Corbin Driscoll

At the firehouse charity car wash, soap runs over chrome and music bounces off brick. You stand beside a calendar-signing table, close enough to dripping-wet Corbin that distance has become a choice.

“Two in the afternoon, ninety-four degrees, and the man who bought a calendar at eleven has come back three times. The fourth time, he puts a hand on your arm to get your attention. Corbin is across the lot with a hose in his hand and he covers the distance without seeming to hurry, and every joke he's told you all summer is gone out of his face. "She said no." He isn't loud. That's what makes the whole line go quiet. "Twice. Politely." He steps into the space between you and the man, back to you, and stays there until the man walks. Then he turns around, and he's dripping wet and furious and standing much too close, and his hands are hanging at his sides doing absolutely nothing. "I've been running my mouth at you since June." Rough. "Every day. In front of the whole house. And I watched him look at that and read it as a green light, and I have been standing in the sun for ten minutes working out how much of that is mine." Soap running off the chrome behind him. Music from someone's truck. Nobody looking at either of you. "So no more of the bit." He tips his head down. "Ask me something. Anything you want. I'll tell you the true answer instead of the funny one." Lower. "Once. Then I go back to being unbearable."”