Gemma exits and hauls the bags over to South Railway, up and over the tracks. A cold front’s come in while she’s been out, blowing the belt of her coat around her. Times like this, when the wind comes down from the north, you can feel the spectre of winter, even this time of year. You can smell the thirty-below waiting, breathing inside the breeze.

She reaches Ava’s building. A train’s horn sounds from the east. The groceries were only thirty and change, so Gemma’s still got a hundred bucks left. If she can hitch into the city tomorrow, she can get a room for the night. Snag a couple boys to buy a few more days and figure out the rest from there. Maybe it’s time to skip town for real. She knows a girl in Montreal who once told Gemma to visit. Maybe. Fuck, they shut the buses down, though … And the train is always booked up in summer. And even if she could rustle up flight money, she’d need to get an ID … Ach, whatever, that’s tomorrow’s fire! In the meantime, she has one more night to spend with Ava, and Gemma wants it to be beautiful.

She enters the building and Olive lets her into the apartment. “I’m good,” Olive says happily, though Gemma has not asked her a thing. Olive is watching TV on her phone. “You want a beer?” she asks, and Gemma tells her no, thank you, she’s not feeling particularly well, and she thinks she needs to lie down.

Gemma half wakes in the early afternoon to brilliant sun coming through the shades. Sounds of movement come from the living room. It must be Olive and Ava, getting ready to leave for Olive’s appointment.

It comes to Gemma one final time, behind lidded eyes, floating on the border between sleep and consciousness, that what she wants in this exact moment, more than anything, is for Ava to open the door and kneel by the bed and put a hand on her back and say something like, “Shhh. Hey. I know sometimes I get weird. I’m sorry. I want you to stay. For a little while longer, anyway. If you want to stay, I want you to stay.” Gemma knew last night these were the contours of what she wanted, and now she knows it again one final time. She dreams of Ava opening that door and appearing behind her in this room.

So, when an hour later Gemma’s phone alarm goes off, she sits up in an empty apartment and puts her head in her hands. Okay, love. Okay. Okay. You had a good feeling about this girl and you came here to check it out and you had a place to stay for a few days. And now you know. And you’ll go on. As you do.