I reached over her to kill it. She stirred but didn't open her eyes. Nova was in the bouncer beside the couch, the same bouncer she'd been in when the three of us fell asleep the night before, her fist curled at her mouth, her breathing the steady rhythm I could pick out of any room now.
I sat up gradually, trying not to wake either of them. The apartment in the early dark was quiet and warm, the blanket still over both of us, her feet still against my thigh. I had a shift in an hour. My bag was in my truck. I needed to get to the firehouse by six, and the drive took fifteen minutes. I was sitting on Audrey Callahan's couch at five in the morning, not wanting to move because moving meant leaving a room I didn't want to leave.
I got up. I made coffee, poured two cups, and left hers on the counter where she'd find it. I wrotegone to shift—back tomorrow morningon the notepad she kept by the refrigerator, which was something I did now, left notes on her notepad, because she liked knowing where I was, and I liked being someone she expected to hear from.
I was pulling my boots on by the door when she spoke from the couch.
"Duke."
"Go back to sleep, Aud."
"Come here."
I went back. She was sitting up, the blanket pooled at her waist, her hair a wreck from the couch cushion. She looked half-asleep and fully sure of whatever she was about to say.
"When you get off shift tomorrow morning. Go home, get cleaned up, and come back here at seven."
"Seven in the evening?"
"Yes."
I stopped with one boot on. "Why?"
"Because I'm taking you out."
"Where?"
"Don't ask questions. Just be here at seven. I'll handle the rest."
I looked at her across the dim apartment. She had the look she got when she knew something I didn't and had decided that was going to stay that way for a while.
Something registered that I wasn't expecting. She was planning something for me. In fourteen weeks, I'd been the one showing up. Coffee from the place on Main every morning. Dinner at my place. I brought things to her. I showed up for her. I didn't know I was waiting for her to do the same until she just did, and the not-knowing made the landing harder.
"Okay," I said.
She leaned forward and kissed me. Quick and warm, her hand on the front of my shirt for one second before she let go.
"Be safe today."
"Always."
I pulled the other boot on, picked up my keys, and let myself out. I stopped at the top of the stairs. I stood there for a beat withher kiss still on my mouth, the shift ahead of me, and whatever she was planning sitting in my chest like a gift I hadn't opened yet.
I kept going.
I got off shift at six the next morning and drove home.
The house was quiet the way it always was after a twenty-four, the particular stillness of a place nobody had been in since yesterday. I slept until noon. Ate something. Tried to read. Gave up on the reading because my brain kept circling back to whatever Audrey had planned, and the not-knowing was doing exactly what she wanted it to do.
By six, I was showered, shaved, and standing at my closet. The house looked different from the way it had six months ago, and I noticed it sometimes the way you notice a season has turned, not all at once but in the accumulation. A baby blanket was folded over the arm of the couch. A small basket of Nova's onesies on top of my dresser because Audrey left them here last Sunday, and neither of us moved them to the car. The nonfiction stack back on the coffee table, Krakauer on top, dog-eared where I left it. The portable crib in the second bedroom. The pinball machine in the basement.
The house of a man who stopped performing what his home looked like. A man who lived here with the things that mattered to him, including the ones that belonged to two other people.
I changed shirts twice, which was two more times than I'd changed shirts for anything in my adult life. I had gotten a text during shift.
Audrey
Jeans are fine
