“Hi.” It seemed like maybe that was all he could come up with as well, but then, the words labored, he managed, “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. God, are you okay?”

His nod was a ghosting movement in the dark. He wasn’t standing all that close, but his presence—his silence—was unbearably intimate. I thought this was the Deputy Bobby that maybe nobody else was allowed to see. And I thought, again, about what Indira said. About what it might mean.

Assumptions, I told myself. Interpretations. The reality—cold, hard reality like a sober morning—rushed through me. We were friends. That was all. We’d always be friends.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” I said.

He stood there. Behind him, the brittle outlines of hemlocks stirred in the breeze.

“About how I reacted. When you told me. Uh, that stuff about Damian. And yes, I promise I can speak in full sentences, it’s just, uh—” I tapped the side of my head. “—a little choppy in here right now.”

His breathing was uneven. Like he’d been running, a part of my brain thought. Like he’d run all the way here.

“I know you did it because you want me to be safe,” I said. “I know you did it because you’re my friend. And I appreciate it, I do. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I might be kind of sensitive about dating and relationships and my generally bad judgment in men, but I shouldn’t have projected that onto you.”

“You don’t have to be okay,” he said.

“No, I overreacted.”

“You can get angry. You can—you can yell.”

There was something so strange about his voice, like he wasn’t really talking to me, that my reply came out cautiously: “I don’t want to yell at you.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re not okay, that’s okay.”

“It’s okay not to be okay?” I wanted it to sound like a joke, but it fell flat.

Deputy Bobby nodded again, just that suggestion of movement in the darkness. “You can tell me if you’re not okay. You can talk to me about it.”

“Bobby—” I struggled for a moment, and once again, I came up with a moment of sheer poetic genius: “I’m fine.”

He did this little breath thing that was so awful I didn’t realize, until an instant too late, it had been a laugh. And then, in that way as though he were talking to someone else, he said, “I just wanted to check on you.”

“Okay,” I said drawing out the word until it was almost a question. But he didn’t reply, and he didn’t move. “Do you want to come in?”

He shook his head.

I want to take full ownership of this moment and acknowledge that I am not a particularly bright man, because it didn’t occur to me until exactly that moment what was happening.

Then I said, “Bobby, are you okay?”

He jerked out a nod.

“Are you sure? Because you don’t seem like you’re okay. And someone very wise and much, much older than me once told me it was okay not to be okay.”

“I, uh—” The way he stopped broke my heart, but it was worse when he tried to smile again. He sounded like he was setting up a joke when he said, “The guys took me in. I had to call West from the station.”

“Oh God—”

“It’s fine. They didn’t arrest me.” The pause that came after had a numb quality. “But West told me not to come home tonight.”

I waited, but no punchline came. Where the ambient light caught his eyes, his gaze was blank and unprocessing.

“Oh God,” I said. “Bobby, I’m so sorry.”

“He’s really mad.”

“It’s going to be okay. Come inside.”

He didn’t move, so I took his arm and brought him into the vestibule. I hadn’t bothered with the lights, so we stood together in the shadows. A part of me was aware that I was still holding his arm: solid, dense with muscle. A part of me was aware of the heat of him. And a part of me was aware that he was trembling.

Deputy Bobby put his free hand to his forehead and held it there like he had a headache. “He’s so mad.”

“I’m sorry, Bobby.”

He shook his head, barely more than an impression in the gloom.

“He’ll get over it,” I said. “It’ll all work out.”

“He’s right to be angry. He should be angry.” The only reason I knew he closed his eyes was because that hint of reflected light was extinguished. Despair tilted his voice as he said, “Oh my God.”

I should have known better. After that conversation with Indira, I definitely should have known better. But it didn’t matter; he was in pain, and he was my friend, and his heartbreak was so intense it felt radioactive. I slipped my arms around him and pulled him against me.

His body was stiff at first, his muscles tense, joints locked into stiff angles. I always forgot I was taller, and it was disorienting how he fit with me, his head resting on my shoulder, his face turned into my neck. His breath was hot on the sensitive skin there. With every breath, I could smell his hair.

The thing you don’t learn writing mystery novels? Romance. When Will Gower was a rough-and-ready private eye, he had sex—lots of sex. (Too much sex, if you asked Phil, my parents’ agent.) And when he was a jaded cop with a drinking problem, he had sex. And when he was an icily intellectual FBI profiler, he had sex (in one manuscript that will never see the light of day, with the serial killer he was trying to profile). Will Gower got his heart broken by the systemic cruelties of a corrupt world. Will Gower, the white knight who never knew when to give up, lost people he cared about. But he didn’t fall in love. And the part of my brain that never turned off, the part of my brain that turned everything into stories, the part of me that recorded details and saved them for the next time I needed them, thought: the way I’m holding him, his shirt is slightly rucked up, and I can feel a hint of bare skin low on his back; the way his hair tickles my nose and I want to sneeze; how he splays his fingers against my ribs, like he’s not sure if he’s pushing me away or grabbing on. My heart, I thought, like I’d come apart from my body. How fast my heart is beating. And I wanted to turn it into a story, to make it safe and manageable, sewn up from beginning to end. But I didn’t know how, and even if I had, I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do it. To take this, all of it, and make it...less.

By degrees, his body softened until he felt real again. And my heart slowed down. A little. Like, there wasn’t an imminent risk of a cardiac event. He stirred. His fingers flexed against my side and drew back. I relaxed my arms, and he retreated a step. He tried to look at me, but his eyes were fixed on something behind me, and he rubbed his jaw.

“Let’s get you something to eat.”

He shook his head.

“Let’s sit down, then.”

He swallowed, and it looked painful. “I should go.”

“Bobby,” I said.

And now he did look at me. I didn’t know exactly what to call what I saw in his face. A plea, maybe. Asking me for—what?

I changed what I’d been about to say. “Where are you going to spend the night?”

“I don’t know. The Rock On.”

The Rock On Inn was adorable, but I said, “No way. Cheri-Ann will put it on Facebook two minutes after you check in.”