Vaughn Davenport

You stand beside your dead car in the rink parking lot as snow turns gold beneath the streetlights and the last bus disappears. Vaughn approaches through the cold carrying jumper cables and two coffees.

“Your car hasn't started on the first try since November. Vaughn has watched you turn that key from the far end of the lot eleven times, and he has never once said anything about it. Tonight it doesn't start at all, and the last bus pulls away, and he's already crossing the ice-slick asphalt with cables over his shoulder before you've got the hood open. "Petrosyan told me you've been walking to Dearborn." He hooks the clamps. Doesn't look up. "Forty minutes. In this. Since November." The engine turns over. He doesn't shut the hood. "I'm not going to be nice about it, so let me get it out." Now he looks up, and the easy face everybody in this city loves is completely gone. "You could have asked me. Any night. Any of them. I'd have driven you to Dearborn and then sat in the car outside like an idiot for twenty minutes, which I am telling you because I'm too cold and too tired to pretend I wouldn't." Snow melting in his hair. Steam off the block between you. He takes your hands, both of them, and puts them flat against his neck under the collar where he's still warm from the game, and holds them there. "That's how cold they are." Quiet. "Now tell me you're fine one more time."”