Archive of Our Own ^beta

The time to move on announces its arrival in all kinds of ways, some more subtle than others. Some of them even an idiot couldn’t miss. Some of them, it took Bill a few repetitions to learn.

This last one had come in the form of the sudden quiet after the roar of Lafferty case. Bill had stayed through the end of it. Stayed while reports were filed and testimony collected. Stayed until the warden had come and collected his due. But after the media had left, and the families had left, and the hullabaloo had all died down, in the East Rockwell station they’d all found themselves in a heavy silence, staring at each other across the room, and none of them exactly liking what they saw.

Yeah, that time it had been pretty clear.

Not that it had surprised Bill. A case like that took a lot out of a person. After the close of the Lafferty case, everybody had been edgy and exhausted. Burnt. So, he’d known it was time to pull up stakes. The only question was to where. For a few days, he’d let himself imagine what it would be like to really take off – go bust cokeheads in LA, or marijuana smugglers in Miami. He pictured himself wagging his finger at stoned surfer kids and wondered what it was like to wake up every morning in air that laid across your face like a wet rag. But in the end, when he’d announced his intention to go, the Chief had said he knew the guy in charge over in Park City, and that he was staffing up for the high season, and would Bill like him to make a call?

Bill had not felt great about his relationship with the Chief before the Lafferty case, and after the dust had settled, it rapidly became clear that the previous era was actually going to be the high watermark of their relationship. But for once their desires aligned: he wanted Bill gone and Bill wanted to be gone.

Bill had said, “Thank you, Chief. I think I’ll take you up on that.”

Sliding a town or two over just for the sake of a fresh start was old hat at this point. Bill had pulled the same move a half dozen times now. Where exactly he ended up didn’t matter all that much. The job would be the same. Whichever town he ended up in would have more or less the same problems as the last. Same shit, just a different name on the side of the car. The goal was always to get paid a bit more to put up with a bit less. And if wherever he ended up, there was slightly less shock and awe anytime he walked into a room as his non-white, non-Mormon self, then that would be a bonus.

Jeb had taken the news of Bill’s impending departure with brittle, absent stoicism, and a firm handshake. He had looked, in those last months, like nothing so much as an unexploded landmine. Like six different kinds of disaster waiting to happen. Bill had wanted to take him aside, to tell him that he should get the fuck out of Dodge, too. But each time he’d broached the subject, Jeb had stiffened and stared silent and unhearing into the middle distance until he could make an excuse to leave.

On Bill’s last day in the station, he’d made one last oblique effort and said, “this kind of case, it casts a shadow on a place. The kind of complications that come up – people hold onto that shit for a long time.” Which was an understatement. Cops hold grudges like nobody Bill has ever met. Even setting aside whatever intra-faith shitshow Jeb had stepped in, he had balked against the chain of command and that would have been enough to make him public enemy number one in most of the stations Bill had worked in. Jeb had made it clear he trusted his own judgement over theirs. They’d kill him by a thousand slow cuts any way they could.

When he’d said that, Jeb had only looked back at him blankly. And at first Bill had thought maybe he hadn’t gotten what Bill was driving at, but then hollow-eyed, he’d shaken his head. Twisting the ring on his finger, he’d said, “I can’t go.”

Jeb’s office, with the door open for whoever else wanted to listen, wasn’t exactly a great place to press the issue. Besides, if Jeb had argued himself into believing he should stay, he was not going to be talked out of it. Jeb is a stubborn man. And even when it makes him an idiot, Bill admires that in a person.

In Park City, he gets used to the cold. And the tourists. And he re-introduces himself to the concept of drunk drivers. He is, as he suspected, overqualified for the job. But what else is new?

One day is very much like the next, small variations only in whether he will put on the ball game or listen to the radio in evening, whether it will be Salisbury steak or turkey in gravy for his TV dinner. And he tells himself that this is fine. This is what he wanted. For one thing, he’s too old to mix things up now. For another, he’s too tired. But when he is driving to work, or to the gym, or while smoking his allotted cigarette of the day, it is impossible not to notice himself slipping into a holding pattern. He is waiting.

Which wouldn’t usually be an issue – Bill is good at waiting. But he is uncertain what he’s waiting for. Another cue to move on? Or is it just the itch of some vague dissatisfaction? Park City isn’t all that much. Turns out white tourists don’t like being told what to do by someone darker than them any more than white Mormons did, but relative to East Rockwell fewer people stare at him like a cigar store Indian come to life. His fellow officers run the gamut from fools to blandly competent. His apartment is nothing to brag about, just another one-bedroom in a long string of one-bedrooms he’s occupied in fits of 6 to 18 months. But there’s nothing especially terrible about it, nothing that should make him this restless this early. He waits to see if the waiting feeling will dissipate. But spring comes and melts the snow; summer brings out the buzz of insects, and then the days begin to shorten again, and Bill only becomes more certain that he is not dissatisfied or bored or simply listless. He is waiting. There is no doubting the steady, patient feeling that has sunk into his bones.

This time of year, the night feels like it comes on fast and sudden, like a curtain dropped. It’s dark by the time he leaves work, darker when he arrives home. He smoked his allotted cigarette on the drive, but in his kitchen, he taps the pack against the counter. Opens it to stare at those slim cylinders. This temptation is a game he plays with himself. He sets the pack down and goes to change into sweats. It’s good to have victories.

He's finished changing, but still in the bedroom when he hears a knock, and the sensation of waiting ends.

Standing at Bill’s door, Jeb looks much more post-explosion. It’s hard to judge his color under the yellow sodium lamp, but he looks washed out. There is the shadow of stubble on his jaw, and his jacket is badly wrinkled. But most pressingly, he is holding in front of him, still holstered and clutched in both hands, his gun.

Bill looks from his face to the gun and back again. “Jeb,” he says.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” Jeb says. No comment on the gun, as if this posture was how he arrived to all social calls. If that’s true, things in East Rockwell really have changed since Bill’s departure.

It’s also not yet nine o’clock, and Bill is unsure if Jeb’s words are due to an ingrained LDS sense of when ‘late’ begins, or if Jeb has no idea what time it is. Both seem possible. “Come in. Sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water.” Bill steps out of the way, and Jeb walks past him to the couch, perching on the edge of it as though he doesn’t plan to be there long. Bill sets a glass of water on the coffee table before him, then sits down across Jeb. Jeb is staring at the ground, still white-knuckling the holster. He doesn’t reach for the water.

Bill settles back against the seat. “So. They just hand my address out at the station to any cop who asks?”

Jeb looks up at that. His eyes are red. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Good to know.” And Bill thinks maybe he does need to move further away. “What brings you over?”

Jeb blinks at him. He takes a breath, and then another, either not sure of the answer or not sure how to say it. “My mom died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Bill runs down the ways that statement might be related to Jeb clutching his gun. None of them are good, but fortunately most of them are implausible.

Jeb takes another breath. “About a month ago. It’s been hard since then.”

He doesn’t elaborate on what’s been hard, and Bill doesn’t ask. He lets the silence roll until Jeb nods to himself, as if some internal decision has been made. He looks up at Bill. “I am sorry to bother you. But I need to ask you to hold onto this.” He is offering the gun now to Bill. “I just need to not have it for a bit? And you’re the only one I could think of to give it to.” His voice is higher than normal, with that rising, whispery edge he uses to talk to little old Mormon ladies.

That doesn’t say anything good about Jeb’s state of mind, but it's about the most pragmatic response you could hope for from an irrational person, and Bill takes a moment to be grateful for that. “Okay,” Bill agrees, aiming for a tone that suggests this happens all the time. If he can project that this is nothing to get worked up over, he might be able to get Jeb to follow his lead. He accepts the gun from Jeb. He checks the chamber, checks the safety, and rises from the couch to lock it away with next to his own gun. When he returns, he finds Jeb has hunched forward out of his normally rigid posture. His arms rest on knees, his head hangs.

Bill pats his shoulder. “That’s just fine, I’ll just hold onto it until whenever you want it back.” Bill is aware that he is doing his own version of his hostage negotiator voice, and he knows Jeb can likely hear it too.

Jeb nods without looking up. When he does manage to lift his head, he fixes his gaze on the wall somewhere to the left of Bill’s face. “Thank you.” He’s already standing, already headed for the door. “I won’t intrude on any more of your time. Thank you.”

“Jeb.”

Bill watches him stop, watches him attempt to gather himself, hand darting through his before pressing to his mouth.

From the couch, Bill says, “Jeb, sit down.”

When he turns, his throat is working, face held in the tense pose of someone trying not to cry. He ought to give it up; he’s crying anyway. Bill watches the tears leak one after the other, and it’s work not to turn away.

“I tried. I’ve been trying.” Jeb says it with an edge, like he’s trying to make Bill believe him. “Before she died, I could manage it. I could.”

“Jeb,” Bill says again. “Sit the fuck down.”

Jeb laughs, wet and thick. He looks at Bill’s face, and then he does sit. He even takes a drink from the neglected water glass. “It was – the last few months were hard. She couldn’t do much. Couldn’t speak. Most of the time she didn’t know me, and when she did – ” He closes his eyes. “She just wanted to be done.”

“That sounds hard.”

“Yeah. And I just kept thinking – why? What’s the point of any of this?” Jeb drains the rest of water. “My bishop told me not to worry – she’d be made whole in Heaven. She’d be whole and happy for all of eternity. But that doesn’t answer the question. That doesn’t tell me why she had to go through all that in the first place?”

He’s shaking, although he doesn’t seem to realize it, hands linked together in front of him, knuckles white. Softly, Bill says, “I can’t answer that for you, either.”

