeves of the hoodie.
“I’ll wash it before I give it back,” she blurts out hurriedly. “Sorry for getting it dirty.”
He shakes his head slowly. “It’s tears. Not dirty.”
He looks at her again. The tip of her nose is red, her eyes swollen badly from crying. For once, the glass wall she always keeps standing between herself and everyone else has gone thin.
She covers her face with both hands. “Don’t look at me.”
“Okay,” he answers easily.
They sit in silence for a long while before she finally mutters, “My mom called.”
He listens without saying anything.
“I always feel awful afterward. I don’t usually react this badly, though.”
She lets out a small, embarrassed laugh. He nods once.
“Mm.”
“Anyway... it’s embarrassing you had to see me like this. Forget about it.”
“Crying isn’t something to be embarrassed about,” he says calmly, reaching a hand toward her. Startled, she instinctively leans back a little.
He simply plucks a bit of dust from her hair.
Flicking it onto the ground, he says, “It’s just, you looked really cold.”
Her feelings become tangled. He’s a strange person. He appeared out of nowhere. She has no idea what kind of life he lives or what he even does.
And now he’s sitting beside her on a parking lot curb at nearly eleven at night, listening to her. If the broken little fragments she’s said can even be called a story.
“...Thank you,” she says quietly. “For caring about me.”
He gives a slight nod. “How do you get home?” he asks.
She points toward a bicycle parked in the corner of the lot. “With that.”
“It’s dark out.”
“The bike light’s actually pretty good.”
“Where do you live?”
She coughs lightly before answering. “Downtown. An apartment on Willow Street.”
He thinks she’s more reckless than she looks.
Downtown isn’t exactly close from here. Commuting this far by bike during the day is one thing, but riding home alone at night is another. It’s not a particularly dangerous town. Still, a woman wandering around alone this late at night isn’t ideal.
He looks at her slumped shoulders, swollen eyes, exhausted face.
“Want me to drive you home?”
She looks startled. “What?”
He points toward his car across the street.
“I can drop you off.”
“What about my bike?”
“I think it’ll fit in the back seat.”
She hesitates for a moment before accepting the kindness of a man she barely knows.
Then she follows him across the road.
Every time the car rolls over a pothole in the road, the bicycle rattles loudly in the back seat. She sits in the passenger seat while he drives one-handed.
“I actually always thought this car’s kinda cool,” she says suddenly, breaking the silence.
“You’ve seen it before?”
“I can see it from the window. Across the street.”
He lets out a quiet hum. He hadn’t realized she’d been looking across at the motel. Though, standing behind the diner counter, the parking lot is impossible to miss.
She seems to be shivering slightly, so he turns the heater up. A little warmer than he’d normally like.
The drive to her apartment is short. He pulls the bicycle out for her once they arrive. It’s red, with patches of chipped paint scattered along the frame. She thanks him as she takes it from his hands. To him, the bike looks slightly too large for her.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she says through the open passenger-side window while he fastens his seatbelt again.
“You really don’t have to.”
She still looks unconvinced, so he gives her a small smile. A genuine one. To show that he means it.
She realizes then that it’s the first time she’s ever seen him smile. Up until now, she’d only ever seen that unreadable expressionless face.
So he can smile like that too, she thinks.
And then, for some reason, a completely irrelevant thought crosses her mind: His eyes are pretty.
Under the dim interior lights of the car, his blue irises stand out clearly. When he smiles, he notices the tension finally leaves her shoulders. They’ve been stiff all night, like she’d forgotten how to relax.
Just before he pulls away, she suddenly tells him to wait a second. He lifts his foot off the accelerator.
“Uhm… what’s your name?”
She bends slightly at the waist to meet his eyes through the open window.
“We never asked each other.”
Before he can answer, she tells him her name first.
He tells her his.
She repeats it aloud carefully, rolling the syllables around in her mouth as though checking the pronunciation.
On the drive back, he quietly repeats her name to himself.