Page 19 of Hard Rain

“It was a push.”

Axel looked over at him then. Long enough for Whip to remember how tight they’d been back in school.

“Kinda,” Axel muttered.

“Thank god they finally put them in the same high school,” Carrie yelled, lifting her beer mug.

The rest of the room erupted with a variety of agreements.

Whip remembered.

It had been the best fistfight he’d never planned on having.

The locker room fight he’d had with Jensen Cramer and his gang of bullies. How Axel had shown up out of the blue and waded into the crowd of boys. Bloody knuckles and a few black eyes later, they’d become best friends through the rest of twelfth grade.

By the time they finally left Tauber Pool Hall, the rain had settled back into a steady cold drizzle over Fern.

Axel walked beside him with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, shoulders looser now than they’d been all week—like a river once it got beyond the rapids.

People had stopped them three separate times on the way out. Old football stories. Questions about work. Somebody inviting them hunting next weekend. Another guy asking Axel if he still owed him twenty bucks from high school.

Axel had laughed more tonight than he had since May left.

Not forced either.

Real.

Good to hear it.

The drive to the house stayed quiet. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just tired. Windshield wipers dragged steadily across the glass.

Whip pulled into the gravel drive a little after midnight.

The house greeted them exactly the same way they’d left it.

Dark porch.

Wet steps.

Light over the stove still on inside.

Axel stepped through the front door first.

And just like that, the ease disappeared again.

The silence inside the house landed differently than the silence at the pool hall. Heavier somehow. Smaller.

Whip hung his keys beside the door automatically while Axel stopped near the hallway leading toward the spare room.

The black garbage bags still lined the wall exactly where they’d been all week.

Nothing unpacked.

Nothing moved.

Axel noticed him noticing.

For a second, neither of them said anything.