Page 64

Hakeem was in his room for maybe an hour, considering self-taping and talking himself out of it, when he heard Antonio's phone ring downstairs.

That alone was unusual. Antonio's phone almost never rang. It buzzed sometimes—short, controlled vibrations that Antonio handled the way he handled everything, with efficiency and minimal evidence. But an actual ring, loud enough to carry up the stairs and through Hakeem's closed door, suggested someone calling who expected to be answered.

Antonio picked up. His voice was too low to make out words at first—just the familiar cadence, measured and unhurried. Then, after a minute, the cadence changed.

Hakeem sat up.

He couldn't hear the content, but he caught the tone. Antonio's voice had gone flat in a way Hakeem had never heard from him—not cold, not angry, but stripped. The careful music of his usual speech, the dry wit, and the deliberate pacing had been replaced by something blunt and tired. He spoke a few sharp words. Waited. Then fewer still. There was a pause long enough to suggest the other person was doing most of the talking, and then Antonio said a single word that sounded, even through the floor and the plaster and the old bones of the house, like a man swallowing something he did not want to taste.

Shortly after, silence.

Hakeem waited. He told himself he was giving Antonio space, which was technically true and functionally a lie—he was giving Antonio space while listening for what the space sounded like.

After another few minutes, Hakeem went downstairs, telling himself he wanted water. He did not want water. He wanted to see Antonio's face after that call—a different kind of thirst entirely, and one he wasn't prepared to name.

Antonio was in the front room, sitting on the couch in the exact spot Hakeem had left him, but everything about his posture had changed. The book was closed on the cushion beside him. His glasses were off, folded, and set on the arm of the couch. One hand rested on his knee. The other was pressed against his mouth, thumb along his jaw, fingers curled loosely against his upper lip — the pose of a man holding his own face together.

He stared at nothing in the middle distance, which meant he was looking at something internal, and whatever it was had weight.

Hakeem stopped in the doorway.

He had imagined Antonio in many configurations over the past several weeks. Threatening. Calculating. Devastatingly attractive while performing mundane tasks. Amused at Hakeem's expense. Watchful in ways that made the back of Hakeem's neck feel like a lit fuse. But he had never imagined Antonio emptied out like this. The reserve was still there, but it wasn't functioning as armor anymore. It looked like exhaustion. Like a man who had been holding a shape for so long that the effort had finally become visible.

Antonio noticed him. His eyes moved slowly and heavily, arriving at Hakeem without the usual sharpness.

"Hey," Hakeem said.

It was the most inadequate word in the English language, and yet he deployed it anyway.

Antonio dropped his hand from his face. "Hey."

"Bad call?"

Antonio looked at him for a second, as if deciding how much of an answer Hakeem had earned. Then he said, "Professional disagreement."

"About?"

"Timelines."

The word was vague enough to cover anything and specific enough, given what Hakeem now knew about the manuscript and the editorial correspondence and the system Antonio had built, to mean exactly one thing. A deadline. Someone on the other end of that call was expecting pages from a man who had been too busy studying his roommate to finish them, or too blocked, or too distracted.

Hakeem should have left it alone.

"You look tired," he said instead.

"I'm fine."

"You look like a man who's been told he's ‘fine’ so many times he's forgotten what the alternative feels like."

Antonio's gaze shifted. It wasn’t glaringly visible from across a room. But from the doorway, standing close enough to see the lines at the corners of his eyes and the tension in his jaw that he was no longer bothering to hide, Hakeem saw a fracture in the composure. Small and real and human in a way that made Hakeem's chest do something inconvenient.

"That's a very specific observation," Antonio said quietly.

"We’ve established that I notice things."

Antonio gave the ghost of a smile; tired and thin, offered without the usual rationing. It was the least calculated expression Hakeem had ever seen on his face, and it hit harder than any of the heartbreaking ones.

"Sit down," Antonio said. "You're hovering like a fire hazard."