The waiting room smells like burnt coffee and mildew. A sticky New Yorker from 2021 clings to my lap, open to a cartoon of two pigeons debating gentrification. The caption: See? Even the rats are moving to Jersey.
He strolls out of the radiation suite looking like a crumpled page smoothed back out. No IV pole, no drama - just him, wearing his trademark smirk like armor. There’s a faint red patch creeping up his neck where the beams hit, and I can tell he’s a little more tired than he’ll admit. But he’s upright. Handling it.
“You look like shit,” I say, because I know he’d hate pity more than honesty.
“Radiation glow,” he says, plopping into the chair next to me. “It’s in this season.” His knees crack like glow sticks - pretty sure this isn’t the cancer, it’s just him - but he sits with grace. His left hand drifts to his throat, almost absent-mindedly. I’ve skimmed the pamphlets. Sore throat. Fatigue. Skin irritation. Maybe some nausea, if you’re lucky. Or unlucky, depending on your vibe.
But Mark? He makes it all look like an inconvenience at best, a punchline at worst.
“They let you keep the gown?” I nod at his outfit - sweatpants, a threadbare Joy Division shirt, no shoes. His socks are neon green, with flamingos.
“Stole it. For my Fashion Week outfit.” He pulls a pouch of honey out of his bag, the kind with a pharmacy label slapped on it. “For throat irritation,” he reads, faux-posh, before squeezing it into his mouth. “Beekeeper’s Kush. Medicinal.”
“You actually like that stuff?”
“It’s not terrible. Better than lidocaine.” He coughs, a quick burst of sound that makes his shoulders jerk. He waves it off like it’s nothing.
“You sure you’re not gonna start levitating? You look like a half-cooked poltergeist.”
He flips me off, then squints at the clock. “Walk me home. I want to impulse buy something cold.”
We hit the street, the humidity clinging like plastic wrap. He moves slower than usual, but steady. His jeans sag a little from the weight he’s lost. Two kids on e-bikes swerve around us, cursing. Mark just grins.
“So,” he says, kicking a gum wad, “Shore this weekend. High tide’s at noon. Perfect timing. If I puke, the fish get brunch.”
“You’re not gonna puke.”
“Not on you, I won’t.” He dodges a construction cone. “We’ll get a seagull before it can get my fries.”
I side-eye him. “Since when do you eat lard?”
“Since my diet’s ‘anything that doesn’t feel like sandpaper going down.’” He pauses at a crosswalk, breath a little shallow. A sheen of sweat glazes his forehead, but he doesn’t look weak. Just tired. The red patch on his neck catches the sun, but it’s not as bad as I’d thought it’d be.
The light changes. He doesn’t move.
“Mark - “
“Jimmy Hoffa’s buried in the sand there, y’know,” he barks over me, lurching forward. “Gonna find him. Ask for union tips.”
I match his pace. “He’d tell you to invest in concrete shoes.”
He laughs, and it almost sounds normal. Almost.
We pass St. Remy’s, the dive bar where we got trashed after his mom’s funeral. His steps falter for half a second. We both pretend not to notice.
“You bringing a swimsuit?” he asks, too loud. “Or you still wearing those tighty-blackies from the Coney Island incident?”
“Burned them. With Molly’s scented candles.”
He snorts. “At least she’s good for arson.”
The unspoken curdles between us. The breakup. The fight about it clawing its way between us. You’re acting like a stranger, he’d spat. The mug shattered. It all echoes in my skull.
“I’ll bring the sunscreen,” I say. “SPF 100. They’ll mistake you for a glacier.”
“Fuck that. I want to blister. Give the seagulls something to peck.”
A bus honks. He jerks, and I grab his elbow- but he doesn’t need me to. I can’t help it though. His bones feel brittle, but not fragile. Just… thinner.
He shakes me off. “If you’re not going to make it to the end of the block before me, you’re buying pretzels.”
“You’ll lose.”
“Already did,” he mutters, so quiet I almost miss it.
But I don’t. My throat tightens, and I pretend not to hear.
***
The night Mark cracked us, we were sprawled on his couch, elbows knocking, watching Terminator 2 for the umpteenth time. Except he kept pausing it - to refill his drink, to adjust the curtains, to pick at a hangnail.
“Sit the fuck down,” I finally snapped. “You’re worse than a fly.”
He froze mid-pace, the blue TV light carving his face into something ancient. The Darth Vader mug I’d bought him sat cradled in his hands, coffee long gone cold.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He stared into the mug like it held prophecies. I can tell he’s being avoidant. “You ever think about how we’re just… recycling the same three jokes? Forever?”
“Philosophy hour’s Thursday,” I said, aiming for levity. Missing. I can feel something’s coming.
He sank onto the couch, leaving a full foot between us. Unprecedented. His knee didn’t nudge mine.
“Amir.”
I looked at him, frowning. “Why are you being so fucking weird?”
He gripped the mug tighter, white-knuckled, like it might flee. His eyes stayed fixed on the coffee dregs.
“I’m in love with you.”
