They Never Saved Me a Seat, So I Built My Own Table novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Ask First

I did not answer Tommy's post.

I turned the phone face down on my desk and spent the afternoon on the northern routes, because the routes were the only thing in my life that made sense.

By six the office had emptied out.

I stayed because my apartment had one chair and a kettle, and the office had light.

Seth stayed too, at his desk across the room, with his sleeves pushed up and a pencil behind his ear.

At seven he stood and stretched.

"I'm calling it," he said. "You're allowed to stay, but the building turns the heat off at seven thirty."

"I'll go now."

"Okay." He picked up his jacket and then stopped. "Can I ask you something? You can say no."

I looked up.

"Which way is your apartment?"

"Two blocks down. The gray building with the green door."

"I'm parked that way. Do you want company, or do you want to walk alone?"

Nobody had asked me that in four years.

They had always just walked next to me, or ahead of me, or without me.

"Company is fine," I said.

"Fine yes, or fine whatever?"

I laughed again, and it surprised me twice in one day. "Fine yes."

We went down in the elevator and out through the lobby doors, and the cold hit us at the door.

It was not the warm Texas night I had arrived in.

Overnight a cold front had come down from the north, and the temperature had dropped thirty degrees.

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