Silence stretched across the kitchen. Then her shoulders dropped.
Mama did not yell. And she did not call me an idiot for flushing four years of sacrifice down the drain, all to leave with nothing but a resignation letter.
She just sat there, holding my hand.
The kitchen clock ticked through the silence. Outside, a car rumbled past the apartment, the headlights sweeping across the wall before fading. Still, she did not look away from my face.
Her thumb traced the edge of my torn knuckle. Once. Twice. Then her grip tightened, the pads of her fingers pressing into my palm as if she were trying to anchor me to the chair.
When I finally lifted my head, her eyes had gone glassy. Her chin tipped upward, jaw set, and she exhaled a slow, shaky breath through her nose. The same breath she used to take before telling me we would figure it out, back when I was a kid and the heat got shut off or the rent came up short.
She did not say a word. She did not have to.
Telling Mama the truth at the kitchen table loosened something in my chest. Not enough to fix anything, but enough to get a few hours of sleep that night.
The next morning, the garage heat hit me like a wall. By noon I was back under a sedan, grease caked under my nails, my shirt soaked through.
Rick let me take my break in the alley. So, I dragged an empty, upturned bucket to the wall and sat down hard, scrubbing my fingers with a paper towel that disintegrated before it did any real work.
The metal door scraped open behind me.
“Ten minutes, Zotov.”
“I know.”
“Break’s over. Get under the lift.”
The door slammed. Felt about right. Tossing the ruined paper towel toward the dumpster, I dug my phone out of my pocket.
Sunlight washed out the screen. Squinting against the glare, I opened the sports app before I could talk myself out of it.
Just checking scores. That’s all.If Karter was back on the ice, if his name showed up in the recap and he looked fine, then I would know. Leaving was the right call. My absence had actually protected him.
A notification popped up immediately:Ridge Cross Secures Spot in Cold Quartet. Karter Johnston Scores Game-Winning Goal.
Clicking the link loaded a post-game photo. The guys from the team crowded the frame in a mess of helmets and gloves, celebrating the playoff spot.
Zooming past Perez and Elliot, my thumb stopped on Karter. Anyone else would just see a player posing for the camera. But I saw differently.
He kept his weight shifted away from the teammate leaning on his shoulder. His eyes stared straight ahead, completely blank.
Karter wasn’t celebrating; he was just enduring it.
The stench of the dumpster hit the back of my throat. Dropping my arm to my side, I stared at the cracked asphalt between my sneakers. The screen had shown me a team photo and a playoff spot. Everything Karter was supposed to keep. But that flat, empty stare in the middle of a celebration told me the truth. Walking away had not protected him from a damn thing.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I walked back inside.
The rest of the afternoon blurred together. I spent the final hours of my shift so distracted that I dropped a wrench directly on my thumb, splitting my nail. Still, I simply wrapped it in shop tape and kept working, completely ignoring the sting.
That same numbness followed me home and kept me awake long past midnight. Tossing and turning on my bed did no good. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Karter staring blankly into that camera.
Giving up on sleep, I pushed the living room window up and climbed outside. Wind whipped across the fire escape as I sat down on the metal grate and gripped the railing, pressing my bare hands against the iron.
Half an hour later, the window scraped open. Mama climbed out onto the grate, her sweater wrenched tight across her chest. She did not look at the streetlights or the empty road. Instead, her gaze pinned me to the railing.
“It is two in the morning.”
“I am not tired.”
