Thirty seconds on the bench

The cut opened again. Same spot above the brow. I stood in the change room and could see the brightness in my own eyes that I don't like — the one that means my brain has been told something my legs haven't caught up with yet. Quill's right hand found a hole I wasn't watching. A twenty-six-year-old, nine kilos on me, and I didn't see it. That's the part that's still sitting on my chest.

I sat on the bench for thirty seconds. Rob didn't come in. I keep going back and forth on which version of him I want that to be — the one who trusts me to be alone, or the one who saw the wobble and decided not to make me explain it in front of the floor. I don't know which one I'd rather owe.

Carly picked up before the second ring. She already knew. She said are you sure. I said yeah. She said the shoulder. I said the shoulder's voting. She said and you. I said I'm voting too. Three minutes. What I actually meant was the Manila envelope is still on my counter, and if I open it tonight I will know, and then I won't be allowed to unknow.

Zoe hasn't called yet. She will. She always does. She'll say Mark. Just the one word, the way she says it when she means the whole ocean of it. And I'll say I know. And she won't say you don't. She's better at the silent version than I am.

Here's the thing I won't put on the post. I keep a column. Inside my head. I rank myself against men who never blew up a first career. Quill found my jaw hinge in round two of a round he asked me for. Heavier. Younger. Cleaner. The wobble was the column filling itself in.

The rain on the drive home sounded like a crowd. I almost opened the envelope at a red light. My hand was on it when someone behind me honked, and I drove the rest of the way with it still closed.