He stands at the door of a house in a quiet neighbourhood-- a nice neighbourhood-- and there’s a kind of comfort in that. The address hadn’t been difficult to find. He doesn’t knock on the door just yet, though. Part of him doesn’t want to be here. He should walk away, not disturb whatever peace she might have found here. This is the house. This is her house.

And he darkens the door with his shadow.

Eight years ago, he opened the door to her concerned eyes. She gaped at him for a full minute at the swollen, bruised and broken skin of his face, shocked into disbelief, and half of him wished he hadn’t opened the door to her. She’s worried and he already felt bad. “What the hell, Rust.” her hand reached for his face, “What--”

He ducked away from her, avoiding her gaze. “Don’t.”

He left the door open for her, turning his back to return to his boxes. Cassie stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She noticed the boxes. “What’s going on, Rust?” her voice was so quiet, the glitter-gold seemed dim.

“I quit.”

The silence between them was unbearable. It had been a long time since a silence had felt like that between them. Cassie faltered, shaking her head slightly. “I thought you were just suspended, I--”

“I fucked Maggie.” he interrupted and the words seem so sour in his mouth. They’re spat out like bile, full of bitterness and self-loathing. Cassie took a step back, stunned. “Marty found out. We fought. I quit.”

Another silence. Rust didn’t look at her, he lit a cigarette and took a long drag. Shit. That bitterness bubbled away in his stomach, acrid and vile. He wondered what she thought of him, if it was any worse than what he thought of himself and in her silence, he couldn’t seem to tell. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He heard her shift a little on the spot, she wrung her hands: “You’re leaving.” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah.” he exhaled.

“You can’t.”

He looked up. She was looking at the floor. Had she even looked at him? What did she think of him? No. He couldn’t stand this, not from her. But then… he made no move to clarify. Maybe it was the anger in his stomach, maybe he thought too much of her silence.

“Because you say so?” he spat back, brushing past her. “You think ‘cause you say so I’m going to just stop and stay here?”

“I just--”

“’cause you’re so important,” he scowled, “You’re no different to anyone else, it’s all about you. That’s all any of you are. It’s all about you. You don’t mean shit. I mean, why are you here, Cassie? Really? Why are you ever here? What am I to you?”

Her breathing was coming fast and he knew she was trying to stop herself from crying. She finally looked up at him then, her eyes were glossy. The sour taste in his mouth was stronger now. She would make him want to stay and he couldn’t let her. Not after this. “You’re my friend, Rust.”

His jaw tensed. Friend. Marty and Maggie were his friends too.

“Bullshit.” he said slowly, still glowering at her. He sniffed indignantly. “I’m just some broken nobody you think you can fix so you can feel better about yourself.”

He sparked something in her chest, Cassie fixed him with a look: harsh and defiant. “Stop it.” her words came from behind gritted teeth. “Don’t say that.”

“I’ll say whatever the fuck I want,” he told her flatly. “If you never liked it then you knew where the door was. I’ve had enough of all of you.” He gestured, “Fuck all this, man.” he continued. “Fuck Marty, fuck Maggie, fuck everything and fuck you too, Cassie.”

Her voice was louder, quivering. She was so close to tears. She stepped towards him, a hand reaching for him. “I don’t want you to go.”

He caught her wrist, “You don’t get what you want, Cassie.” he told her.

“Why are you being like this?” she asked. “I’ve done nothing to you.”

He didn’t answer her.

“I’m your friend.” her voice was breaking, rose gold shattering with every syllable. “I’ve only ever wanted to be your friend. I care about you even though you don’t care about yourself, even if you don’t want anyone to care about you.”

“You care,” he said coldly. “’cause it helps you sleep at night. ‘cause you’ve deluded yourself enough to think you can make anything good in this world. It’s bullshit. This whole fucking planet is a cesspool of shit. You think you can make it all better? You’re wrong. You can’t do anything right, so you know what?”

He gripped her wrist tightly, pulled her close to him. His words are like cold, rusted iron: “Go play happy fucking families with your boyfriend, go live in your happy fucking dream-world and leave me the fuck alone.”

She inhaled so sharply it felt like a knife in the gut. He knew he’d hurt her with that. He firmly shoved her arm away and stepped back from her. Tears pricked at her eyes but he couldn’t look at them. He could barely look at her at all. Somewhere, beneath it all, he loathed himself for talking to her like this.

