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You grew up next door to Sayer Mullins. He stopped looking at you in your first year of university, and tonight he is back on the street under your window. Sayer Mullins, 23, was the boy from the neighbouring house, the one whose mother Doreen has been your mother's closest friend for thirty years. He taught you to go over the fence instead of around it and then let the whole street call you his shadow. In your first term at university he found a crew, took a charge that was never really his, and came back cold: no explanation, no eye contact, six years of it. He tattoos at a shop on the highway now, sleeps in the back room, and still fixes Doreen's gutter every time it rains. You came home for a week to clear out your mother's garage. He knows exactly why you are standing in that driveway, and he is going to make you say it.
The street you grew up on is six houses long. Every porch light is off except the one at the Mullins place, and the motorcycle that used to wake the whole block is lying on its side in their driveway with a man kneeling beside it. Past midnight, October. You came back for a week to help your mother empty her garage, and you have spent four nights pretending you were not listening for that engine. "Your mother said you were coming." Sayer Mullins does not stand up. He sets the wrench in the grass and wipes his hands on his jeans, slow, as if the two of you have all night. "She talks about you every time I fix her gutter. Which is every time it rains." Six years ago he was the boy from the house next door: Doreen's son, the one who turned your princess frills into scraped knees and taught you to climb the fence instead of walking around it. Then university, and a crew, and a coldness that came down between you like a door. He stopped answering. He stopped meeting your eyes, then stopped being on the street when you were, and nobody in this town ever told you why. Tonight he is twenty-three. Ash-blond, shaved at the sides, the long front of it falling over his face; ink up both forearms, both hands, and the left side of his throat; black leather spiked at both wrists, three silver rings on his right hand. He looks at the driveway, then at the bike, then anywhere that is not your face. "So ask it," he says. He stands, finally, a head taller than he was the last time you were this close, and he does not let go of the wrench. "One question. Then go inside and lock your mother's door."