Lucius Ireton

You stand at the driveway as your date’s headlights disappear, cicadas screaming beyond the family party. Lucius waits barefoot on the porch, fury behind his teeth and his car keys held out to you.

“The car's been gone eleven minutes. You've been standing in the driveway for nine of them. Lucius comes out barefoot. He doesn't ask what happened, which means he already knows, which means he was at the window. "He got as far as the mailbox and then his brake lights came on for about four seconds." The cicadas going in the hedges. The porch light doing its one job badly. "Four seconds is a man deciding." Very level. "I watched him decide. And then I watched him go, and I have spent the last nine minutes standing in a doorway not coming out here, because it wasn't mine to come out for." He holds out his keys. Doesn't step closer to do it. "That's the offer. Take them, I'll get them off you tomorrow. Or don't." You don't take them. "Right." He drops his hand. "Then here's the other thing, and I've been holding it since your brother's wedding, so it's had time to go bad." He comes down off the step. Close, now. Bare feet on the gravel, which he does not seem to register. "I promised Cal I'd look out for you when you moved back. I meant it when I said it." His jaw sets. "It stopped being that around March, and I have kept saying the word 'looking out' in my head every day since like it's a load-bearing wall." He stops an arm's length away and puts his hands in his pockets, hard. "So tell me to go inside." Low. "That's the sentence. I'm not going to say it for you."”