“Don’t come back here again before I’m gone. I don’t want to see you again. We’re done.”

For a moment, she was motionless. There was nothing but the sound of their breathing: Rust’s heavy and slow, Cassie’s shallow and quivering. She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t reach for him again or say another word. A tear slipped from her eye as she turned and left, leaving him alone.

That was the last time he saw her.

He steels himself. Knocks. The wait is almost unbearable. A girl answers the door. She’s barely older than thirteen, dark brown eyes and blonde hair that falls over her face. He takes a step back, whatever he’d done to brace himself for this opening is lost by the sight of her. His mouth falters, no words come out: she looks so much like her. All he can do is stare.

The girl takes a step back, clearly uncomfortable by the sight of him.

“Aunt Cassie?” she calls behind her.

Aunt. Her niece. He remembers. She had flown home when the baby had come. Returned with pictures and a joy about her that blinded him with light. And he’d remembered his daughter and he couldn’t look at the pictures. And then she’s there-- her hurried pace slowing as soon as she sees him. The familiar taste returns to the back of his throat and this time, he doesn’t choke on it. He finds himself realising he’s missed it.

There’s a tightness around her eyes he doesn’t remember her having. Her hair is short, faint lines mark around her mouth and eyes. As she reaches the doorway, she stares for what feels like a long time before she gently directs the girl back inside the house. “Go watch your cousin, okay?”

The girl looks at Cassie and then to Rust before nodding, heading back into the house. Rust swallows thickly and looks away.

“I should have called,” he says finally.

He looks at her again. Her mouth is a thin straight line as she steps towards him and before he can say or do much else, she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him into a hug. He still doesn't choke on her. He lets those sounds, colours and tastes wash over him like parched sand washed by the first wave of the sea. Her breath wavers in her throat, he can feel it fluttering; words on the tip of her tongue she can’t say. Gently, he places his hand on her back.

Cassie makes coffee and they sit at her kitchen table. For a long time, there’s silence, punctured only by the voices of two children outside and the low hum of the refrigerator. She pushes an old mug towards him for an ashtray and he sits and smokes and tries to find a starting point.

“Your niece looks a lot like you,” he comments, his gaze lifting to the window. They sit on a tree swing. The boy’s feet dangle in the air, the girl kicks up dust as she gently pushes the swing with her foot. A folded paper shape twists in her hands.

“Caity. She’s Adrian’s oldest,” she says with a small smile.

He utters the name under this breath, his brow furrowing for a moment in thought. “Named after your mom, right?” he pauses again, “Caity. Catherine.”

“Yeah. She wanted to come visit for the summer.” she says with a nod, “My brother and his wife visited just over a week ago. They’re doing some sight-seeing while I look after her.”

“And your boy. He’s...” he nods with his head, he can’t say it. He’s your son, isn’t he?

“Cole.” she says, “He’s six.”

Her answer burns. His eyes glance up at her and she sits with the smallest of smiles on her lips. Fuck. He doesn’t know how to process that. After how he’d spoken to her, she went and named her kid after him? A wave of emotion hits him and it threatens to drown him. Rust takes another long drag on his cigarette, smokes it down to the nub before he can do anything else.

“You’re married,” he remarks quietly.

“Widowed,” comes the gentle reply, she's not looking at him. “Two years ago. He, uh-- it was a heart attack. Undiagnosed heart condition.”

There’s a wedding invitation in a drawer; his name written on the envelope but no address to send it to. She’s still kept it. She doesn’t know why.

“I’m sorry.” his voice is barely above a whisper. He lights another cigarette. Of course. Of course, he missed it. He missed her wedding and missed the funeral. For a moment, he pictures each day, the contrast of her face. He can’t quite see the joy of how she would have looked on her wedding day, not anymore. It’s the grief he can picture more clearly. It hurts to think of her like that. “What was--”

“Rust.” she interrupts him, leaning forward in her seat. He catches her gaze for a moment and quickly looks away. His comments and questions trouble her. One after the other, as if he’s on autopilot. He hasn’t said a single thing about himself since he stepped through the door. Nothing about their argument, about why he left, where he went. “Where did you go?”

“Back to Alaska,” he says finally.

“I thought you didn’t like the cold?”

“I don’t.”

“And you went anyway.” she pulls in a breath, taking a sip of coffee. “I.. I wanted to write, call, something. After a while, I found out what had happened-- I don’t blame you for wanting to get out. That wasn’t fair, what happened.”

