Page 11 of Cross Check
I poured the tea down the sink, rinsed the mug, and set it on the shelf.
By size. Tallest in the center.
Exactly where he'd put them.
6
NICO
The first time it happened, it was an accident.
Insomnia wasn't new, it was the oldest relationship I had. My body listened politely to the therapist's suggestions—the box breathing, the progressive muscle relaxation, the rigid bedtime rituals that were supposed to retrain my circadian rhythm. Then it stayed awake until my eyes burned.
Two and a half weeks into my exile in Kieran Walsh's apartment, I gave up at 2:47 AM and retreated to the kitchen for tea.
Walsh was already there.
He sat at the counter in the near-dark, silhouetted by the dim glow of the stove hood light. A book lay open beside his mug, one of those airport thrillers that promised a body on every page. He wore a faded T-shirt and sweatpants, bare feet arched against the cold tile.
He looked up when I appeared in the doorway. No surprise. Only a quiet acknowledgment, the way you'd nod at someone you expected to see eventually.
"Kettle's still hot," he said, going back to his book.
I poured my green tea, light, what my grandmother called the only civilized option after midnight, and took a seat at the far end of the counter. Six feet of marble between us. I wrapped both hands around the mug and felt the heat seep into my palms.
We didn't speak for twenty minutes.
The apartment expanded around us the way spaces do in the dead of night, turning small sounds massive. The refrigerator cycled with a low hum. Heat ticked through the vents. Wind rattled the windows in their frames, the building shrugging in its sleep. Walsh turned a page, the paper rasping.
I drank my tea.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of quiet I hadn't experienced since—I couldn't actually remember. Before Minnesota, maybe. Before every silence got loaded with suspicion and subtext, with the question of what I was hiding or who was listening. This silence was just two men sharing a kitchen at 3 AM because neither of them could sleep and neither of them felt compelled to pretend otherwise.
"This is terrible," Walsh said.
I looked up. He tilted the book so I could see the cover, a shadowy figure on a bridge, a city skyline in flames behind him.The Lazarus Protocol.
"How terrible?" I asked.
"The detective just fell in love with his partner's widow. They've known each other for six days."
"That's efficient."
"They've also survived two car bombs and a boat chase. On day four."
"Relationship-building activities."
Walsh's mouth quirked. Not a smile, not yet. A shift, a tectonic movement at the corner that hinted at the possibility of a smile the way a tremor hints at an earthquake. Small. But significant.
"I keep reading," he said, "because I need to know if the Russian arms dealer is actually her long-lost brother."
"Is that a possibility?"
"Everything is a possibility in this book. Logic left around page forty."
I took a sip of tea and set the mug down. "My grandmother reads theKalevalato me over the phone. The Finnish national epic. Monsters get defeated with songs and riddles. A man builds a boat out of a spindle. A woman gives birth to a king while floating in the ocean."
Walsh considered this with a seriousness it didn't deserve. "That's actually better than the boat chase."
