PART 5:

A casserole. She made too much. Sure she did. Marcus picked up his coffee. And? And nothing. She stayed for dinner because Sophie invited her. She helped with the dishes. She left. And you’ve been thinking about it ever since. Ethan set down the menu. Marcus. I’m asking. I’ve been He stopped. It’s not like that.

I didn’t say what it was like. I asked if you’ve been thinking about it. The waitress came and they ordered without looking at anything. And when she left, Marcus leaned back in the booth and just looked at him with that face. She’s my neighbor, Ethan said. I’m aware that neighbors exist. She came over because she was upset.

I was there. That’s the whole thing. She came back Sunday. With food. People don’t cook food for people they don’t think about, Marcus said. That’s a law of physics. It’s not a law of physics. It should be. He set down his cup. When’s the last time you let someone in? I mean actually let someone in. Not service industry polite.

Not hold the elevator in. Ethan said nothing. Three years, Marcus said, not unkindly, just accurate. You’ve been running on low power mode for 3 years, E. You fix everyone’s systems but your own. That woman knocked on your door at midnight in a party dress and you made her tea. That’s not nothing. That’s you.

That’s just being a decent human being. Sure. And the fact that you’re sitting here 3 days later still thinking about it. What’s that? The food came. They ate for a minute without talking. Then Ethan said, I don’t know what to do with it. With what? With any of it. With the way she looked when she laughed at dinner.

With the fact that I haven’t heard someone laugh in my kitchen in 3 years and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until He stopped himself. Marcus looked at him steadily. Until she did it. Yeah. Okay, Marcus said. Now we’re talking. I’m not looking for this. I’m not in a position for this. I have Sophie every other week and a lease that’s up in 8 months in a business I’m trying to grow from the ground up.

I don’t have space for For what? For another person? For complication. Marcus put his fork down. Let me tell you something I know from experience and you’re going to hate it because it sounds like a greeting card, but it’s true. The people who show up at your door when they’re broken are not an interruption. They’re the assignment.

He held up a hand before Ethan could speak. I’m not saying marry the woman. I’m saying stop talking yourself out of whatever this is before it’s even had a chance to be something. You have a habit of that. You know you do. Ethan looked out the window. She didn’t go to a friend, Marcus said, quieter now. She didn’t call someone.

She crossed a hallway and knocked on your door at 11:40 at night. That’s specific. That means something. Or she was just desperate and I was closest. Maybe. Marcus picked his fork back up. But you didn’t close the door either. The diner around them was loud with Saturday morning noise. Families, couples, a group of older men two booths down arguing about baseball.

And Ethan sat in the middle of it and felt, with a clarity that surprised him, that Marcus was right. Not about what it meant. About what he was doing with it. Which was the same thing he always did. Filing it under not the right time before it even got a hearing. I don’t want to be wrong about this. Ethan said, “You already care about getting it right.” Marcus said.

Which means you’re already somewhere. The question is whether you’re going to stand there forever or take a step. Ethan drove home without the radio on. He pulled into the parking garage and sat in the car for 2 minutes, just thinking. He thought about the hairpins on the coffee table. He thought about Sophie saying she can stay for dinner if she wants.

Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He thought about I like when things balance and how it had sounded like something said about more than numbers and how he’d heard it and kept it without meaning to, without even deciding to. The way you keep a song you didn’t realize you’d memorized until it’s already there.

He went upstairs. Her door was closed. Her light was off. He could see the gap under it, dark, which meant she was out or in bed. And it was 1:15 in the afternoon, so she was probably out. He stood in the hallway with his keys in his hand and thought about nothing actionable. Then he went inside his own apartment and stood in the kitchen and looked at the cabinet where he’d put the dish from the casserole.

She’d taken it back with her. The cabinet was the same as always. His phone buzzed. Sophie from her mom’s sending a voice memo. He played it. Daddy, the lady from across the hall, the one with the casserole and the spreadsheets, do you think she’d want to be my friend? Priya has two friends who are adults, and she says it’s very useful.

Let me know. He played it twice. Then he sat down on the couch and pressed his hands together and stared at the middle of the room, and the thing Marcus had said came back to him clean and quiet and impossible to argue with. You’re already somewhere. The question is whether you’re going to stand there forever or take a step.

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