“Get out. Right now. Before I call the cops.”

“Fire me. Kick me out. Scream at me. Just don’t cut me out like this, Shaw. You’re my best friend, ok?”

“All right. I’m calling the cops.”

North surged forward, but Shaw danced back, and the fear and rage in Shaw’s face made North falter. “Shaw, please. Hit me. Beat the living shit out of me. Whatever you’ve got to do, please, do it, just don’t do this.”

Shaw was fumbling with his phone. It was obvious that he was trying to unlock it. It was equally obvious that he couldn’t because of how upset he was. He threw a look at North and shook his head. “Jesus, North. Hit you? You think that’s the way to make things right?” He turned his gaze back to the phone. “Now who’s fucking pathetic?” He jammed on the screen a few more times and then threw his head back and screamed, “Fuck.”

It was that sound, the devastation in it, that sheared through North. He reached out and wrapped one hand around Shaw’s, around the phone, holding on even when Shaw tried to jerk away, and said, “It’s ok. You don’t have to—I’ll just go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

For one last moment, he allowed himself the heat of Shaw’s hand, the smoothness of his skin, the tension in tendon and bone and muscle. Then North released Shaw, who stumbled back, shaking out his fingers as though North’s touch had burned.

North left.

At the bottom of the stairs, he didn’t turn fast enough, and his shoulder collided with the wall. In the kitchen, he hip-checked the counter. He thought about the wheel of smoked cheddar and Shaw saying they were starting a new diet, and at that thought, something shook North so hard that he had to catch himself on the door jamb. It was just cheese. Just fucking stupid cheese. And he had to wipe his eyes because something was wrong with them, because he couldn’t even see the door.

Somehow he made it outside. Somehow he made it to the Grand Caravan, and as he slid into the seat, as he breathed in the smell of wet upholstery and old stains, another of those tremendous quakes rolled through him, and he had to grip the wheel. He stared out. The streetlights fluttered like moth wings. At the end of the papery tunnel of light, everything ended at a wall of darkness.

North had to go home. His husband was waiting. Tuck was waiting. And for a moment, that thought was so terrible that North envisioned driving the Caravan at full speed and crashing into that wall of darkness, he envisioned shattering against it, he envisioned a sudden, final end.

But he waited. He waited two hours with the mothlight of the old sodium lamps playing across the dash, across the wheel, across the backs of his hands. He waited until the lights went out in the rooms above the Borealis offices. He waited, and Matty Fennley never came out. One final quake rolled through North as he jittered the key into the ignition. And then he drove home.