Page 7 of Even After Sunset

I tell him anyway. Mainly because I don’t know what else to fill the silence with. I pour us each a bowl of cereal as I talk and place his in front of him with a carton of milk and a spoon. When I’m finished, he still doesn’t react. Which is weird, because the Silas I knew was a huge talker. He was the bold leader. The boy with grandiose ideas and plans that the rest of the kids followed everywhere. I was the quiet, uncertain one. The one nobody noticed.

To this day, I still have no idea why he did.

He pours milk over his cereal, still holding that stupid cigarette like it’s his lifeline.

“Sorry if I freaked you out last night,” he finally says, still not looking up.

“No, it's fine. It’s totally okay.” My voice sounds higher pitched than normal. Extra perky. I try to rein it in a notch. “It’s just I had no idea what was going on at first. And I didn’t recognize you, but then I figured out you must have just, you know… just randomly crashed in here after… uh, after the party.”

After they kicked you out of the party, is what I really mean.When you showed up drunk and looking for trouble.

He doesn’t say anything; just eats his cereal, gaze lowered. I use the opportunity to study him more closely—to notice the slight bump along the bridge of his nose that wasn’t there before, the darker color of his hair: thick and wavy and slept-in, and the way his long lashes look like tiny fans against his pale skin. It’s the only thing about him, I decide, that is still boyish in any way.

But he does still look like Silas. Sort of. He’s just a harder, edgier version of his old self. Wider shoulders, bulkier muscles, and hands that look like they’ve been used for so much more than normal every day things. They’re scarred and rough, his knuckles slightly redder on his right hand. And then, of course, there’s the tattoo: a physical reminder that I really know nothing about him anymore—because if that fateful afternoon had never happened when we were ten, I would know the whole story behind his tattoo today: the why and the when and the where. I might even have been there with him when he had it done. But now it’s as much of a mystery to me as he is.

“Are you done staring?”

He doesn’t even look up when he says it.

I tense. “I wasn’t staring,” I shoot back, even though I totally was. But how the heck can he tell? Did he develop fish-eye vision or something?

I try to deflect the conversation. “I was just thinking; it’s kind of cool that you fell asleep in Connecticut and woke up in Massachusetts.”

He jolts upright. He looks more awake than he has since I found him.

“We’re inMassachusetts?”

“Yup.” I raise both arms in a jazz-hands pose. “Surpriiise!”

He actually scowls, and for a second he does look boyish again—the way I remember him. But then he bangs the back of his head against the window and mutters, “Fuck me.”

Which, well… isn’t exactly boy-ish. Or endearing.

He stands up and walks over to the window, dragging a hand through his already messy hair as he opens the curtains with the other. When he leans over the counter to peer outside, his T-shirt hikes up. And my jaw drops in horror.

“Oh my gosh, Silas…What happened?”

I’m beside him now, lifting his T-shirt to reveal a massive bruise—like almost the size of a dinner plate. His entire torso is a mottled mess of deep purples and pinks and yellowish-browns.

He whirls around and backs up all in one movement, pulling the fabric out of my grip. He looks annoyed; his eyes more silver now than grey as they glare back at me. I don’t understand why he’s mad at me for being concerned about—

“Wait. Was it…” I take a step back. “Was it the guys at the party that did this to you?When they kicked you out?”

He rolls his eyes and combs a hand through his hair again, turning his body sideways to push past me. His bare arm brushes against mine and the brief warmth of his skin makes him seem more real to me in that moment than he has since I found him last night.

“You’re still as dramatic as ever, I see.”

He tries to throw the line callously at me as he reaches to grab his cigarette off the table. But the fact that he has to force the words through gritted teeth makes it obvious he’s working hard to restrain whatever emotion he’s really feeling.

“I need a smoke,” he mumbles as he strides down the galley and out the door, letting it slam closed behind him.

My instincts scream at me to go after him, but I force myself to wait. To give him space. I mean, already within five minutes of our second interaction in seven years, I managed to embarrass him and send him fleeing.

I keep myself busy brushing my teeth and changing and checking the directions to the festival grounds in Provincetown. I’m sitting at the table on my laptop when I hear a phone message alert, only it’s not coming from my phone. It’s coming from a phone lying on the opposite seat cushion.

Silas’ phone.

I glance at it, and when I see the first line of the text, I can’t help myself: I pick it up and read the rest.

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