After I flush, I wash my hands the best I can around the bandage and pull my fingerless gloves back on. Margo would never have let me work in knit gloves. They’re already pilling and full of crumbs and coffee dust that won’t shake out all the way. My fingers feel stiff. I know I should wash the cut and change the bandage, but I left all that stuff in the car.

“Okay, do me a favor,” Adam says when I get back from the bathroom. He’s pulling the futon away from the wall. “Grab over there.”

I don’t know how to say I’m leaving.

He pushes the top of the futon forward and picks up the edge of the bench at the same time. My arms are shorter and my hand hurts, but I reach as far as I possibly can to make it work, because he asked me to. The frame unlatches and the futon flattens. I feel the stretch in my muscles even after I’ve let go.

Adam climbs on the futon and opens a cupboard under the bookshelves behind it, pulling out sheets and a blanket and three pillows. The blanket is fluffy and the sheets are crisp. Three pillows. But he wanted my help with the futon, so it’s probably not something he does every night.

I stare at my boots by the door, think through the motions it will take to slip my feet in and run.

“You know, you can take your gloves off,” Adam says, and I go so quickly from being worried about leaving to worrying that he’s noticed how gross my gloves are—that he might not want me in his bed, on his clean sheets.

I stare at the pillows and think about the dark outside. I don’t want to be anywhere. The blanket looks warm. “I cut my hand,” I say, like it’s some kind of apology. “At the campground. Firewood.”

Adam climbs off the futon. “Give it,” he says, curling his fingers at me.

I place my hand in his.

He peels my glove away. Winces when he sees dried blood on the bandage, but he unwraps it without hesitation. Leads me to the bathroom, runs water in the sink until it’s warm and guides my hand into the stream. “Just let it rinse for a sec,” he says, raising his eyebrows, eyes sad, like he’s sorry I’m hurt.

My cut is sort of puffy and the water stings, but when I flex my fingers, I feel like the ice I’ve been carrying in my bones starts to melt.

Adam opens the medicine cabinet, lines up iodine and bandages and medical tape along the side of the sink. He smells like soap and night air and a little bit like Matty, like they use the same shampoo, or maybe that’s just what men smell like when you get close enough.