Frank

By the time I find you on the shoulder outside town, the road has gone black except for the weak pulse of your hazards and the wash of my headlights across the ditch. I pull in behind you and leave the truck running while I get out, boots grinding over gravel as I take in the crooked angle of the car and the simple fact that you are standing beside it instead of lying under it. That takes some of the edge off the knot that formed in my chest when your name lit up my phone, though I have no intention of rewarding you with that information. Seeing you again after this long already feels strange enough without making it sincere.

“Well, hell. You made it almost all the way back before finding a way to make yourself my problem.”

The smile comes easily because teasing you gives me something familiar to do with the moment. I take the flashlight from my pocket, have you pop the hood, and lean into the engine bay while everything around us settles into the quiet of a road that never sees much traffic this late. The motor is still warm beneath my hands. I work through the obvious things first, listening to whatever explanation you give me without pretending I believe half of it, and the whole time I am annoyingly aware of you standing close enough that I do not have to turn my head very far to see you. My memory has kept an older version of you tucked away for years, useful mostly because it made you easy to place somewhere adjacent to my marriage and leave you there. The person beside me now does not fit that shape nearly as well, and I resent the observation enough to keep my attention on the engine until I have an answer.

“Needs a part I don’t have. I can tow it back, but unless the delivery truck suddenly discovers a work ethic, you’re probably stuck here a couple days.”

There is not much point pretending that leaves us with a dozen options. The nearest place worth calling a hotel is far enough away to make the idea stupid without a car, and whatever else has changed since the divorce, I am apparently still incapable of leaving you to fend for yourself when I can do something about it. That old sense of obligation has always been easier to live with when it stayed abstract, one of those things a man tells himself means he kept at least part of his promises even after the marriage fell apart. Tonight it has your face attached to it, which complicates matters more than I care to admit. I get the car back to the garage, confirm the diagnosis under proper light, make the call I can make this late, and finally shut the shop down once there is nothing useful left to do until morning.

Upstairs, the apartment feels smaller the second I bring someone else into it. It is one room arranged around the habits of a man who has not expected company for a while: bed against the far wall, battered couch in front of the television, narrow kitchen, boots near the door, work shirt abandoned over the back of a chair. I have spent months pretending the quiet suits me because that is easier than admitting I notice it, and now your presence changes the whole shape of the place before you have even put anything down. I clear the couch without making a production out of it, folding the shirt over one arm while my eyes keep drifting back toward you in ways I would rather not encourage.

“The couch is yours. It pulls out, sheets are clean, bathroom’s through there. Try not to act too impressed; I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

The arrangement ought to be simple enough to file under practical necessity. You need somewhere to sleep, I have somewhere to put you, and in a few days the part comes in and we both go back to our own lives. The trouble is that practical does not stop me from noticing how different it feels to have you standing inside mine. You are not a distant piece of somebody else’s family here, or a name I hear in passing, or a memory attached to a marriage that no longer exists. You are an adult in my apartment, close enough that I can hear the shift of your clothes when you move and near enough that every glance has to be chosen instead of excused. Some part of me still wants to sort that awareness under disloyal, even now, even after the vows have been broken and signed away and made legally meaningless. Another part is considerably less interested in behaving.

That is usually where the jokes become useful. If I keep you irritated, keep the balance tilted just enough that you are busy rolling your eyes at me instead of looking too closely, then I get to stand on ground I understand. My gaze moves over you once, slow enough that there is no pretending it was accidental, and the corner of my mouth lifts when I catch myself enjoying the fact that making you uncomfortable is a much easier problem than explaining why having you here has unsettled me at all.

“Couple days, sweetheart. Don’t get comfortable. I’d hate for you to start thinking this is hospitality.”