Page 57 of Soft Flannel Hank

“We just… I misunderstood what he wanted. And being around him is going to be really hard. But I’m supposed to be laying low. So I’m stuck.”

“Magda told me.”

Esther sighed again and covered her face with her hands. “It’s just so awkward.”

“So leave,” Jory said with a shrug.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“What’s the difference?”

“You.”

Esther uncovered her face and met Jory’s jade-green gaze. A dark eyebrow arched high.

“What do you want to do, Esther?”

* * *

Hank felt awful.He’d felt awful since the day before, when he’d left Esther crying in the kitchen. Not long after he’d disappeared to his room with the hopes that he’d be struck by lightning and put out of his misery. He’d stood up no fewer than ten times to walk to the door to find her, to explain himself. To make her understand.

But every single time, he had stopped himself and sat back down on the bed, his self-loathing creeping over him until he was cloaked in it. Not long after he’d holed up in his room, Magda had texted to tell him that Jory was coming over to see Esther. Through the floors and vents, Hank had heard them talking. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could hear Esther’s animated voice and Jory’s husky replies. Esther’s laughter, loud and clear, and had that been a snort? He wanted to know.

Hank wanted to make her laugh like that but he didn’t know the first thing about making a person laugh. He’d rarely managed it with Marnie and never on purpose. He didn’t know any jokes. He wasn’t naturally witty like Nat. He didn’t possess the ease that enabled him to feel comfortable enough with people to cut up. He never had.

Esther sounded so happy, and while Hank didn’t believe he had the means to make her laugh, to make her happy at all, really, he had the means to not stop someone else from doing so. And so he’d stayed up in his room. He skipped dinner. He tossed and turned, his chest tight and his gut churning.

Hank had therapy at nine o’clock that morning. He woke up at the crack of dawn to shower because he didn’t have the strength to meet Esther in the hallway, in the kitchen, or on the stairs, and not crush her against him. So after taking a shower in near darkness, he dressed and grabbed a protein bar on his way out the door. The clock in his truck said six fifteen.

He sat in the truck in the gathering light, staring at his dark house while he choked down a protein bar and wondered if Esther was sleeping in those little cut-off sweatpants. Or in anything at all.

Hank threw the uneaten half of his bar on the passenger seat and put the truck in reverse. He drove to the diner for a coffee. He had his hand on the door handle to open it when a squad car pulled into the lot. Hank held his breath as two men he knew very well got out. They walked towards the diner door, but one of them looked behind him.

Rick cocked his head in the direction of Hank’s truck and his partner, David, turned his head. Together, they sauntered across the lot towards Hank.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It was too late to leave. The men, both in uniform, stood next to the driver’s side door and tapped on the window. Hank rolled it down.

“License and registration?” Rick said.

Hank’s heart seized in his chest. He held his breath, reaching for his wallet, when Rick smiled.

“Goddamn, Hank, I’m just messing with you! Dave! Did you see the look on his face? How the hell are you, man? Back from the dead, I see.”

They both wore such easy, warm smiles, like they were genuinely happy to see him. And neither one seemed to notice the small flinch he’d been unable to control after Rick’s last sentence.

“Rick. Dave,” Hank mumbled.

“It’s been, what? A year?” Dave said, wedging himself in to casually lean in the open window.

“Six months.”

“Huh,” Dave replied. “Feels like longer than that.”

“Yeah,” Hank said. Because it both did and it didn’t.