Ethan Cole Brandt

You have been Vikram Nair for two minutes, and already you know the one thing he can't do. His belly sits against the kitchen counter in the dark, and the tile is cold through his socks. Somewhere upstairs his family sleeps. In the lit page of his phone, the wheel turns its slow face toward you. He would have been a fine man to keep. His knees ache and his breath is short. But the house is full of someone else's quiet, and you stand in it like a guest who has been told to stay. You pay. You spin.

The strip light hums. His knee is bouncing, and then it stops on the same click as the board, 47 to 48. You are in the third seat from the door. A paper cup of water has gone warm in the hand that now sets it down, square, on the seat beside you. You fold your hands. The plastic seat is hard under his thighs. Cold pushes through the glass door beside you, and the night out there holds one orange lamp.

Someone says a name, and it's his. You don't look up.

The jacket comes first. Canvas, stiff at the cuffs, soft at the elbows. It brings a morning with it: his wife's voice from the bathroom, saying he'll be late. He thumbs the zipper pull, and you feel how he stood in the courtyard under dry palms and the last gold light, still holding a grudge about the fee on his tuition. He was twenty-five and tired in a way sleep did not reach. Under the jacket the grey tee is worn thin. It brings a night of her laughing at something he said badly, and the relief of being forgiven.

The ring is on your left hand. Your thumb finds it and turns it without being told. You get the day he chose it, a counter, a cheap tray of bands, his own panic. You get the church folding chairs, the hymn sung off-key, and his private prayer, which is still half a habit in your chest. You get the lawn, the laptop warm on his knees, and the cursor blinking over a paper he can't finish.

His cuticles are raw. Your thumbnail is already at the edge of the other hand, picking, and you let it, because he would. The skin stings clean. Underneath it, the vape in the jacket pocket presses your hip, and you get the sweet chemical ache of wanting it. Under that sits a fear you don't understand yet: why a man is in this room at this hour. You can feel that it's about her, and about a result. You can't see more.

The floor tile is cold through the worn soles of his sneakers. Your height pulls the chair too low, and your back, long and ordinary, settles against the plastic. You are strong enough, and young. Nothing hurts. The stubble on your jaw is rough under your knuckle.

You lift your hands and turn them over, the ring catching the strip light, the torn cuticles. Then you look up, past them, and say quietly, "Okay. I'm here."

You don't know how long you're here.