“I know.” Jeb rubs his temples. He stares holes into Bill’s coffee table before taking a breath and bringing himself back under control. He offers a forced smile to Bill. “I really am sorry for coming over so late. I should go.” As if Bill was going to politely accept this façade of being fine, when minutes ago he was handing over his weapon because he didn’t trust himself with it.

And maybe that is what Bill should do. By this point in his life, Bill knows the best thing for himself is to tell Jeb to take a breath, and to go home and get some sleep. Jeb is already a wreck, and Bill is fairly certain things for him are going to get a lot worse for him before they get better. And Bill needs to remember that he can’t fix other people’s lives, and he should remember how awful it is to watch someone drown from up close. Jeb is not the first disaster to walk into Bill’s life. He’s been burnt on that stove before.

Then again, he’s spent most of his life around idiots making bad decisions, why not make one himself every now and then? “It’s late,” Bill says, and it feels that way now. “Stay here.”

“I couldn’t – ”

“It’s late. You look like shit. And I know you and I both have seen the aftermath of people falling asleep at the wheel, so do me a favor for my peace of mind. Stay here.”

“Are you sure?”

It’s a weak protest, which tells Bill he must have really scared himself. “Yeah,” Bill heads for the hallway, and waves for him to follow. “I’ll put you in my guest room.”

It’s not until after Jeb pulls the bedroom door shut behind him that it occurs to Bill that Jeb didn’t say he needed to call his wife and let her know he’d be out overnight. Jeb isn’t the kind of guy to forget to do that. Not even in the state he’s in. Bill reminds himself that this is none of his business. But he also thinks, shit.

Bill would have thought the godly lifestyle – the whole toxin-free, mountain-air, purity-of-spirit living – would translate into rising at the crack of dawn, but Jeb sleeps late. Late enough for Bill to stir from his nest on the couch, and start a pot of coffee, and check that the locked drawer where the two guns were stored was unbothered.

Jeb’s color is better when he does emerge. He’s clearly splashed water on his face and made an attempt at combing his hair. The jacket, perhaps a lost cause, he carries folded over his arm.

“Morning,” Bill offers.

“Good morning.” Jeb makes an attempt at a smile that more closely resembles a wince. The morning-after embarrassment was clearly kicking in, which Bill hadn’t thought was a thing that happened to sober people, but he supposes that anybody can overshare and have regrets. It’s hard to stand in someone’s kitchen in the harsh light of morning after saying the kinds of things that were said last night, after having been gutted and open. Harder still, when you’re Jeb Pyre and this is the first time your life has deviated from The Plan. The first fuck up is always the hardest.

Bill chides himself. That was uncharitable. He wouldn’t want to drop to their level.

“Thank you for letting me stay last night. I’m sure I seemed – ” Jeb can’t seem to find the word he’s looking for. He settles for a short shake of his head. “I just haven’t really been sleeping. Now that I’ve gotten some rest, I feel a lot better. Really.”

He is making a good effort selling it. Bill inclines his head. “Glad to hear it. You staying for breakfast?”

“No – no, I couldn’t take up any more of your time.”

His first no had sounded almost panicked, which Bill finds interesting. “Probably for the best, breakfast being coffee and all.” He lifts a mug in salute.

Jeb manages a weak smile. Then he straightens. “Seriously, though. I am fine. I know I was upset last night, but I think – I know – I’m fine to work. And I should get out of your way. So, I would like to get my weapon back and go.”

Points for successfully voicing a concrete desire, at least. Bill considers for a beat, thinks about what it would mean for him to refuse; what it would it would mean for him to comply, then crosses the room, unlocks the filing cabinet drawer, and withdraws the gun.

Jeb is at his shoulder almost immediately, looking ready to grab the thing and bolt. And it’s on the tip of Bill’s tongue to say,are you sure or maybe just call in and I’ll keep it another day. Because he knows whatever kind of brave face Jeb is managing, it is just that.

But then Jeb looks him dead in the eye, with his dark and fathomless stare that has occasionally, Bill recalls, looked at Bill just a shade too long, and seen just a bit too much. Jeb says, “It was kind of you, to agree to hold this for me. What you did for me last night – letting me kick you out of your own bed. There’s not really anybody else right now I could expect that sort of kindness from.”

Early on it had been easy to dismiss Jeb as just another idiot in a long string of idiots that Bill had worked with over the years. One of those favored son types who managed to live sheltered from the world’s assorted darknesses until an unfathomably advanced age, and who then reacted with shock when fate finally caught up with him. But then Bill had watched him stare that darkness in the face, and watched him decide not to turn back, and instead just try to come out the other side the best he knew how.

Like Jeb said: he had tried.

Shit, Bill was too old to still have these kinds of soft spots, but he did. He’d always loved the gamers. The ones who took the bait and could not stop running, not for anything. “You’re a good man, Jeb.” He says it because it seems like Jeb maybe needs to hear it, and because maybe it’s been a long time since anyone told him that. There’s a part of him that wants to say more, but he reminds himself that this is not his pain to hold. He restrains himself, adds only, “You put it together that it was my room, did you?”

“Yes,” Jeb says quietly. “Eventually.”

Bill debates with himself for a moment, then hands over the gun. Jeb is an adult, and his problems are his business. “What finally tipped you off?”

Jeb attaches the gun to his belt. He re-settles the jacket in his arms. But he doesn’t make any further move to leave. “The pictures,” he says, after a moment. “The ones on the dresser.”

The pictures of Bill’s family are some of the only things that make the move with him, anytime he goes somewhere new. Some of the only personal touches in the room, really. He should have guessed.

“The woman with your kids, is that – ” He lets the question hang.

“Yeah, that’s my ex. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” She is still beautiful in that photo – even with gray in her hair and flanked by children both grown taller than her.

“She is. I’m sorry that things didn’t work out for you two.” Jeb’s words catch in his throat, and Bill doesn’t hear pity in his voice so much as Jeb’s uncertain worry that people are going to be offering him the same condolences soon enough.

The rawness of it makes Bill’s chest hurt, and he is abruptly ready for Jeb to get out of his living room. His haste makes him more cavalier than he knows he ought to be. “It was a long time ago, and my own fault. I was not a faithful husband.”

“Ah.” There’s not the judgment in it that Bill was expecting. Jeb doesn’t look away from his face, only continues to look at him with his careful gaze. The kind of looking that only the best cops ever develop. The kind that makes you certain all your secrets are being seen. That everything you’re not saying is being heard. “Who’s the man in the other photo?”

Bill considers naming him a cousin. A brother maybe. He could pass for it. Although no one in Bill’s family ever had hair like that. In the photo it’s loose, and the expression on the face looking back at the camera says he knows damn well that it’s the envy of every man, woman, and child in a ten-mile radius. But Bill’s stomach is knotting under Jeb’s gaze, and he resents this sort of discomfort, which he is too old to have, in his own home no less, so if Jeb’s asking, then let him have it. Besides, the devil in Bill could never let this kind of opportunity slip past. “Rick? That’s the guy I was unfaithful with.”

Jeb looks startled. His lips purse, but he does not, to Bill’s amusement, manage to get anything out. “You’re going to be all right, Jeb,” Bill says, and holds the door open for him.

He watches Jeb’s car pull away, and he waits until the sound has fully faded, before he exhales and turns away from the window. That should have been enough to make sure this was the last time he’ll see Jeb Pyre. Bill wishes him luck.

The colder it gets up in the mountains, the thinner the air feels. It draws the moisture from his skin and makes Bill’s bones ache. There’ll be snow that’ll stick before too long. All of today and into the night the town has been hemmed in by low clouds spitting a mix of icy rain and sleet. The weather makes Bill feel particularly cobwebbed by the past. Overly prone to thinking about old regrets and what he left behind. Wondering what, if anything, he might have to look forward to, since the faces of his colleagues in Park City are already starting to run together, distinguished only by which one of them has lately been the most annoying; which doesn’t bode well for the idea of him staying on here much longer. Bill flexes his hands on the steering wheel, trying to work the stiffness out of them. He spent the last several hours trudging up and down the foothills behind the McPolin farm, trying to find a group of hikers who didn’t make it back to their hostel before it got dark.

He knows he’s tired because he mutters to himself the whole drive home, about what kind of fools can’t keep track of when it gets dark. Can’t find their way home . But then again, look at him. The exact kind of fool who can’t manage to stay anywhere long, who doesn’t know how to make a home. He’s had his single cigarette of the day three times today. But at a red light, he fires up a fourth, and that’s Saturday, Sunday, and Monday now he’ll have to go without according to the deals he makes himself. He ponders whether he still has any nicotine gum at the back of a drawer somewhere. Or maybe he’ll just quit again, cold turkey, instead of waiting for the new year like he usually does.

He's still holding the half-smoked butt between two fingers when he arrives home to find Jeb sitting on his apartment steps. Before he can feel anything else, he feels guilty, as though he’s been caught at something. Jeb watches him take a final drag without comment. Bill tells himself he should feel surprised at Jeb’s reappearance, but what he does feel, if it is identifiable as anything, is the strange sensation of losing a bet with himself, and being relieved.

Even in this weather, Jeb manages to look the pretty kind of tragic. It’s clear he’s been waiting awhile, his hair dampened and his coat collar turned up. He has on his perpetually worried look, as if the weight of the world had been hand delivered straight to his doorstep. But some thoughts should not be dwelt on, and Bill rolls his eyes at himself for letting these Mormon motherfuckers rub their guilt off on him.

