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Maksim didn’t move.

“Not, like, on purpose. I know. But he came home Thursday with his face all wrecked and he’s been staring at his phone like it’s a bomb for two days, and he keeps saying it’s nothing. And I don’t know what happened. And I don’t want to know, that’s between you guys. But he’s my best friend, man. He’s the best person I know. He just doesn’t know it.”

The wind whistled, and somewhere far below a car door slammed.

“He is,” said Maksim.

I blinked. “He is what?”

“The best person you know. I agree.”

That threw me. I’d been braced for a lot of things, a threat, a stare, a very calm explanation of how easily he could kill me. I hadn’t been braced for agreement.

“Right,” I said. “So— so if you’re going to be with him, you have to be, like, actually with him. Not half. He doesn’t do half. He does everything all the way, and it wrecks him when other people don’t.”

“I understand.”

“And if you hurt him, if you mess him around, if you—” I lost my thread. I took a breath. “I’ll hit you. Okay? I’ll hit you with a stick. I know I won’t win. I know you’re, like, seven feet tall and you probably bench a truck. But I’ll do it. I’ll hit you as hard as I can. And I’ll go down swinging.”

I stood there in the dark, shaking, in my good jacket, waiting to be flung off a roof.

Maksim looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, quietly, in a voice I’d never heard from him, “Then you may.”

“What?”

“You may hit me.” He took his hands from his pockets, and held them open at his sides. “If I hurt him, Jason, I give you my word. You may hit me as hard as you can, as many times as you want. I will not lift a hand. I will not defend myself. I will stand there and let you.”

I stared at him.

“That is the creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me,” I said.

“I am told I have a gift.”

“But it’s also kind of the nicest.”

“I am sometimes both.”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. It came out of me in a great foggy burst, and I bent over with my hands on my knees, wheezing, and when I straightened up he was smiling. A small, real, startled smile, tired and shy and completely without fangs.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. That’s fair. We’re good.”

“We are good?”

“We’re good.” I wiped my eyes. “I don’t know what you are, man. I’m not asking. I’ve got a theory and I don’t want it confirmed. But I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be, a little.”

“I’m scared for you. It’s different.” I shrugged. “You look like a guy who’s been standing on a roof a very long time.”

The wind lifted the edge of his coat. He was quiet.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I have.”

“Well. Come inside. It’s minus eleven and I’m going to get frostbite in my personality.”

He looked at me, and then at the stairs.