“Yeah, well.” he shrugs, shakes his head. “You still talk to them?” he asks, and then after a short pause, a little more carefully. “Marty?”

Cassie exhales, “Maggie, yeah. I talk to her sometimes, it’s not really the same, though.” she pauses, pursing her lips for a moment. “I haven’t seen Marty since the funeral. He came to that. I think he just avoids me for the most part.”

“He’ll think you blame him.” Rust offers with a shrug.

“I do blame him,” Cassie says, unashamed. “He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and I lost my friend.”

Rust looks down. Cassie still watches him carefully before she reaches across the table for his hand. His hand goes limp in hers but she holds it anyway and he still can’t look up.

“You said those things on purpose.” she tells him, “You didn’t mean them, though. Not deep down.”

“Why did you leave anyway?” he asks. “If you knew? Shit, Cassie. You’re one of the most stubborn people I know – you put up with me for all those years. You gotta be stubborn for something like that. But… you just walked out the door.”

“I won’t lie, what you said did hurt. It’s just...” she trails off and sighs softly. “I guess I knew you couldn’t stay. I guess I knew there wouldn’t be anything I would say that would convince you to. You were hurting, Rust. You just… did what you had to do for yourself.”

Rust nods, her words crackle like electricity in his stomach. He wipes his face. He’d lashed out at her and she knew. She didn’t blame him for it, either. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

“Why did you come back, Rust?”

He doesn’t answer her. Maybe he shouldn’t. She has no idea what he plans to do. He takes another drag, still looking down.

“Stay,” she says finally. “Don’t leave like last time.”

He can’t give her the answer he knows she wants to hear.

“You wanna stay for dinner?”

Finally, he can answer. “I can’t.” he says, “I shouldn’t.”

He looks up then. The look on her face already tells him he’s lost the argument.

It’s the most awkward he’s felt in a long time. Her niece keeps texting under the table with a small smile despite Cassie’s insistence on ‘no phones at the table’. Her son stares at him curiously and he can’t look at the boy. He feels out of place, this is too normal for him.

She convinces him to stay the night after dinner. Cassie puts her son to bed and her niece soon follows. He stands silently in her kitchen, drying the dishes she washes, listening to her talk. She talks about her son, her family and with a sad reluctance, her husband. He remembers him vaguely. The last man he knew she was dating before he left and he cringes inside: ’Go play happy fucking families with your boyfriend.’

She talks about her job, how she spends her time, all these little things in her life he doesn’t know about, what he’s missed in eight years. He’s comforted by the fact she’s happy, despite her loss; that she’s doing okay, that she’s remained the same: gentle and kind.

They sit on her porch, looking out onto the backyard. He swigs from a bottle of beer, looking up at the stars. She lives in a quieter neighbourhood, away from a lot of the lights. The sky is clearer here. Not as clear as he’d like but he gets why she moved here. She’s quiet, it’s a nicer kind of silence. A little more comfortable. She’s missed this. He’s missed it too.

Perhaps he should explain, he thinks. He can’t really tell her it’s goodbye but he can at least explain why he’s back. It’s easier than making this his goodbye to her. After everything, he owed her that. And well, he guesses, they just weren’t the two for making goodbyes. They had never been.

“You asked me why I came back,” he says finally. “I got debts.”

“How’d you mean?” she turns her head to look at him.

“You remember that case Marty and I worked on, back in ‘95?”

She pauses for a moment in thought, “Dora Lange, right?” she asks and then frowns in realisation: “You still kept all those pictures and things on your walls afterward. It wasn’t finished.”

“I need to put it right.”

Silence falls once more. She looks at her hands for a moment. “I’d expect nothing less.” Cassie nods, smiling sadly. “You have to do what needs to be done.”

She falls asleep next to him on the sofa and he shifts her, letting her rest on him. The weight of her pressing on him like an anchor and he appreciates it, he always has. Maybe he didn’t thank her enough. It’s one last regret of their friendship he adds to his list.

When he leaves the next day, she presses her phone number on a folded piece of paper into his hand. He dutifully places it in his back pocket but he can’t quite look her in the eye. When she hugs him goodbye, he holds her a little tighter than he realises.

“Come back, okay?” she murmurs into his shoulder. “You know where I am if you need me. You’ll always be welcome here.”

“Thank you,” he tells her. It’s all he can say.

Rust knows it’s a promise he can’t keep. He’s glad she can’t see his face.