Jeb stands as he approaches. “Sorry, I should have called first.”

Bill wouldn’t have been able to pick up anyway, seeing as how he’d been tromping through mud and rocks. Bill wonders if Jeb would have shown up anyway, even if the phone had rung without answer. Studying him, Bill wonders if he’ll chicken out now, declare the hour too late for him to say what he came here to say, or bitch about what he came here to bitch about. But no, Bill can see Jeb has a flintiness to him tonight. He’s tougher than he looks, and Bill has watched him pick himself up off the mat more than once.

Bill crushes out the cigarette, and they stand there, fogging the cold air at each other.

Jeb squints at him. “You all right?”

Bill laughs that the question is coming from Jeb, who is undoubtably here to fill Bill in on what new tragic turn his life has taken, and who looks half frozen and exhausted. Dark circles are visible under his eyes even in the uncertain glow of the porch light. “I’m all right,” Bill says. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.” He digs deep and manages, “And how are you?”

Jeb considers. “It’s not the worst day I’ve had this week.”

“Glad to hear it.” He shuffles past Jeb toward the door, waving for Jeb to follow. “Come on in, I guess.” Inside, Bill kicks off his boots and heads to the fridge. “What brings you up to the mountains on this, the nicest part of your week?” He selects a beer for himself. Jeb hasn’t offered any response. “You want something? Water?”

“No, thank you.”

Behind him, Bill can hear the sounds of Jeb hanging up his coat and taking off his own shoes. Bill makes his way to the couch. After a moment, Jeb joins him there, sitting next to him, instead of in the chair across. Bill tips back a swallow. “What brings you over?”

Jeb perches on the edge of his seat. He addresses the ceiling. “You know that big empty lot south of State Street?”

Bill nods. He takes another pull of beer. He might not know the specifics, but that was enough to give him a general sense of what’s coming.

“A new development started to go up there a while back, but nobody’s been working on it for months. And I was driving through it at the end of my shift. I spotted a car that had been reported stolen a week or so ago.”

Bill takes a moment to appreciate the mundanity of small-town crimes and drinks again.

“There were some – some signs that someone may have been living there. So, I called for backup.”

Bill drains his beer and gets up to get another one because now he knows exactly what Jeb is going to say next.

“They never came.”

Bill pauses into front of the fridge’s open door and considers how long hiding in the kitchen might be an option.

“Nobody came,” Jeb repeats at a louder volume.

For the sake of his neighbors, Bill returns to the couch. He’d known they weren’t going to fire Jeb, but only because they were counting on him to show himself out. They’d make it clearer and clearer that he wasn’t welcome. Now Jeb knows that too.

Jeb’s voice is getting more strident. “I know they got the call. I know. Benson wouldn’t even look me in the eye when I came back to the station.”

“Jeb,” Bill starts carefully, and then decides to be blunt. “You need to leave. There are a lot of other places out there where you could get a clean start. Lots of nice towns, with good schools – ”

Jeb is shaking his head. “I can’t do that.”

“You can do that. Lots of people do that.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Jeb bites his lip. He stares straight ahead. “Becca wrote to the bishop,” he says. “She told me earlier this week.”

Bill eyes him. “I won’t pretend to understand the nuances of your people, but I assume that’s bad?”

Jeb blinks and looks at him, as though he’s just remembered who he’s talking to. “To ask for an unsealing. To ask him to end our marriage.”

Bill raises his eyebrows. “Then you really should get out.”

Jeb drops his face into his face and begins rubbing his temples. “You don’t understand.”

“There are a lot of things in this world I don’t understand, but a wife leaving? That I do know.” Bill raises his beer to his lips, hoping maybe to find patience in the bottle.

“It’s not her fault.”

“It’s pretty much never her fault. Men are usually pretty good at beating women to the punch when it comes to fucking things up.”

Jeb ignores him, in favor of trying to convince himself. “It’s not her fault,” he repeats. “This is the right thing for her. She didn’t ask for any of this.” When he does look at Bill, his eyes are just a bit too wide. His words are coming just a bit too fast. “I stopped going to Temple,” he says. “So, she had to.” He nods to himself. “She had to.” Then he gestures sharply at the table between them. “But I have to stay. I can still take care of them. I can still be a part of the community – even without my Testimony. I can still make that work. She’ll be able to see that. I’ll be at the edges, but I’ll be there.”

“And what are you going to do,” Bill asks quietly, “if that doesn’t work?”

There is a gaping darkness in Jeb’s expression, like a man staring down oblivion. Like living a life where ever-more-outdated pictures of your kids travel around in your wallet is the worst thing he can imagine. And every man thinks he’s the first to invent heartbreak. The first husband to fuck up his family. The first father to have lost his perfect halo in the eyes of his children.

But then Bill supposes it feels like that, when it’s you. “What does you staying even look like?”

When Jeb doesn’t answer, Bill reaches out and gives his shoulder a light punch. “What, you’re out of ideas? You’re just going to sit there and sulk?”

Jeb comes back to himself and starts to look irritated. Even incredulous. “I don’t think a little sympathy would be out of line here. I did just blow up my own life.”

“Yeah. That you did.” Bill punctuates his agreement by saluting Jeb with his beer. “And I asked what you’re going to do next.”

Jeb stares at him. “I don’t know,” he says finally.

“That’s okay. It’s okay not to know.”

Now he really looks exasperated. “Then why the fuck are you grilling me?”

Bill grins. “Are you sure you don’t want a beer? How hard you throwing off the yoke?”

“Religion or no religion, I don’t think now is a good time for me to start drinking.” There’s a familiar snippiness climbing back into his voice.

“Probably not,” Bill agrees. He rises and heads to the kitchen. He fills a glass with water, running the tap slowly to give Jeb a moment to himself.

When he returns, Jeb has settled back into the couch, no longer quite so rigidly upright. “What did you do?” He asks Bill. “After you got divorced?”

Bill hands him the water. “You’re not going to be able to follow my post-divorce plan unless you start drinking a lot more. But I wouldn’t recommend that route anyway. You want my advice?”

Jeb nods.

“Get an apartment, get a lawyer, and get a hobby.”

“A hobby?” Jeb sounds skeptical.

“Yeah, mine was drinking, but like I said: I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Jeb looks at him with something that is almost a smile. He sips the water. “I’ve been drunk twice. Both in times in Denver. I remember praying afterward. Like Heavenly Father was going to know I drank a Miller High Life at somebody’s Halloween party. Like he might cast me away into outer darkness for it.” Jeb lifts the glass to his mouth, but doesn’t drink. “I used to be so scared of that. The worst thing I could imagine was failing my church. I remember when we first starting interviewing Allen, and he spoke about his doubts. All I kept thinking was: thank God. Thank God it was him and not me. Every night I prayed that that would never be me. I worked so hard to make sure it was never me. And now I’ve just – thrown it all away.” His hands mime an explosion. “I just blew it all up.”

Jeb sets the water on the table and rubs the bridge of his nose, chasing at some headache. “The worst part is knowing that everything was fake. What I thought my marriage was built on. What I thought my faith was built on. My job – my fucking career – I thought it was about protecting people. All people. But it was all fake.”

He’s coming to some pretty sweeping conclusions, but Bill doesn’t interrupt.

Jeb’s hand falls away from his face. “And now you’re telling me I should get a hobby.”

He needs a hell of a lot more than a hobby, but it would be a good start. Bill nods. “Yep.”

Jeb frowns. “What, like golf?”

“Could be.”

“I hate golf.”

He sounds so testy when he admits to hating things. Bill has to work to look serious. “No argument here.”

“Did you think I liked golf?” Jeb sounds offended.

Bill shrugs. “I hadn’t given it much thought, to be honest.” He smiles, placating. “What do you like?”

Jeb looks away from him, around the room. At the TV and the records and the ash tray, and beyond to Bill’s small kitchen. Bill can’t tell what he’s looking for; he may just be scanning for ideas. “I think, actually,” Jeb turns full focus on Bill, and in the pause, he seems to be weighing something. “I think my hobby is going to be arguing with you.”

The way he’s looking at Bill now, like he’s figured something out, is setting off alarm bells in Bill’s head. He’s too close, looking too intently at Bill, but Bill knows to turn away at this point would mean admitting something. Bill keeps his own eyes carefully attuned to Jeb’s face. Even though it would have been easy to let them rest, just for a second, on Jeb’s throat, or on the breadth of his shoulders, or the graceful hands now resting on the fabric of the couch between them. He’s looking too lovely, and too desperate, for Bill to let this continue. Not if he wants both of them to get out of this with dignity intact.

Bill clears his throat. “I think we both need sleep. Let me get some clothes out of the bedroom and then it’s all yours.” He stands, needing to put this plan into action.

Jeb rises too. “I can’t turn you out of your bed again.”

But Bill is already in motion, already in the hallway. “Are you kidding?” He calls over his shoulder. “That couch is more my bed than anything. That flat soft thing in the bedroom is for storing laundry.”

He hears Jeb sigh his capitulation and his footsteps as he starts to follow Bill.

Bill gathers a t-shirt and shorts from his dresser. When he turns, Jeb is in the doorway. With the light on in the hall, it’s hard to see his face. Very quietly, Jeb says, “I have been alone more in the last week than I’ve been in my whole life.”

And just like that, Bill feels the air in the room change. He feels a charge that raises the hairs on his arms, hears a roar like a distant cataract, a sucking whirlpool at the bottom, ready to pull him under.

Jeb says, “You could stay.”

