Page 125 of Wreckage and Rain

"I've been practicing."

"I can tell. Don't stop."

"I won't."

She opens the door. The hallway light is the haint-blue buzz. She doesn't look back. The door closes behind her with the same care she opened it with.

I sit on the foot of the bed.

Everything in this room is the same, but I'm not the same man. I've got a long road ahead of me, with Summer, with my parents. But I'm free, and she came to my door.

I lie back on the made bed. I don't undress. I don't turn out the lamp. I look at the ceiling of a yellow-painted room in a Federal house on Queen Street in the city we used to live in and I let the warmth of her mouth stay on mine for as long as my body will hold it.

Tomorrow.

I'm going to be ready for tomorrow.

Chapter 36: Rain

Summer

I wake up early, the morning of tomorrow. The crack of light at the bottom of the door means Colt is awake across the hall. He's been awake a while. I can hear him moving around. The shower. The coffee maker downstairs. He's gone down for coffee and come back up.

I go downstairs in pajama pants and rugby shirt. Lorna is at the desk with her crossword. She looks up at me over her readers.

"Coffee on the sideboard, sweetheart."

"Thank you, Miss Lorna."

"Pound cake too."

"It isn't even seven."

"Pound cake is a twenty-four hour food in this house."

I take the coffee and the pound cake to the parlor and I sit in the wingback chair. Colt comes downstairs at seven. He's shaved his beard down to something between rugged and trimmed. His blond hair is wet, leaving the top in waves that hang across his forehead. He looks like the man who used to walk into King's Diner after rugby practice at sixteen and look at me like I had invented something.

He sees me in the wingback and pauses in the doorway of the parlor.

"Morning."

"Morning."

"Pound cake before seven?"

"Lorna says it's a twenty-four hour food."

"Lorna is correct."

He stands in the doorway with both hands in his pockets. Looking at me.

"You sleep?"

"No. You?"

"Not a minute. I lay there all night knowing you were awake on the other side of that wall, thinking about me, and I couldn't for the life of me be sorry about the lost sleep."

"You don't know I was thinking about you."