I don’t have a bottle. I don’t have one. I don’t have one, or I might.

“Let’s go inside,” Kimberly says.

We’re parked in front of my building. We’ve been sitting in the car for a while, I guess. I don’t know how long. She lays her hand over mine and gently peels my fingers from the wheel.

We climb to my apartment, wash up. When we sit on the couch, it is ostensibly to snuggle, but we are too wound up to find comfort. I put my arm around her. My knuckles stroke her upper arm. She leans against my chest.

“Your heart is racing,” she observes.

Don’t I know it.

“Did we wimp out?” I whisper. “Did we walk away from a fight?”

“No,” she says.

But we did. We did. We did, and I don’t know why we did. Or how.

I unwrap my arm from her and lean forward, resting my head on my knuckles, still clenched. “I didn’t think it would really happen. That we’d lose control.”

“It’s been happening,” she says.

“I thought we could keep it peaceful.” My fists sit like rocks on my knees. “I should have been able to stop it.”

“Okay, Superman,” Kimberly says. “Tell me another one.”

The burst of my laughter is unexpected and strange. I clamp a fist to my lips. Hmm. I still can’t unclench my fingers.

“It’s Sloan’s fault,” Kimberly insists. “No justice, no peace?”

Great. She’s gonna throw that back in my face right now? I glare at her. “They’re just words.”

“How can anything be just words?” She closes her eyes. “Most of the time words are all we have.”

I don’t know if I agree with that, but I also know we shouldn’t be talking about this. Not tonight.

“I think he wanted a riot,” Kimberly says. “I think he was hoping for one.”

“That’s nuts.”

She shrugs. “It’s better press, isn’t it? You notice he didn’t stay for the actual announcement. He knew what would happen.”

My brain swirls and glitches over the coldness in her voice. “That’s unfair.”

“Whatever.”

I pull out my phone. There is much still to do tonight, apart from tending our own wounds. Let us not make new ones.

“We have to work,” I say. “I’ll check in with legal aid, you do social media?”

Kimberly nods. We open all the tech. Between our phones, my tablet, my laptop, and the TV, we can keep tabs on the conversation across platforms.

The coverage on TV is more chilling than usual. Maybe because we were there. One shot they keep returning to is the steps where we stood, which now is lined with people seated in rows with their hands bound.