"Have you talked to him?"
"We were on a plane for three hours."
"That's not what I asked."
I looked at the water stain. "We did the thing. The thing where both of us are completely normal and nobody mentions anything and Kieran makes a joke about the game and I laugh at it and Felix says something useful about the coverage and we both," I stopped. "We're very good at the thing, Charlie."
"I know you are."
"It's our thing."
"It was your thing," Charlie said. Quiet. Specific. "It might need to become a different thing."
I didn't answer.
"He said we can't," Charlie said, again, like it was something he wanted me to sit with rather than argue with. "Not I don't. You know Felix. You know how he talks. You know the difference between what he says and what he means better than almost anyone."
I did know. I had been cataloguing the difference for four years. The way he said fine when he meant I'm doing the math on this and I don't like the answer. The way he said go to sleep, Shay at midnight when his lamp was still on and his phone was face,up and he was laughing at gas station sushi. The way he said we can't with both hands fisted in my shirt.
"He meant I'm afraid," I said.
"Yeah," Charlie said. "I think so."
"That's not better."
"No. But it's workable." A pause. "Fear you can , there's something to work with there. I don't want to is a door. We can't is a wall with a reason on the other side of it."
I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye. "When did you get wise."
"I've always been wise. You just weren't listening."
"You were a disaster for thirty years."
"I was a disaster for thirty years and I was wise. I contain multitudes." I heard him smile. Heard, in the background, Henry say something , low, unhearable , and Charlie's voice soften in the way it did when Henry was in the room, withouthim meaning it to, without him even noticing anymore. "Henry says hi, by the way."
"Tell Henry I'm having a crisis."
A murmur. Then Charlie: "He says we know."
"That's , why does Henry know?"
"Henry knows things." A pause. "He also says: Felix ran for fifty,five minutes this morning. Thirty over scheduled."
I was quiet.
"He told you that?"
"Henry notices things. He noticed it and he told me and I'm telling you because , Shay. That's not nothing. A man who runs thirty extra minutes is not a man who put it down."
I looked at my ceiling. The water stain. The corner. The flat, opinionless sky outside the window. The bag still by the door, unzipped, spilling slightly, the sock that had escaped onto the floor and was probably Felix's because Felix over,packed socks on road trips, which I knew because I knew everything about Felix Wren that I had zero business knowing.
That was Felix's sock.
On my floor.
"Charlie," I said.
"Yeah."
