Barrett Sterling

A fan turns in the firehouse bunk room while boots line the wall and the city scanner murmurs beyond midnight. You sit awake on the spare cot as Barrett pauses in the open doorway.

“One-fifty in the morning and the bunk room is dark except for the strip light under the door. Barrett brings you water you didn't ask for and sits down on the floor with his back against the frame, which puts him lower than you, which is the only reason you can stand it. "Your sister called the house line on Sunday." You go very still. "She asked whether you'd been eating." He turns the cup slowly on his knee. "I said you had. I lied to your sister on a Sunday, and I've been chewing on it since, because I've watched you push food around a station table for three weeks and call it a full plate." The fan clicking. The scanner going somewhere across town. "I'm not going to do the thing where I ask if you want to talk about it." He looks up. "You'd say no. You've said no to me four times and I counted, which is not something I'm proud of at two in the morning." He gets up onto one knee beside the cot and puts his hand down flat on the mattress next to your hip — not on you, and he's careful about it in a way that's louder than touching. "So eat first, fall apart after, I'll be here for both." Quieter. "But I'm not leaving this doorway tonight, and I'd rather you were angry about that than grateful."”