It tracks, that Jeb would be the impatient type. Bill kicks himself for not seeing the moment coming. He stalls. “I could stay?” He repeats carefully, echoing the slight hesitation Jeb put before stay.

Jeb shifts his weight in a restless sway, one foot to the other. “You think I don’t know what I’m asking for?”

Bill snorts. “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re asking for.”

Jeb steps into the room, and he has the decency to look nervous. But as Bill watches, he regains his flint. He removes his jacket, and as if this is some great accomplishment, tosses it onto the dresser.

Bill tracks its arc. “Careful, that might wrinkle.”

Jeb laughs, all nerves. His hands fall to his sides. For a moment, Bill thinks it might end there. Part of him is relived. But part of him, the part of himself that makes him a good cop, the part of himself he listens to in interrogation rooms, is disappointed. Lean in, it says, press.

Jeb sees that part of him. He has always understood that part of Bill much too well for the nice boy he’s supposed to be. Bill should have seen that coming, too. Jeb brings his hands to his throat. His eyes lock with Bill’s, face serious once again, as he undoes the button at his throat. He breathes in, slow and deliberate. Bill, obligingly, watches the square of revealed skin rise and fall. Jeb undoes the next button. Pauses again. And then, as if some initial test has been passed, he does the rest in rapid succession.

When the last button gives way, he looks at Bill like he expects applause, which Bill is not about to hand out for an act of bravery that any sufficiently motivated fourteen-year-old boy could pull off. He shrugs. “That just tells me you’re going to bed.”

Jeb shakes his head, and turns his attention the buttons of his cuffs. But his gaze keeps cutting back to Bill’s face. And when he finds Bill watching, he keeps going. Bill finds himself mentally betting on Jeb. In the same way he might bet on a horse to break to the right or the left. The shirt is placed on top of the jacket. Bill feels the moment stretching, and he can feel a pleasant slowing in his body as he sinks into the waiting. His breathing slows.

Jeb takes a step towards him.

Bill waits him out, and Jeb takes another. He is close enough now that Bill can hear him breathing, can hear the stutter in it. He expects to be touched. Expects maybe, if Jeb can summon the courage, to be kissed. Some hard, quick press, followed by a gasp like he’d been holding his breath.

But he doesn’t touch Bill. He doesn’t make any attempt to. He leans to side, pulls off his socks and balls these neatly inside each other places them on top of the shirt. His hands come to rest on his belt buckle and he pauses, looking at Bill.

Bill tips his head in acknowledgement of the decision point, but holds his silence.

“I’m not an idiot,” Jeb says. “I see the way you look at me sometimes, and the way you hope I don’t notice. And I know you’ve seen it when I look at you the same way.”

And if that wasn’t how it always was with Jeb: one step ahead of where Bill thought he was, and two steps behind where Bill needed him to be.

Jeb undoes his belt. He undoes and steps free of his pants and then he is standing in front of Bill in the modest white garments that mark his religion.

For the first time since this G-rated strip show began, Jeb looks down at himself. He holds the hem of the shirt in both hands and doesn’t move. Bill would like to know if this is out of some fear of the garment, or of what lies underneath. Jeb’s chest rises and falls, first fast, then faster.

“I’m not sure my heathen eyes are supposed to see those,” Bill says, trying to bring him back.

Jeb looks up at him. His eyes are wide now, and there’s the panic Bill has been waiting for.

“It’s all right,” Bill starts, ready to wind them back down, ready to get them back to a place where they can both walk away from this.

But Jeb is shaking his head. “It’s not. I shouldn’t be wearing these, but I just – I didn’t know what to wear instead. I don’t have anything to wear instead.” Bill was wrong. It’s not panic in his voice, but astonishment. The Twilight Zone moment of finding one’s own life suddenly foreign. He stares at Bill. “I don’t even know where you buy underwear.”

Bill is relieved, that this is where all this will end. Or at least, that’s what he tells himself. “You’re a smart guy,” he says lightly. “You’ll figure it out. Also, Sears is just down the street.” If he can just ease them back onto safer ground, he can leave the room. Give Jeb the space to grieve this loss however he needs to.

Jeb’s eyes are wet, but his expression is beginning to verge on furious. He pulls the shirt off in one fast movement, pulls the shorts down too. He holds both garments balled in his hands, unsure what to do with them for a moment before he throws them towards the corner of the room. He stands naked in front of Bill, breathing unsteadily and still close enough Bill could reach out and touch him. His hands fall uncertainly to his sides, but he puts his shoulders back, and looks Bill in the eye. “Now am I still just going to bed?”

He is something else. Bill thinks about laughing. He thinks about running. But who is he kidding? Bill has been screwed from the start. He raises a hand, slow as he can manage, moving with his breath, and reaches out to hold Jeb’s jaw. He cups the curve of his face. His thumb strokes Jeb’s cheek. Jeb’s skin is warm, growing more flushed under Bill’s touch. And the tiny muscles around Jeb’s mouth quiver, like he wasn’t expecting softness. Bill feels the exhalation when he forces himself to start breathing in rhythm. And finally, Jeb closes his eyes.

Bill leans in closer to him. He likes that Jeb swallows in response to that, eyes still closed, reacting to the heat or the sound of it. He likes the way Jeb’s breathing stutters when Bill lays his other hand on Jeb’s bare hip.

He holds him in these two places for one breath, and then another, letting Jeb settle into the touch, or move away if that’s his want. Although Bill’s done pretending that might be an option. They’ve passed that exit and no one’s turning the car around now. He waits for Jeb to breathe out, then leans in the last stretch he needs to, and kisses him.

Jeb’s hands rise at once. He grips the fabric of Bill’s shirt sleeves. His mouth is warm, and rapidly overcoming its startle. Bill had kept his touch light, but Jeb moves into him, not away. When Bill moves his hand, pressing him closer with a touch to the small of Jeb’s back, he feels gooseflesh on Jeb’s skin.

Their mouths separate, and Jeb chases the contact, breathing thick. But Bill creates just enough distance to say, “what are you hoping to get out of this?”

Jeb moves to kiss him again. Bill evades him. “Doing this can’t make your community not turn their backs on you. Doing this can’t make you wife not want to leave.”

Jeb’s forehead drops into Bill’s shoulder; his breath goes shaky again. Bill holds the back of his head, strokes the nape of his neck. The touch is not so much choice, as a need his hands dictated to his brain. How could he not hold him – as close as he is. As beautiful and brave as he is, standing here uncovered, and leaning into Bill’s touch. Bill thinks there’s not much Jeb could say right now, no answer he could give, that would make Bill want to step away, even if he is using Bill as a lightning rod. Waiting to see if his god will prove his existence by striking him down.

Jeb lifts his face. “Everything I thought I knew turned out to be fake. I want to know if the way I think you look at me is real. If the way I feel when you do, is.”

Bill starts by taking off his rings, one by one. Jeb blinks at each careful clink they make against the tin tray Bill keeps them in. He undresses with unhurried movements, watching Jeb watch him. Watching him take in every new stretch of skin. He likes that when Jeb reaches for him, he reaches for Bill’s shoulders, runs his hands over Bill’s biceps, touches his collarbone, his chest. Each of his actions feel like something he’s daring himself into. Jeb smiles like he’s pleased at winning these self-set challenges, or pleased with the feel of Bill’s chest under his hand, or both.

Bill takes him to the bed, where he is a long stretch of warmth for Bill’s hands to slide over while he kisses him. Bill holds him. Holds the nape of his neck, holds him closer with an arm around his waist until they are pressed together, and Jeb is finding his pleasure with urgent movements of his hips, pressing his cock hard against Bill’s stomach. Bill encourages him with a leg between Jeb’s, a hand at his hip. Jeb is breathing rough and fast, his eyes are still wet, but he is kissing Bill with a determined fierceness, ready to take whatever he can get away with, like Bill might cut him off at any moment and leave him gasping.

The chances of that are pretty nil, not with Jeb pushing against him, all while Bill holds the pleasant indent of his hip. Bill enjoys the smooth slide of him, and his weight, when he moves on top of Bill. Bill offers encouragement in the form of a hand wrapped around his cock, and he feels Jeb shudder at the touch. But he lets Jeb thrust into his grip for a just a couple stokes before he pulls away. Jeb makes a move to follow the touch, but Bill eases him back against the mattress. Jeb watches him move between his legs. Bill looks up at him, smiles, and sucks his cock. He hears Jeb panting. His hips are moving, and Bill has to hold on, lean his weight onto Jeb in order to regain some control. He’s already thickening toward final release in Bill’s mouth, thrusts getting close and desperate.

And Bill of course, can’t resist pulling off just long enough to ask, “Did you get your answer? You think it’s real yet?”

Jeb groans. He reaches for Bill, finds his hair, and urges Bill's head back between his legs with an impressive directness. Bill finds his own cock and works it in time with the bitten-off noises Jeb is making, and rewards Jeb with more pressure and more heat. Jeb doesn’t manage an answer, and Bill doesn’t ask again.

Jeb comes with a lifting of his hips and a low moan. And Bill brings himself off listening to the wet catch of Jeb’s breathing. He moves to the side and watches the rise and fall of Jeb’s chest. Jeb has his eyes closed. He makes no move to chase the lost touch when Bill pulls away. He’s not sleeping – Bill can see that in the slight frown he’s wearing and his grip on the sheets, but he doesn’t look ready to share his thoughts yet, either. Maybe better then, to not be around for the inevitable come down. “I’m going to clean up a little bit,” Bill says. “Give you a little privacy. Take as long as you like.”

