A Small Weather Between Them

They walked the long way because he said the short way felt impatient. The street had left-over rain in the gutters, thin mirrors where traffic lights wobbled. He kept to the curb side. She kept to the dry cracks, reading them like lines on a palm.

They traded stories the way people trade coins—small, shiny, not the heavy ones. He told the one about the teacher who used to whistle through his teeth; she told the one about the cat that came with her apartment. When he laughed, he looked at her. When she laughed, she looked at the street.

A bus sighed at the corner. He reached for the pull of her sleeve—just a guiding touch, a suggestion about the puddle ahead—and stopped a breath early so it wouldn’t be a touch at all. She stepped around the water on her own, already somewhere else in her head. His compliment burned a hole in his pocket; he kept it there, warming his hand.

“Next month,” he said, pretending to be casual, “there’s a thing at the museum. The late-night one.”
She smiled in the agreeable way people smile at weather. “You’ll love that,” she said, and the you landed like a coat returned to its hanger.

They matched pace without trying. He edited jokes as he went, shaving the pieces that might snag. Her phone lit up and she read the name without letting her face change shape. The crosswalk counted down. He imagined reaching for it—her hand—like you reach for a doorknob in the dark because you already know the door. Instead, he adjusted his backpack strap.

At her block, the trees shook off a last bit of rain. She pointed at the sky and said how it always smelled like pennies after a storm. He learned the fact and saved it, the way you save an address you’ll never visit.

“This was nice,” she said, and meant it. He knew she meant it. She waved in a way that could belong to any decade of friendship and took the first step backward, keeping the distance gentle, careful not to tear anything invisible.

When she turned, he watched her go long enough to make it a choice. The street kept its mirrors. He saw himself in one—there, a blur—two footsteps becoming one set again, and understood without drama that he’d been walking beside her, not toward her. The air cooled a degree. Somewhere a light changed and no one hurried. He put the compliment back in his pocket and crossed with the red.