Page 75 of The Crush
Isabel
I’m waiting for him when he steps out from the darkness, my arms resting my knees as I sit on the front porch steps in one of his old sweatshirts.
For the few moments before he sees me, I get to seehim. The ways his shoulders are slumped, his steps slow, his breathing unsteady. See the way he’s struggling simply to keep his head up as he finds his way.
When he does see me, he doesn’t seem surprised. If anything, he seems relieved to not have to go any farther, dragging himself the last few paces until he’s able to drop down on the step beside me. I lean into him, he leans back, and for a while, neither of us say anything. Nothing that doesn’t need to be said. And nothing that does.
“There were some kids messing around by the cattle barns,” he says finally, slipping a small backpack from his shoulder and setting it on the step below. “They got spooked by one of the lights and took off.”
He unzips the bag, and I see it’s full of metal noisemakers, bang snaps, and sparklers. I roll my eyes and mutter, “Happy Halloween.”
He nods, and I can feel the way he’s still shaking with how close I’m sitting. When he starts searching the bag, I would bet anything that he’s already done it once.
“Could’ve gotten hurt,” Daniel scoffs, zipping the backpack up and tossing it onto the porch with a loudthump. No longer occupied with the bag, his now free right hand comes to rest on my leg, thumb nervously brushing over the denim of my hastily pulled-on jeans. His eyes, however, stay on the darkness—watching, assessing. Searching again and again.
So I try again, too.
“Is that why you’re out here, Danny? Why you’re not sleeping?” I ask softly, hoping he’ll give me an answer. “You don’t think it’s safe?”
His jaw clenches, his hand turning and lying open so my palm can rest in his. I inch closer, my head tucking into the space beneath his chin. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t have to. Still, I wonder…
The dreams. The DEA. The dead.
How many things can you leave unsaid before you stop saying anything at all?
The Clock
Fatigue was starting to feel like a friend. A partner to keep pace with me as I moved from task to task, lingering no matter how hard I tried to wave it away.
It was persistent. Hovering nearby, waiting for an opportunity to assert itself. So constant that some nights I almost hated to sleep at all, hated to give those few hours an opening to let me know how tired I really was. As if I needed reminding.
I was surviving on coffee, remembering to start a new pot even when I forgot to eat. I’m not sure when I stopped tasting it, stopped caring if it was even hot as long as it was strong.
Each cup acted like a log sheet of my time.One more hour. One more cup. One more hour. One more cup.On and on until the drip ran dry, until I was so fidgety that I had no choice but to take a walk. True exhaustion and false exhilaration echoing with each step, whether it was on carpet or concrete.
I should have gone to bed. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the work, too focused to even remove my badge as I hunched over my coffee table and the carefully organized stacks of papers atop it.
Never have been able to leave something unfinished.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Had the clock on the wall always been so loud? Had it always moved so fast? Maybe it was broken.
Maybe I could fix it.
“Danny.”
My head jerks up at the sound of my mamá’s voice, and I squint at that same loud clock just to ground myself.
She shouldn’t be here. It’s too late.
But she is. She’s standing in the light from the front room lamp, a soft smile on her face, her curly hair rustling in the breeze from an open window, her left hand straying to the pocket of her burnt-orange apron. The warm glow almost seems to fade in and out as I look at her with sleep-strained eyes. I squeeze them shut as they start to water, and my chest starts to ache.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Danny,” she says again, crossing the threshold so she can stand beside me where I sit on the sofa and place a gentle, encouraging hand on my back. “It’s time to go now. You’re done here.”
“Iamdone.” I lean forward, my hands quick to close stuffed case files and sparse reports so she won’t see. “I’m done. I just need to take care of one last thing.”