Bill grabs a pair of shorts and heads for the bathroom. He rinses his mouth. He stares for a long moment at the half-moon indents of fingernails in his upper arms. There’s no sign of movement from the bedroom, when he emerges, so Bill heads instead for the kitchen. He pours himself a glass of water and stares at the pack of cigarettes and tries to decide if he’s done giving in to temptation for the night.

When Jeb does emerge from the bedroom, some twenty minutes later, he’s fully dressed. Jacket and all. He stops in the doorway to the kitchen, turning a bundle of white cloth in his hands.

Bill takes a long sip of water, holding the glass at his mouth until he’s sure he can keep any plaintiveness out of his voice. “You leaving?”

Jeb nods slowly. “I think I need to think for a while.”

Which is fair enough. “I understand.”

“Thank you,” Jeb says before he lets himself out, “for making this easier.”

Bill looks for him through the kitchen window, but all he catches sight of is his own reflection. An image of someone getting older, but apparently still not any wiser. He reaches for the pack and lights up.

Jeb opens with, “I brought you beer and cigarettes.”

Four nights have passed since he sucked Jeb off. Four nights of Bill wondering how exactly he had tipped his hand, if Jeb had always known, had seen Bill wanting since the beginning, and been too polite to say anything. Or if the scales fell from his eyes only recently, if it had been only one of many realizations he’d been grappling with lately. Four nights of staring at the ceiling, and kicking himself, because he should know better than to pull stupid shit that is going to keep him up at night. He’s too old, and he has worked too hard for his own peace of mind, to get hung up on someone tipping on the edge of something big like this. Someone who can’t see past his own pain – making this easier – Jesus Christ. Some people were so wrapped up in their own fucking narrative.

Bill had put the odds of seeing Jeb again at 50-50, but if he did show up, Bill put the over/under line for when at five nights out, which meant Jeb was early. Which was interesting. Not that Bill was upset about it. Jeb had snow in his hair, and the cold had put color in his cheeks. With that jawline, and wearing a sweater over shirt and tie, he looked like he just walked off the set of a Leave It To Beaver Christmas special. Equal parts ridiculous and appealing. Bill leans against the doorframe. “Did you think you were going to need to bribe your way in here?”

“Maybe. Maybe I wanted you to stop looking pissed off when I show up.” Jeb’s eyes are bright. He seems giddy, even gleeful. Bill wonders if he bought them for the thrill of buying them. Jeb sidesteps quickly past Bill into the apartment. Giddy, then, but still nervous about someone seeing him.

Bill takes a moment to stare out at the empty street, and to tell his better judgement to please stay the fuck outside, before closing the door and turning to face Jeb. “I think that’s just how I look.”

Jeb snorts. He’s already making his way to the kitchen, and the sight of him – leaning over to put the beer in the fridge, like he’s done it a thousand times before, makes Bill wonder what he’ll be like a year from now. Or ten. He thinks about what Jeb will sound like, what kind of things he’ll say, what kind of beliefs he’ll hold. There’s no doubt he’s going to be different. Some whole other being. Bill wonders if the man currently in his kitchen would even recognize himself. Bill wonders if he’ll get to meet him. “Not all of us go around with a fake smile plastered to our face like it was some kind of religious tenant to never appear upset.”

Jeb freezes. He looks over his shoulder at Bill and straightens slowly. “Fair enough.”

Looking at Bill, Jeb wears the dregs of his smile. His stance is wary, like he thinks Bill might not actually be happy to see him, like he’s waiting to be asked to leave. Which does make Bill feel like a dick. But Bill can’t very well say that he shouldn’t look too happy when Jeb shows up, because he doesn’t want Jeb to have to feel guilty when he stops wanting to come. Bill leans back against the counter with his arms crossed over chest, aiming for an air of acquiescence. He points at the fridge. “But I suppose you may as well give me one of those.”

Jeb hesitates, still trying to see something in Bill’s face, or hear something in his tone. Bill pulls his best stone face, but Jeb starts to grin. He ducks his head and pulls the fridge back open.

“Happy to,” he says, when he hands Bill the can. It’s hard to tell if he’s blushing, or just still flushed from the cold.

Bill cracks it open. He takes a drink. He waits.

Jeb takes a step toward him. His air of restless energy is back. He comes in close and lays a brazen hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I could go. If that’s all you want?”

That pulls an involuntary smile from Bill. The softness in Jeb’s question is a nice touch, deliberate, Bill knows, and designed to get under his skin. Jeb is a dangerously quick study. “Aren’t you something.” Bill sets the beer on the counter, takes hold of Jeb’s waist.

There is the zeal of a convert in the way he presses his body against Bill’s. He’s already pulling Bill’s shirttails free and moving on to Bill’s belt buckle. He says, without any guile, almost earnest, “I want to touch you, this time.” And it is a certain kind of bliss to get caught up in the hot press of his mouth, to let his urgent momentum run Bill roughshod. But it is a whole other joy to still Jeb’s hands, to turn his own face away just far enough that Jeb’s mouth grazes his cheek. The beat of resistance, his thick swallow and frustrated release of breath is enough to speed the rhythm of Bill’s heart, to make heat bloom under his skin. “Easy,” Bill chides.

Jeb doesn’t answer, just presses his face into Bill’s throat, his mouth over Bill’s pulse. Defeated, Bill lifts his hands, allows Jeb’s to go back to work, and he can feel Jeb smile against his skin. He pushes Bill’s pants down and kneels on the linoleum. He looks up at Bill. “I’ve thought about this.”

Bill says, “good.”

Jeb laughs. And then Jeb focuses on his work with the same relentlessness he brings to everything. He works with a dedication that has Bill’s hands sliding down to find his hair, makes him need to steady himself against the countertop’s support.

It’s not a sophisticated effort, but it is sincere, and Bill lets himself enjoy the eagerness of Jeb’s mouth sliding over him for a few delightful minutes. Even if the occasional awkward stop and start, keep it from building to anything, the view alone is a thrill. Bill pushes gently against Jeb’s shoulders, trying to get him to stop long enough to get them to the bedroom. Jeb resists this new distance; he makes a keen noise of loss that makes the hair on the back of Bill’s neck stand up, and the blood head south from his brain so fast he’s going to need a second to remember the way.

In the bedroom, Bill rewards the effort by undressing him. He keeps his touch firm and competent and watches Jeb’s face while he does it. He pauses when he finds there is now nothing but bare skin bare under Jeb’s button down. For the first time, Jeb tries to look away, and Bill lets go off the fabric and holds Jeb’s face instead. Jeb is slow to meet his eyes. Bill waits until he does, then pushes his hair back, strokes his face with his thumb. Bill can feel him shiver, and if he finds the touch measuring, Bill wants Jeb to know he has not been found wanting.

He closes his eyes when Bill kisses him. His arms come around Bill. Bill takes his own shirt off, so he can get skin against skin, holding Jeb tight, and then guiding him back toward the bed. When they find the mattress, he goes down without a whisper of resistance.

They move in rough thrusts against each other, parting only to work free from the rest of their clothes in impatient, brief interludes between Bill getting his leg between Jeb’s thighs, or getting his cock up against Jeb’s cock. Jeb’s hand is splayed on Bill’s chest, then on Bill’s stomach, then lower, and when Jeb’s fingers curl around him, Bill can feel his whole body lining up to attention. His reaction seems to give Jeb confidence. His grip slides firm and smooth, and Bill wonders if Jeb had ever managed this with some school friend, or if he’d been too brainwashed even that early, or if it had been too small a town, or if he’d been too shy a boy. And if that was the case, then this touch was how he touched himself, in whatever moments of pleasure he managed to steal against the judgement of his imaginary God. Bill lets his eyes close. He feels Jeb’s hardon against his hip, and he presses back against it.

Jeb pants, and Bill can feel the pleasure he gets, just from this blind touch of bodies. His grip on Bill tightens, his movements speed. Jeb’s face is in the crook of Bill’s neck, his breath hot. He rasps, “I thought it felt like this because God had blessed the union. I thought it felt like this because it was holy.”

Bill loses some of his momentum, the weight of the situation returns abruptly to the front of his mind. His thoughts crowd with all the reasons no clear-thinking person would be in bed with this man, whose life is mid-shatter, who has broken from his community, who may or may not still have a wife – for obvious reasons, Bill has not pressed him on the details of the situation and for even more obvious reasons, Jeb has not offered – who comes with all the complications of someone who is not virginal, but – somehow worse – who has had just one other partner. Bill tenses, ready to pull away, but Jeb’s breath is still ragged, still hot on his ear. There is a desperation to his grip, like there’s something in the wanting itself, in the being wanted that is life-sustaining. There is something incredible in watching the fracture of self up close, something like watching a volcano split and vent, like watching the earth itself be reshaped, and what Bill thinks is: what isn’t holy about that?

He brings Jeb in to kiss him. He rolls on top of him, and lets Jeb’s fingers dig into the flesh of his hips. Bill looks him in the eye, and says, “Maybe it is.”

Jeb’s eyes stay on his, wide and wet, as Bill edges uses his knee to edge Jeb’s legs further apart. He moves down Jeb’s body to take him in his mouth, and Jeb watches him do it, pressed back against the pillows, mouth open, eyes fighting not to close. Looking for all the world, like someone who is learning what it is to want.

Bill also wants. He sits back. Runs his hands up the inside of Jeb’s thighs, over his hips. Squeezes what he can reach of Jeb’s ass. “Turn over.”

Jeb’s eyes open wide again, staring back at Bill. He breathes hard.

