“You promise?”
His phone buzzed. A text from his brother, Bruce: “You awake?”
He buzzed Chloe’s apartment.
He hung up. But the knot in his chest didn’t loosen. The next afternoon, Ray visited Bruce. They sat in the facility’s garden, the jacaranda trees dropping purple blossoms onto the cracked pavement. Bruce was in a wheelchair, a tartan blanket over his lap. His hands trembled as he tried to lift a cup of tea.
“Because I don’t know how to stop,” Ray said.
But now, in the stillness of his one-bedroom flat in Sydney’s western suburbs, something was wrong. He could feel it like a splinter under his skin.
And for the first time in a long time, that felt like enough. End.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: “New job. Warehouse in Botany. 8 p.m. Don’t be late.”
