"I know." He picked up his jacket. "Come on."
He walked toward the door without checking if I was following, which was Dylan, which had always been Dylan, and I followed him because what was the alternative, and the bar kept going behind us with its candles and its menu and its group that had already moved on to someone else.
It was cold outside. Dylan's car was around the corner. He'd parked and come in rather than texting from outside, which meant he'd been prepared to stay as long as it took, which meant Rob had told him to.
I got in the passenger seat.
We didn't talk for a while. The city did its thing outside the windows, late and sparse, everyone with somewhere to be or somewhere they were coming from. Dylan drove the way he did everything, correct and unhurried.
I looked at the window.
I thought about Nathan Cross, who I had not been able to stop thinking about for weeks, who I had not figured out what to do about, who was somewhere across the city right now probably asleep or pretending to be.
"Dylan," I said.
"Yeah."
"Thanks." I kept looking at the window. "For coming."
Dylan was quiet for a moment. His jaw moved.
"Wes."
"Yeah?"
"Don't thank me."
I looked at him.
"Just—don't,” he said. “We don't do that shit. That's not what this is."
"What is it then?"
He didn't answer for a second.
Then: "It's just what we do." He kept his eyes on the road. "It's what we've always done."
I sat there for a second.
"Dylan."
"Wes."
"I'm going to—" I stopped. Tried again. "I'm going to try to be different."
"Okay," he said.
It wasn'tI believe you.It wasn'tgood.It was justokay,the way Dylan saidokayabout things he was holding open and not putting weight on yet.
He looked at the steering wheel.
"Then fucking do it for once," he said.
I got out.
I stood on the sidewalk and watched him pull away, the red taillights shrinking until they disappeared around the corner.
I went upstairs.
