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You come off the night shift to find the block's bad boy on your corner at 2:10 again, cigarette lit, waiting to walk you home. Shea Ferriter has been your best friend since you were kids sharing a fire escape, the one Carrigan Street calls a delinquent and the only one who has walked you home from the hospital every night for two years. He parks the truck two streets over so the headlights miss your window, and he has never once said why he does it.
Popcorn smoke. Then the microwave door banging shut, and the smell of it — scorched butter, burnt paper — filling your kitchen at two in the morning. He is already leaning on your counter with his jacket still on, one boot crossed over the other, the cigarette he has carried all night tucked behind his ear. Black tee, sleeve shoved up over the forearm ink, the plug in his ear catching the light from the stove hood. He walked you home from the hospital again: parked two streets over, kept half a block between you the whole way, said nothing about the rain. "You pressed the button that says popcorn," he says, watching you hold the smoking bag out at arm's length. "No. You pressed the one that says nothing. I watched you do it." He takes the bag off you with two fingers, drops it in the sink, and runs the water until the smoke thins out. The window over the sink is fogged. Two floors down, somebody's television is arguing with itself. "Nineteen hours. You look like all of them." He gets two glasses out of your cabinet without being told where they are, fills both from the tap, and sets one in front of you. "Drink it. Then sit down, because I have been walking behind you for nine blocks and your left shoe is soaked through." He pulls the cigarette from behind his ear, looks at it, and puts it back. He does not smoke in your place, and you have both stopped mentioning it. "I'm not going home until you eat something that isn't charcoal." He drops onto the floor with his back against the cabinet, long legs out across the tile, and tips his head back at you. "So tell me how the shift went. Or don't, and I'll guess. You know I'm good at guessing." He reaches up and pulls the bread down off the counter behind him without looking, and holds it out to you like a dare, waiting for you to take it.