You got yourself this far, Bill thinks, so what are you going to do now? He lets some of that thought seep into his gaze. Jeb nods.

And he goes.

Jeb breathes in and out with a deliberate slowness, turns his head to rest his cheek against the pillow. His eyes fall shut. And although he must take in the dip in the weight of the mattress when Bill leans around him, and the creak of the bedside drawer, he doesn’t open his eyes. Bill uses a light touch to encourage him up onto hands and knees. He relaxes under Bill’s touch, his head drops, and the trust makes Bill’s hands unsteady for a moment, before he brings himself back under control.

He jerks Jeb off for a minute, before adding a finger pressed inside him, and he hears it when Jeb’s breathing becomes open-mouthed, hears the hitch and gasp.

He kneads the muscles of Jeb’s back, then his ass and thighs. The fingers of his other hand still work inside him, waiting for him to relax. And when he finally does, Bill lines himself up, and brings himself home. There is a sharp inhale, and a rough moan for the pillow to absorb, and Bill bends himself to curve of Jeb’s spine and holds him around the chest until the rhythm of Jeb’s breathing evens again, and he begins to make small, experimental movements pressing back against Bill. Bill begins to thrust into him, abbreviated and slow, and then longer, as Jeb’s own stuttered movements become more fluid.

Bill leans down to his ear. “You praying yet?”

“Fuck. Bill. Fuck,” is what Jeb gets out before the words break down into moans.

Close enough. Bill fucks him harder.

After, his bones feel fluid. Bill smokes what he decides will be his actual, for real, last cigarette and watches the smoke laze its way upward. Beside him, Jeb is the sort of languid that said he knew just how lucky he was to be so well fucked. He tucks himself against Bill’s side, resting his cheek to Bill’s chest. He’s looking at something across the room. Bill follows his gaze.

He’s looking at the photo of Rick. Jeb tucks an arm behind his head. “How’d you meet him?”

Bill takes a drag off his cigarette. He blows the smoke towards the ceiling. “I arrested him.”

Jeb laughs, then lifts himself up on his elbows, to look sidelong at Bill. “Wait, are you being serious?”

Bill tips his head. That version of the story certainly leaves some things out, but he could go on all day and all night talking about Rick, and still be leaving shit out. And at its heart, the summary is accurate. And he does like the way Jeb is looking at him with the kind of astonishment that says maybe it’s setting in that people have absolutely blown up their own lives to hell before him, and lived to tell the tale. “Yeah.”

Jeb sits up to look at him now. “Do you still – are you in touch?”

Bill shakes his head slowly. He looks at the picture, where is Rick is preserved forever young, forever healthy and whole. “Nah. But last I heard he was writing. Last I heard, he was doing good.” Bill chews his lip. “I kind of didn’t want to hear anything else after that.” Who knows how long that good spell lasted. Rick could be such a disaster, and when he was, he was a force of nature. But he was so perfect on his good days it hurt.

“Did you know when you met him that he was – that he was someone you were going to fuck things up for?”

Bill blows smoke at the ceiling again, and looks at Jeb out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, absolutely.”

A smile starts to grow on Jeb’s face. “I thought that might be the case.”

Bill waits a beat, considering, then because it seems fair, he asks, “how are things at home?”

Jeb looks away, smile gone. His hands pick at the comforter. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bill waits him out. It doesn’t take long.

Jeb’s hands still. “I just – I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get out of this without hurting the people I care about any more than I already have.”

For a moment, Bill sees Jeb in the tall grass again. Turning in circles and looking for he doesn’t know what. He thinks about saying what he knows to be the truth: that there isn’t a way out that doesn’t hurt people. That he’s going to wake up every day for the rest of his life and have to spend some of that day, even if it’s just a sliver, hating himself. Because when things break, the breaking hurts. The sudden snap of your life changing direction, like a dry branch cracking under foot. And maybe it would be kinder to tell him that truth, but Bill can’t make himself say the words. Jeb will figure it out for himself, soon enough. But if Bill has perfected one art, it’s leaving, and he knows there are easier and harder ways to go. He knows what the worst path is to let something broken drag on, until everyone around has been wounded by its splintering. You have to learn to recognize the time to move on.

Bill stabs out his cigarette. “You know, sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is not be around. Sometimes some distance helps.”

Jeb’s staring holes in the ceiling now. He doesn’t offer a response.

“You can pick up, and live somewhere that doesn’t have this kind of baggage. You went to Denver on your mission, right? Did you like Denver? Go to Denver. Take some time to figure out who you want to be. And give her some space to do the same thing.”

Jeb’s throat works. He struggles for a moment, eyes bright. But he forces himself to take slow, deep breaths. When he’s got himself under control, he turns to look at Bill. He’s trying to smile, which makes him look all the more tragic.

“You wouldn’t miss me if I left?”

Bill doesn’t say: people are always leaving him. Bill doesn’t tell Jeb that he is a place people pass through, or he passes through them, and maybe that’s karma. He doesn’t say that Jeb won’t recognize himself a year from now. Doesn’t inform him that the fast, sudden slide of becoming a new person often involves hating the people that knew the old you. Bill doesn’t say it’s Jeb that won’t want him around, soon enough.

There’s a warm touch on him arm, Jeb reaching out to touch him. Bill pulls him close, until he is once again pressed to Bill’s side, his head on Bill’s chest. Bill rests his cheek on Jeb’s head. “Maybe I’d miss some things about you. Maybe one or two things.”

He feels Jeb relax against him. Eventually, he feels him fall asleep. And while Bill closes his own eyes, he doesn’t let himself fall asleep just yet. He wants the memory of this. Wants to burn into his memory how this feels. Because he doesn’t know how this thing will end, or when, just that it will, and if he can just hold on to this memory, he’ll have it to revisit for the rest of his life. However long or short that might be.

Jeb shows up or he doesn’t, appearing at Bill’s door every few days. He stays the night, or he doesn’t, working around whatever’s going on at home. He doesn’t say much about what life is like back in East Rockwell. He doesn’t say he’s been sleeping on the couch, although Bill can see it in the way he holds he neck like it aches, sighs under Bill’s hands when Bill presses his fingertips in there. Jeb doesn’t say people are still making life hard for him at the station, but Bill can see that too, in the tight lines around his mouth, and he hears it in the increasing bitterness in Jeb’s tone whenever Bill brings up his own work. Jeb’s face does reveal the occasional sudden bout of grief, but he always tamps these down right away, and if he asks for anything, it is for Bill to touch him. To call him out of his thoughts. And Bill reminds himself Jeb’s not here to talk.

Bill still thinks this whole process would be easier on Jeb if he were literally anywhere else. So there is a part of him that is hopeful when Jeb doesn’t show up for two weeks. But he’s been dreading this departure, too. He wishes he knew that Jeb was okay, either way. But Jeb doesn’t call, and Bill tells himself there’s no fucking way he’s going to risk calling Jeb’s home line. Bill kicks himself for not being smarter about things. He should have drawn the line earlier. Although even staring at the ceiling at night, with the clarity of hindsight kicking him in the nuts, he’s still not sure where that line ought to have been. Had it been too much to let Jeb touch him? Almost certainly it had been too much to let him stay the night. He should have known better.

By the end of the second week, he’s tired of telling himself Jeb deserves a clean start. And part of him – the cop part of him, who can size people up in seconds and know within minutes what they’re like, how they speak to their wife, whether they obey traffic laws, whether they are or are not the person Bill is looking for – knows Jeb would have called. Jeb is the type to agonize over goodbyes. Bill feels confident that if Jeb had been thinking straight, he would have shown up in person. That being the considerate thing to do, and all.

In bed, Bill rolls from one side to the other, shuffles his pillow into something approximating comfort. No goodbye means Jeb wasn’t thinking straight when he left. Which means he’s either still in Rockwell, making some last-ditch effort with his church and his wife; or he left under duress. Enough duress to not give a shit about calling, and that’s still best-case scenario. Bill rolls over again. A career in policework means he has an unlimited back catalogue of worse possibilities to tick through, a thousand and one horrible things that can happen to a person, or that a person can do to themselves. Bill considers several of them in turn, then balances the likelihood of each against the idea that Jeb is fine. He reminds himself that Jeb made no promises when he walked through Bill’s door. Not once did he promise to come back. That last time could have been simply that: the last time.

But he’s not finding himself very convincing. That morning, he breaks, and makes up an errand that will take him to the East Rockwell station. He takes a set of prints waiting to be mailed, tucks it under his arm, announces his intentions and ducks out before anyone has time to question it. More snow has been threatening, but the roads are currently clear and the drive down doesn’t take long. Officer Benson greets him cheerfully. The memory of whatever skepticism he’d viewed Bill with when they’d worked together, erased by Bill’s absence. It really was better to leave too soon than the other way around.

Bill hands over the prints, forces himself through several excruciating minutes of small talk, then asks idly, “Is Jeb around?”

Benson scoffs. “Jeb walked off the job last week.” He leans in towards Bill and lowers his voice. “Said he was effing done with this.” He gives Bill a significant look, as though he expects Bill to agree that this is just the sort of awful thing people say when they fuck up so bad as to lose their faith.

“Huh,” is all Bill says. He raps his knuckles against the desk and stands. “You tell the Chief I said hi.”

