He Helped Me Stack the Chairs

he stays till close now. not every night. enough that I notice which nights he doesn't.

I lock up around two. tonight he didn't leave when I called last round. he started flipping chairs up onto the tables, slow, like it bought him another ten minutes. it did.

we didn't really talk. the dishwasher, the rain, whether the one streetlight outside has always buzzed like that. his sleeve was pushed up. I kept losing the thread of my own sentences.

there's a moment when the lights are half off and the room is just the two of you and the hum of the cooler, and nobody has decided anything yet, and everything is still possible because nothing's been said out loud. I stayed in that moment longer than I should have. I wiped the same six inches of bar three times.

then he said goodnight. just that. held the door a second, the cold coming in, and I was sure he'd say the other thing. he didn't. I didn't either.

I drove home with the windows down even though it was freezing, because I needed the noise.

it's the not-saying I'll reread tomorrow. funny how you can reread something nobody ever wrote down.