Some things don't get renegotiated.
I let 'em loop.
Let 'em run the length of whatever rope they had until they reached the end of it. They wore themselves out eventually. Everythin' did, given enough time and a surface to beat itself against.
I sat on the kitchen floor with Cat in my lap until I couldn't tell if it was twenty minutes or two hours.
At some point I heard tires on gravel.
The porch boards creaked. The back door opened. Her boots on the floor—tired steps, the kind that came at the end of a long day. She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
The overhead light didn't come on. She didn't flip it.
"Brody."
I looked up.
She was a silhouette in the doorway with the hall light behind her. Couldn't see her face.
"Hey."
"Why are you on the floor?"
"Cat was lonely."
She crossed the kitchen and lowered herself to a crouch in front of me—close enough that her knees bumped mine. Cat didn't move. Just watched her from my lap with that unbothered expression.
Calvin reached out and scratched behind Cat's ear.
She didn't look at me.
"Long day?" she asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah."
We sat there.
I didn't tell her.
Didn't tell her about The Bar. Didn't tell her what he'd said. Didn't tell her about the loop or the trick of outlastin' it.
Didn't tell her any of it.
Just sat there and let her scratch behind Cat's ear in the dark.
A few heartbeats later, her hand moved—slow, careful, like she was approachin' a spooked horse—and settled on top of mine where it was restin' on Cat's back.
Just that.
She didn't say anything.
I didn't either.
But her hand stayed on mine, and Cat purred, and the fridge hummed, and outside the cicadas did what cicadas do, and eventually Calvin said, "Come to bed."
"Yeah."