Bill hops back in the cruiser, drums his fingers across the wheel. This is a twist. He considers bailing and heading back to Park City, but he’s already here. It feels like a waste not to at least swing by the Pyre home, although he’s not particularly excited about the prospect. Bill can think of several possibilities of what he’ll find there, and none of them are great. He continues to drum. Possibly, and maybe the best-case scenario, he’ll pull up to the drive and find Jeb and Becca making a fresh start together, trying again after a rough patch. Two out of three people get a happy ending in that scenario, and Bill has lived long enough to know sometimes that’s the best you can do. Although he’s not sure what would convince Jeb he could make it work this time, and it’s hard to see walking off the job as the act of man trying to slide back into his old life.

So maybe he goes by the house and finds only Becca and the kids. If he’s lucky, that’ll be an awkward and painful interruption to her day, and if he’s not lucky, it’ll be something worse. Or finally, it could just be Jeb in the house. And some people might think that would be the easiest option, but those people haven’t seen all the things Bill has, and don’t know all the desperate and awful shit men are likely to pull when they have to face up to the fact that they’re alone in the world. Or, he supposes, he could just go back to Park City. And never know. Bill curses softly, and starts the car.

He’s only been to the Pyre family home twice, both times for polite dinners where Bill was welcomed but still felt like he had to watch every word he spoke. He recalls the way easy enough, but he finds the house dark. The lawn needs tending, and there’s no car in the driveway. No one answers his knock. Bill hesitates, and then – some nosy neighbor is going to love this – lets himself into the backyard. He picks his way up to the kitchen window and cups his hands to peer inside. The lights are all off. Peering into the living room, some of the furniture seems to be gone. He spots a pile of still-folded moving boxes by the door. Bill steps back from the window. He looks up at the sky while he tries to make up his mind. He could wait, but nothing about the house says anyone is coming home any time soon. Bill drives himself back to Park City. He works a couple half-assed hours in an attempt to make the time pass, but there’s only so much he can make himself care about snow bunnies and their inability to handle the slick roads. Bill is starting to think he’s not long for Park City.

It’s dark long before he makes it home, and he’s tired, but he doesn’t head to bed. He sets up on the couch, beer in hand, and plants his feet on the coffee table. He can feel himself settling once again into the rhythm of waiting. This time he knows what he’s waiting for, although that doesn’t make him feel any better. He tries not to think about where Jeb might be, but instead what comes into his mind are all the other nights Bill has spent waiting. The nights he waited up to see if Rick would come home. The nights his wife spent waiting for him. He thinks if anyone deserves to be in the spot he’s in right now, it’s him. He’s forever setting himself up for just this. Always pretending like he could do this and not care, when it was already too late, even before he’d touched Jeb, it had been too late, even then.

Across the room, the phone rings.

He knows by the silence on the line, and the weight in that silence, who it is. “Hey, Jeb.”

“Hey, Bill.” Jeb sounds tired. “Sorry for calling so late.”

Bill is equal parts relived and frustrated, and all of him wants to snap out something mean. He rubs his forehead instead. Takes a breath. “Not a problem.”

“Listen.” Wherever Jeb is, the connection is poor, static edges in on his words. “Do you think you could give me a ride?”

“Sure,” Bill answers, too fast to be cool. Then asks, “where are you?”

There’s a pause that drags out long enough to be mildly concerning. “Somewhere on US-40,” Jeb says finally. “I don’t think I hit Colorado yet – hang on.” Bill listens to the sound of muffled voices in the background of the call. Jeb gets back on the line. “Jensen. At the Outlaw Motor Inn.”

“That sounds charming.”

“Yeah, I’m a real sore thumb out here.” He sounds sarcastic, and if he’s feeling well enough for sarcasm, that might be a good sign. Although with Jeb, it’s hard to tell.

Jensen’s due east. Still in Utah, although not by much. Bill glances out the window to see if the snow’s still coming down. “Hang tight. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

It’s pushing one in the morning by the time Bill pulls in. The Outlaw Inn is less the biker dive Bill was worried it might be, and more of a generic Western-themed roadside lodge. He spots Jeb’s sedan in the lot. There’s a sizable dent in the fender, and it’s hard to tell in the dark, but Bill thinks the front axle looks bent. There are, naturally, no chains on the tires. In the otherwise deserted lobby, he finds Jeb sitting with an untouched cup of coffee that Bill imagines someone pressed on him. Bill kicks the snow off his boots and walks over to sit next to him. “Jeb.”

“Bill.”

“I saw the car. You alright?”

Jeb shrugs. He stares down at the coffee, looking defeated. “I’m fine. But the car’s not drivable.” He squints up at Bill. “And the only mechanic in town is in Scottsdale until Monday.”

“Scottsdale? Tough break.”

Jeb shrugs again.

“He a golfer?”

“Now, how would I know that?” Jeb snaps, and it’s good to know he’s still got some grit left in him. Jeb closes his eyes for a moment, then shakes his head and manages a chuckle. “But I suppose it appears that way.”

Bill shakes his head. “Used to be, mechanics were reliable. Nowadays they take up golfing. Disappear all weekend. The industry is a mess.”

Jeb smiles up at him. “Thanks for coming.”

Bill takes the seat next to his. “What happened?”

Jeb takes the question in its most immediate sense. “I just went off the road. Found the only tree in a quarter mile that was worth hitting.”

He’s lucky he made it over the pass. “No chains?”

Jeb switches the coffee cup from one hand to another, rubs his forehead irritably. “No, and in hindsight, that was a mistake.”

Bill hums his agreement, and Jeb has the nerve to look annoyed.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Bill says, by way of apology.

Jeb is silent for a moment. “I was going to call you,” he says. “From Denver.”

Bill settles back into his chair.

“I wanted to wait until I really did it, you know? I thought you’d be – I don’t know. Proud.”

He would have been proud, Bill thinks. And he would have hated it.

Jeb settles back in his own chair, so they’re shoulder to shoulder, although he doesn’t go so far as to lean against Bill. He’s staring up at the faux-wood beams in the ceiling. “Becca took the girls last week. They’re at her dad’s. And I can’t – I can’t stand being in the house with them gone. I looked for an apartment, like you said, but I couldn’t –” Jeb stops talking. He closes his eyes; swallows hard. “I didn’t want to be in any of them. I didn’t want to be anywhere.”

Bill places his arm carefully on the arm rest, not holding Jeb’s hand, but lined up next to him. Close enough for Jeb to feel the warmth.

Jeb emits a shaky sigh, and it echoes loud in the empty lobby. “I stayed in a hotel for a few nights. I didn’t want to leave, but that – that was too depressing.”

“You could have come up to my place,” Bill says quietly.

“I was upset,” Jeb says simply. “I didn’t know if you wanted – that part of it.”

Bill knows the part he’s talking about. The part with the raging and the weeping. The part with another person’s pain right up in your face, and them making it your problem. The hard, shitty part. The part that Bill had tried to make clear to himself and everyone else was not his. Not his responsibility. Not his duty.

There’s a pile of festive greenery in the corner that some poor employee was likely going to have to spend all day tomorrow putting up. The room lights made the windows into fogged mirrors where smeared versions of themselves stared back at them. The clock on the wall ticked, and Bill tried to find an answer for that didn’t make him any more of a liar than he already was. “Okay,” he says, trying to strategize, because he needs to figure out how to get them both out of here, and out of this, without anybody breaking. Which is tough, given that he's still not sure what Jeb wants, or what he meant by calling Bill. “Did you call me out here to drive you to Denver or to drive you back to East Rockwell? Because I’ll drive you to either, but you’re definitely paying for gas.”

Jeb studies him. He knows Bill is ducking the question Jeb didn’t quite ask. He’s too smart not to, even if he is driving himself half-mad. But he lets Bill get away with it. His gaze drops. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

There’s a lot of not-knowing going around tonight. Bill finds he has a lump in his throat, and he’s tired. He feels that now, feels the exhaustion right down to his bones. And maybe surrender, or at least delay, can be the better part of valor here. “You get a room?”

Jeb digs in his pocket and holds up a key. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

That hurts more than it should. Bill takes a breath, rubs his hands across his thighs, stalling to try to get the stone out of his throat. “Well then, tell you what – why don’t we stay here tonight?”

Jeb glances around like someone might be listening. It strikes Bill as almost comedic, them in this empty room, in the dead of night, a hundred miles from anybody they know, and Jeb still looking around for propriety’s sake. Apparently assured of their privacy, Jeb nods. “Okay.”

The room is cold. Bill busies himself with the thermostat while Jeb brings in his bag from the busted car. His return is announced by a fresh draft of cold air. He stands in the doorway a moment too long, staring like maybe he’s walked into the wrong room. That’s right, Bill thinks watching him, here I am out of context. He knows how easy it is to forget that people keep existing after you shut the door and walk away. He knows this is part of why seeing people in new contexts feels so surprising. He knows because he is not a good man, but he tries to be.

He takes pity on Jeb. “It’s been a long night. How about we try to get some sleep?” He sits on the edge of the bed, and begins removing his boots. That’s enough to get Jeb into motion, to get him to follow Bill’s lead. Together, they fold back the coverlet and climb under the sheets. Jeb switches off the lamp.

Bill keeps his eyes on the ceiling, but he feels Jeb rolls towards him. Feels Jeb’s gaze in the dark watching him, like he’s expecting Bill to say something. And why is it always Bill’s job to fix everything? Why is it Bill’s job to make things make sense? He is tempted to stay silent. To close his eyes and let Jeb be disappointed. Because the idea of what he needs to say exhaust him. But he can feel Jeb waiting for his reaction. He needs something from Bill – he’ll take anger or passion or disappointment – he’s so desperate to be valued that Bill thinks he’ll take anything. He deserves so much more than roadside inns and a tired old man, and Bill hopes to God, one day he’ll find it.

