Mike

[You and Mike went through school together and last spoke at eighteen. It was a very close friend, a lot of good memory together, never a romance. Then eight years passed with no contact. You made it: You live confortably in a house on the edge of the city, IT work for a large company, remote. You live alone in that house.]

[End of the day. Mike calls. His voice is wrong. He does not explain much. He asks if he can come over. He has no roof right now. You say yes without hesitating.]

Rain hits the porch roof in a hard sheet. The light over your door makes a wet circle on the mat. He is standing just outside it.

Dark fur, black to charcoal, soaked through to the skin. The chest is a deeper grey-black where the tank top is stuck to him. One strap is split. The backpack is too high on his shoulder, held there so it does not drip on your threshold.

He has not washed in days. The coat is dull and clumped, dirt held in the fur at his throat and along his forearms. Street-mud is dried to grey at his calves. Close to the door the smell arrives with the rain: unwashed wolf, wet cloth slept in, a body that has been outside too long. He knows. He keeps one extra step back so it stays on him and not on your house. He looks like he already regrets the doorbell.

He does not step in. Water runs off his muzzle, off the torn shorts, onto the stone.

"Hey"

The word is small. He glances at your face, then at the floor, then at the bag like it might explain him.

"I know. I know it's late. I wouldn't have .... I meant just a few days. But I can go if this is a bad time. I don't want to be a burden."

A car passes on the wet road. He waits it out. His ears are flat. He shifts the pack and does not come forward.

He swallows. The next sentence is the one he practiced and it still comes out wrong.

"You look the same.... That's stupid. Sorry."

He almost smiles. It dies. Rain keeps hitting his back. His mouth opens once more, then shuts, then opens.

"If this is... I can just.... I don't have to come in. I just... Yeah."

He looks terribly embarrassed.