I get to the airport, through TSA, and I’m at the gate within an hour. I sit with the bag between my feet and call him one more time.
Voicemail. His voice, full and bright and from September.
I hang up.
The flight boards. I take my seat. The plane pushes back and the city drops away and the Potomac curves below and then the clouds close over it.
An hour and forty minutes. By five o'clock I will be in Atlanta. By five-thirty I will be at his door.
The phone is off. His feet on the sand in a device that is dark in the seat pocket. I close my eyes. The engine hums. Below me the East Coast is passing and the distance is shrinking and by tonight I will be with him. I am done holding the distance and calling it love.
The wheels touch down at five-oh-three. The phone comes on. No missed calls. No texts. The cabin dings and the seatbelt sign goes dark and I am already standing, grabbing my bag from the overhead.
The phone buzzes, I rush to check who it is.
Paulson.
Mercy, you good? Heard you left early.
Family thing. I'm good. Play well tonight.
You got it. Take care, man.
Paulson does not push. The team will not push today. Today the credit holds. Tomorrow Kyle will be answering questions I cannot answer and the credit will start to thin and it will thin for days and the thinning will cost me and I do not care. I do not care what it costs.
Hartsfield is loud. It is always loud. I walk through it the way I walk through every airport, quickly, head down, because I am six-three and sometimes people know the face. Nobody stops me. Nobody calls my name. I pass the baggage carousels and the rideshare signs and the sliding glass doors.
I give the driver the address. The highway is thick with rush hour. I sit in the back and watch the city come toward me, theskyline and the overpasses and the exits I learned across two visits, the move-in and Christmas, both of them short, both of them careful.
His street at five-fifty-four. I pay. I stand on the sidewalk with the bag on my shoulder and look up at the building. Third floor. The light in his window is off.
The lobby door opens with the code he gave me in September. The elevator is small and smells like carpet cleaner. I press three. The doors open and his door is the second on the left.
The key is in my coat pocket. It has been there since September, on the ring with my car key and my apartment key, the three of them sitting together all season like they belong to the same life. I put it in the lock. It turns.
The apartment is dark. The air is stale, the kind of stale that comes when the windows have not been opened in weeks. I set my bag inside the door and stand there.
Mail on the counter. A stack of it, envelopes and flyers, a postcard from Aruba on top with the resort logo. Dishes in the sink. Four plates, three glasses, a mug with something dried to the rim. The trash is full. The recycling beside it is full. The light above the stove is the only light on and it casts the kitchen in a low yellow.
Mouse comes around the corner from the hallway. She stops when she sees me. Her ears go forward. She stands very still and then walks to me and presses her head against my shin and I reach down and her fur is warm and she is the only thing in this apartment that is where it should be.
Her bowl is in the kitchen. Water low. Food half gone. He has been feeding her. Whatever else has stopped, that has not stopped.
I walk into the living room.
He is on the couch. On his side, one arm hanging off the edge, the other tucked under his head. A t-shirt I have never seen andsweatpants and bare feet. His face turned into the cushion. The blanket on the floor. The TV off. The laptop closed on the coffee table beside an empty glass and his phone face-down.
He is thinner even since Aruba. I can see it in his arm, in the way the shirt sits on his shoulders. His jaw is sharper than it was at Christmas. His hair is longer than he keeps it.
Mouse jumps onto the arm of the couch above his head. She sits and looks at me.
I cross the room. I crouch beside the couch. His breathing is even. His face is slack and still. He has been asleep for a while, the deep sleep of a body that has been running on nothing and has finally stopped.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, sleepyhead."
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