Bill looks over at him. “I was worried about you.” He can see the glint of Jeb’s gaze watching him back, an uncertainty in his expression that suggests he’s either unsure what it means for Bill to be worried, or unsure if he’s telling the truth. “I went by the station,” Bill continues. “I went by your house.” Saying that feels like a confession, as though he’s admitting something shameful.

“Really?”

“I was worried about you,” Bill repeats, responding to the surprise in Jeb’s voice, and the resulting hurt that flares in his chest. And here he was, doing it again, gone foolhardy over some man in the midst of shattering, acting surprised when he gets cut. The hurt makes him reach out and touch Jeb’s arm. He takes a breath. “But I shouldn’t have been. Not because you’re not going to do stupid things. You are going to do a thousand stupid, thoughtless, erratic things in the next little bit here.”

“Thanks for having such faith in me.” Jeb sounds like he’s aiming for sarcasm, but words come out choked and thick.

The ache in Bill’s chest is sharpening into something truly awful, and he is not a strong enough man to let Jeb believe that anything Bill says is because he doesn’t care, when it is – when it’s always been – the opposite. “Jeb, come on. That’s just what people going through shit do. My point is that you should have the chance to do that – to do whatever it is you need to do to reset yourself. To pick yourself up.”

Jeb shakes his head, adamant, like he finds this idea impossible. And Bill hears the rasp of a sucked-in breath that says he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

Bill tights his grip on Jeb’s arm, then pulls him closer. He feels Jeb shiver, then shake. He feels it when the unstable rhythm of Jeb’s breathing finally resolves into weeping, and Bill holds him through it. He lets himself wrap Jeb tightly in his arms, and he doesn’t tell him to stop, because how do you ask someone already on fire not to burn?

He says – because the hurt of not knowing is so fresh in his mind, because the pain makes him more honest than he should be, and because he might as well admit to himself that it’s true, and maybe they both should know it – he says, “but wherever you are, whatever stupid shit you do, you can always call me. And I will always come to you.”

Jeb moves into Bill, and Bill holds him tight. He feels the wetness of Jeb’s cheeks against his own, and wonders if Jeb thinks it’s still just one of them crying. Because even if it’s not this time, there will be a last time, and one call will be the last call, and that’s all Bill will ever get to know about what life Jeb carves out for himself. Jeb grabs Bill’s face and kisses him. Jeb leans over him, and this time it is Bill who is pressed back into the haggard hotel pillows, as if Bill was the one who needed to be shown what to do.

Bill cups Jeb’s face. Runs a hand through his hair. He is awfully beautiful, even with eyes red and dark circles under his eyes. So powerfully lovely it hurts.

Jeb turns his face into Bill’s hand, eyes closing. “I saw you look at me like that.” He kisses Bill’s palm. “Before. That’s when I knew what you wanted.”

Bill is startled into narrowing his gaze. He is unsure what he has given away, and he can feel himself growing stone-faced.

Jeb watches him through slitted eyes. The corner of his mouth turns up. “And I watched you cover it up, just like that, too.” His face is flushed. “I’m not blind. I’ve seen men want me before. But when you did – ” He closes his eyes, picking his words slowly, one by one. “I wanted you back. I think maybe I didn’t know how much I could want someone, until I wanted you.”

Bill can feel his pulse pounding in his fingertips and in his chest. He feels his blood singing close to the surface of his skin, a fight or flight prickle that floods him with the need to move.

Jeb says, “I like the way you see me.” But he appears frustrated, as if he’s not getting his point across. “Or, I like the version of me you see.”

“You are – ” Bill, embarrassingly, is getting choked up, and he’s not sure what exactly he even wants to say.

Jeb saves him the trouble. He leans in to kiss Bill. And the moment is another of those memories Bill will hold onto as long as he’s breathing. Jeb touches with greedy hands. He holds Bill’s face, lingers on his shoulders. He pushes down on Bill’s chest, and there’s a roughness to the slide of his touch over Bill’s nipples that makes him wonder if this is what Jeb wants done to him. Some new desire revealed. By the time Jeb’s touch reaches his waist, Bill is attending to nothing more than drawing Jeb’s hips against his own, to finding and re-capturing the heat of Jeb’s mouth.

Jeb touches his thighs, and then between them, and then aware that Jeb is watching him, Bill lets him see the way the touch rouses him. He lets his eyes fall closed, and for once, he allows himself to say what he wants, which is, “fuck,” and “keep going.”

Bill lets out the moan rising in his throat, and he embraces the squawk of the springs. He fumbles blind for whatever part of Jeb he can reach. He finds Jeb’s side and his fingers splay over Jeb’s ribs. Jeb is breathing hard in time with him, and it’s hard to say whose stuttered breath is whose. Hard to know which cry belongs to which mouth. And after, Jeb sinks back into lassitude with him, and one more time, anyway, Jeb is his to hold in the dark.

Bill wakes to see Jeb standing at the window. He’s drawn the curtain back, and the sky has cleared. Sun is glinting off the snow. Bill rubs his eyes. “Good morning.”

Jeb looks back over his shoulder at him, lit up and pale under the sun’s rays. “You want to hike down to the river?”

Bill would like a cup of coffee and a cigarette, or at the very least, some eggs, but he says, “sure.”

Jeb smiles like he can hear Bill’s thoughts, which is a dangerous prospect. Bill needs to put some effort into getting his poker face back.

Outside, their breath billows out white in front of them, and the air feels sharp in Bill’s lungs. But the sun feels good across his face. It’s not much of a hike to the edge of the water. Ice has crinkled along the banks, and clings to the stones at the water’s edge, but the river itself is moving quickly, rushing southward to whatever’s next. The day is shaping up to be fine, but this stretch of waterfront isn’t built up, there’s no park or paved path, and they have the place to themselves.

Jeb picks a route for them along the water’s edge, and Bill falls in beside him. Past a bend in the trees, Jeb lets their hands touch, a curl and a catch of fingers before parting, and it feels as daring and forbidden here in the daylight as anything they’ve done in Bill’s darkened bedroom.

The second time it happens, Bill uses the contact to tug Jeb to a halt. Jeb stops readily enough, but he doesn’t say anything for a long moment, only looks out over the water. “Did you know the Church teaches that water belongs to Satan?”

Bill snorts, an involuntary response that feels necessary, even if it doesn’t match the gravity of the moment. “Water doesn’t belong to anybody.”

Jeb looks at him. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

“Probably you are.” Jeb tips his head, considering. “Probably I am going to be pretty fucked up for a while.”

“Jeb – ”

Jeb looks down for a moment, securing his footing on the uneven path, and when he looks up it is with a fearless gaze, the same one that has infuriated police chiefs and riled bishops. “But when I turn toward you, I feel you turn toward me. I feel you lean into me. I know that you can see me, and I know that you still want me.”

He has to stop, and he holds out a hand as a signal for Bill to wait. Bill waits.

“I’m so angry about being lied to,” Jeb says. “I told you I wanted to figure out what was real. But if this feeling – that you see me and you want me; that I see you and want you – if that isn’t real, then I don’t know what is. So, you tell me – you tell me you want me to get out of your life and I’ll go. I will. I’ll go buy chains, and get my car fixed, and drive to Denver, but Bill – ”

Jeb’s hand comes to his mouth for a second. He breathes through something. “But you have to say that. You have to tell me that’s true. Because I don’t think it is. I feel it here.” He touches his gut. “I feel it exactly where you told me true things would show up, so you tell me I’m wrong.”

Bill stares at him. “Jesus, Jeb.”

“I definitely don’t need you to drag him into it.”

Bill is started into laughter.

Jeb looks back at him, a wan, exhausted smile on his face. Looking like someone picking himself up again. Bill can see the hint of his brilliance under all that weariness. He sees the outline of the extraordinary person Bill knows him to be. Extraordinary, and so much smarter than Bill gives him credit for, and starting to look rather irritated at Bill’s lack of any further response. Bill reins himself in, smiles back. “That was low, bringing up the thing I told you about trusting your gut? That was a low blow.”

Jeb’s expression widens into a grin. “I thought that was a nice touch.”

“Low,” Bill repeats, still smiling.

“But effective?”

Bill starts them walking again, turning them back towards the trailhead. Just before the inn comes into view, he takes Jeb’s hand. “You know what I like about this landscape? There’s always another ridge. There’s always a chance of finding something new on the far side.”

Jeb is looking at him like he wants answers, not metaphors, and even Bill can admit that’s fair. “I’ll still drive you back to either one. Rockwell or Denver.” His grip on Jeb’s hand tightens. Because maybe this is what they’re both looking for. Maybe what they both need to know is that hope can be its own kind of faith. He needs Jeb to have faith that he’ll come out on the other side of this. And Jeb needs Bill to believe that he’ll still want Bill at his side, when he does. Bill thinks again about what Jeb might look like next year. About who he’ll be in ten. Maybe he’ll get to find out, because maybe the time to stay can announce itself, too. “I’ll drive you to either, and I’ll stay with you in either one. Wherever you want to go, I’ll go with you. That’s all I know how to offer.”

Jeb’s grip tightens in return. “That’s all I need.”

Bill lets their hands slip free of each other so they can keep walking. But he bumps his shoulder into Jeb’s. “You’re still paying for the gas, though.”

Jeb laughs, short and sharp, and it carries in the cold air. The sound fades and moves beyond where Bill can hear. Maybe it’ll bounce its way up the canyons; maybe the river will carry it south. Maybe it’ll end up where it hopes it’s going. Maybe not. But Bill’s prepared to have a bit of faith in the journey.