“Aren’t you cold?” he says when he comes up. She’s on the couch with her arms crossed and her knees up to her chest.

“I don’t need you to save me,” she says.

He frowns and shakes his head. “Wasn’t my plan,” he says. He looks at the bottle, the amount that is gone, or rather the amount that is left. “Company?” he says.

“I actually don’t want to talk about it,” Kateri says. “You should go home.”

He shakes his head again. “It’s late,” he says, but she can’t tell if he’s agreeing to leave.

“Were you ever married?” she asks.

“Was your ex here?” he asks her.

“No, no,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

“What happened?” she asks.

Hurt sits in the chair opposite the couch and settles a minute before he answers her. “She died,” he says.

“Oh fuck,” Kateri says. “Really? Because now is not a good time to fuck with me.”

“Fifteen years ago,” he says.

“How?” she asks, and then she says, “Sorry.”

“She had breast cancer,” Hurt says.

“Joel,” she says, and tilts her head to the side. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” he says. “It’s still hard,” he says.

She remembers his son, now a grown man, but he must have been just a little boy when his mother died. Hurt must have raised him alone. She doesn’t feel drunk anymore. She doesn’t feel anything but empty and clawed at. “How old are you?” she asks Hurt.

“Forty-five,” he says.

“She was so young.”

He nods and then stands up. “You want some tea?” he asks.

And she sees him all at once, what it is that blows through him, the hollowness about his soul. She nods her head, because she’s afraid if she speaks she’ll cry, and she hears him go into the kitchen, fill the kettle, look in the cupboards for things that will soothe her instead of make her into his prey. He brings her a steaming mug of orange spice tea, and he’s put honey it in because he’s seen her do that at work, and he stays in the chair across from her, doesn’t sit next to her or try to get close to her at all.

“I’ll stay out here,” he says, “if you want to go to bed.”

“I won’t sleep,” she says.

He shrugs. “I’ll stay out here anyway,” he says.

But sometime after two, her body gives in and she curls onto her side on the couch, exhausted, cried out, and Hurt stays there in the living room, awake all night, sitting in the chair, and then sitting on the floor with his back against the couch while she sleeps. He watches the TV with the volume on about three, and she can’t comprehend how he can even hear.

When she wakes up at seven, the Today show has started.

“Have you been there all night?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. He gets up, stiff, and twists his back.

“You didn’t have to,” she says.