I cut the engine of my motorcycle and sat there for a moment longer than necessary, listening to that silence settle, feeling something I couldn’t quite name—something between calm and emptiness. Then I grabbed my helmet, stepped off the bike, and reached for the saddlebag.
That’s when I heard him.
Not clearly at first—just fragments of a conversation drifting across the open space, pulled toward me by the stillness of the night.
“…how much is it?” the voice said.
I glanced over without thinking. A young guy stood a few parking spots away, leaning against a faded blue pickup truck that had seen better days. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. He wore a fast-food uniform, the kind with a visor that never quite sits right, and his name tag was slightly crooked, like it had been adjusted too many times during a shift that had lasted too long.
“Okay… okay, I can cover it,” he said quickly, pacing now, one hand pressed to his forehead. “No, I said I can cover it. I’ll figure it out, I promise.”
His voice had that thin edge to it—the kind people use when they’re trying to sound stronger than they feel, when they’re holding something together that’s already starting to fall apart.
