“Well,” I said. “It’s kind of a long story. Do you want to hear it?”
He smiled. That same smile. The smile from the hardware store.
“I’ve got time,” he said.
So I told him.
I told him about a man covered in drywall dust who couldn’t remember the name of a hinge, so he drew one on the back of a receipt. I told him about pizza at a table so sticky our elbows stuck to it. I told him about a dock on a lake at sunset, and a boy who said, I’m going to marry you anyway.
I told him about a broken finger and a ring cut off with a tiny saw. About a pale stripe on a sunburned hand, and a fishing trip that wasn’t really a fishing trip, and a wife who went through his bag in the middle of the night because she thought he’d stopped loving her.
