Page 12 of Last Flame
The bike’s in the garage where I left it. I swing on. Sit there a second without starting it.
I wonder if she’ll wear the—
For fuck’s sake.
I start the bike.
The city blurs as I pick up speed. The bike clears my head; it always has. Somewhere past the river it all drops down to one thing, and the one thing is her.
Every time.
She’s the one who got me the apartment. Three years ago. Barely knew me — we’d crossed paths a couple of times, the coffee shop, the sidewalk as we were both moving between places — and I mentioned I was looking for a place. She lit right up and told me there was one open across from hers and walked me to the manager’s office herself. Vouched for a man she’d spoken forty words to.
She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask who I was or why I was moving or whether I had references. She just heard somebody needed help and decided that was enough.
She forgot about it by the next week.
I didn’t.
She set the whole rest of my life in motion that afternoon and didn’t think to put herself anywhere in it.
Like she’d done nothing.
Like she wasn’t the entire reason.
Kyle lived there then. With her. He was fine. That’s the worst thing I’ve got on him, and I went looking for worse, because a man wants a reason andfineisn’t one. He was fine, and then one day I came down to the garage and watched him carry box after box out to his car.
After the third trip, I knew he wasn’t coming back.
She stayed.
I can’t count the times I almost knocked on her door that first week. Just to check. See if she needed anything. See if she wanted to talk, just to get it out, to have someone else understand.
I didn’t. It wasn’t mine to knock on.
She never asked.
And after — every time I saw her, she was a little less. She wasn’t crying, this was worse than crying. She just got quieter and smaller and stayed that way. Like she didn’t deserve good things anymore.
There’s a second parking spot down there that came with her unit. Hers now, both of them. She’s never once moved her car to the better one. Three years, and she still parks crooked in the same half she always had, like the other half belongs to someone who might come back.
Like Kyle leaving made her look bad.
Like it gave her proof.
It shouldn’t have.
She’s over him. Kyle’s a closed door; I don’t waste worry there. It’s what she kept from it that I can’t get past. She decided she’s not someone a person stays for, and she’s been right about it for so long it looks like the truth to her now.
She’s wrong.
So wrong.
There’s nothing I can do about that yet.
Priya’s already pulling my order when I walk into the coffee shop across town. She sets the cup down. Doesn’t quite let go of it.
“Hey, Erik. Would you maybe want to get dinner sometime?”
