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"Everything okay?" Wyatt asks, and there's something careful in his voice again, the same careful from before, like he's bracing for an answer he already suspects.

"Fine," I say. "Just my dad."

I don't elaborate. And the part that surprises me is he doesn't push. Just watches me for a second, something unreadable behind his eyes, before he reaches over and scratches Pickles behind the ears instead, like that's easier to focus on than whatever's happening on my face.

I lock the phone. Set it face-down on my knee like that solves anything.

"You want to finish the story about Camden's mattress?" I ask, too bright, too fast.

"Nah." He says it easy, like it costs him nothing, but his hand's stopped moving on Pickles' fur. "It's basically the whole story. Guy switched rooms for nothing."

The moment doesn't come back after that. Not really. We sit another twenty minutes, but the couch has gone back to being just a couch, the space between us the ordinary kind again.

I gather my things not long after that. The excuse of you're home now, you don't need me anymore sitting between us, technically true and somehow not true at all.

At the door, he hands me back nothing, because there's nothing to hand back; I already have his sweatshirt, his dog's undying loyalty, and apparently a nickname I didn't ask for and can't seem to talk him out of.

"Thanks," he says. "For all of it."

"Someone had to keep Pickles in line."

"I meant it, Peachy."

I don't have a comeback for that. I just nod, and turn for the door.

I make it as far as the hallway before I stop, glance down at myself, and peel the sweatshirt off over my head. I tie the sleeves around my waist instead, which doesn't change a single fact about the last hour, but at least means I'm not leaving his apartment broadcasting exactly whose place I've been practically living in all week.

Small victories.

I don't examine why I still want to keep it that close either.

8

WYATT

Finders Keepers

The door clicks shut behind her and the apartment just deflates.

Nothing's actually different. The mail's still stacked the way she left it, neat, and I don't touch it, because disturbing it feels like erasing evidence of something I'm not ready to stop having evidence of.

Pickles trots to the door about four times in the first twenty minutes, sits there a second like he's waiting for the sequel, then wanders back looking faintly betrayed.

I sit down on the couch, in the spot that isn't the spot she was sitting in, which I do on purpose, and then I notice I did it on purpose, which is its own small problem.

The cushion next to mine still has a shape pressed into it. I don't sit there either. I just look at it for a second longer than a cushion deserves.

"She's coming back for you," I tell Pickles, who is lying in the exact spot on the rug where she sat with him according to the pictures she sent, chin on his paws, doing an excellent impression of an animal in mourning. "Probably. At some point."

He doesn't even lift his head.

"Yeah," I say. "Me neither."

I end up with the guitar in my lap an hour later, not really playing anything, just running through the same four chords I always run through when my head's too loud to leave alone.

The apartment's too quiet in a way it wasn't before I left for the away game. It doesn't make sense, because before I ran out of here it was just me and Pickles too, same as always, same as it's been since I moved in.

How can just one week of having someone else around make the ordinary quiet feel like something’s missing instead of something that’s mine?