The words were clean, surgical. No flourish. No smirk. The mug trembled, but his voice didn’t.
Everything narrowed: the sweat slicking my palms, the faint hum of the fridge, Arnold Schwarzenegger frozen mid-snarl on the screen.
“You’re not,” I said automatically.
“I am.”
“You’re drunk - “
“I’m terrified.” His laugh was a dry heave. “But not drunk.”
He set the mug down with exaggerated care, like disarming a bomb. I stared at the steam rising from the dregs. Let him take it back. Let him blame the tequila. Let this be a bit.
“Say something,” he said.
My throat locked. Something.
He stood abruptly. “No, you’re right. This is - It’s nothing.”
“Mark - “
He was already at the door, fingers gripping the frame. “Go home, Amir.”
“You don’t get to - “
“I said go.” The words splintered. “Please.”
Sunday, he canceled trivia night.
***
The Queens pavement sweats under our feet, shimmering like the skin of a dying fish. A broken fire hydrant gushes half-heartedly down the block, three kids in Spiderman swim trunks dancing in the spray. Mark walks like he’s measuring each step, his Joy Division shirt darkened with sweat at the collar. He’s talking shit about a street vendor’s pretzels.
“That guy’s mustard is ninety percent yellow dye,” he says, kicking a crushed Red Bull can. “I’d rather drink Chernobyl runoff.”
“You did drink Chernobyl runoff,” I counter. “Senior year. That ‘mystery jug’ behind the bodega.”
“And here I am! Proof that nuclear waste causes gayness.”
I snort, but my eyes catch how he leans into the brick wall outside Flo’s Nail Salon. The way he’s breathing - shallow, like a sparrow. His throat’s raw from radiation; I can tell by how he keeps thumbing the honey pouch in his pocket. The skin there’s pink and angry, but he’s wearing it like a badge. Or a joke.
“Remember that summer we lived off Flo’s AC?” He nods at the fogged salon windows. “Camped here for three hours pretending to get pedicures.”
“You got teal toenails.”
“They clashed with the hepatitis I got from the footbath.” He pushes off the wall, forcing a swagger. “Good times.”
I know where this is going. The unspoken we used to, we always. Amy hated when I’d mention those days. Called it ‘codependent circus shit’. But Mark’s digging now, gently, like he’s probing a bruise.
“You still got that teal polish?” he asks, too casual.
“Threw it out.” With your toothbrush. And the couch you slept on. And the photo of us at Coney Island.
“Harsh. That color was your signature.”
“Shut up. You’re the one who - “
A delivery bike swerves, nearly clipping us. Mark lurches into me, all elbows and sharp angles, and for a second, I’m holding him up. He smells like hospital-grade soap and the bergamot gum he chews to mask the metallic taste in his mouth. EBRT’s little parting gifts.
“Thanks, hero,” he says, peeling away. “Now buy me a fucking popsicle.”
The bodega’s buzzing with flies. He grabs a lime ice, then pauses at a graffiti mural on the side wall - a giant koi fish swimming through subway cars, scales peeling from sun and neglect. His head tilts.
“That’s new,” he murmurs.
“It’s rotting.”
“Nah. Rot’s just another color.” He licks his melting ice, green drips hitting the pavement. “Koi live decades, you know.”
“You’re not a koi.”
He arches a brow. “I’m better. I outlasted your shitty taste in women.”
But there’s no bite in it. He’s staring at the fish’s crumbling eye, his own blinking too fast. For a heartbeat, the sarcasm slips. The raw, gasping thing beneath shows through - the fear, the ache, the twenty-years-deep love he’d never call love. The same weight presses against my ribs, sodden and silent.
Then he crunches the empty popsicle stick. “Tomorrow. Be at my place by noon. I’m not drowning alone.”
“You can’t drown in three feet of water.”
“Watch me.”
He tosses the stick into a gutter. We walk. The sun bleeds into the sidewalk cracks, and for once, neither of us speaks.
***
Three weeks of half-answered texts, canceled plans, and conversations that died like wet matches, and I could still never forget the scent of his apartment. We used to orbit each other without thinking - shoulders bumping as we grabbed beers, feet tangled on the couch. Now? We measured space in light-years.
“You’re doing it again,” Mark said, slumped at the kitchen table. A chessboard between us, untouched.
“Doing what?”
“That thing where you look at me like I’m a grenade you have to defuse.”
I moved a pawn. A derisive snort.
“Checkmate in five moves. You’re fucking predictable.” He toppled his king. His hands shook. Always shook now.
“We’re friends, Mark. This is what friends do.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been phoning it in since - “
“Since you dropped a nuke on us?”
He flinched. I regretted it immediately. Too far. But the words kept coming.
“You lit the fuse,” I hear myself say. “Don’t bitch about the fallout.”
His chair screeched as he stood. “You promised nothing would change.”
“Yeah? Did you want me to play along? Hold your hand? Write fucking sonnets?”
The air cracked. We’d fought before - over exes, bad bets, whose turn it was to buy toilet paper - but this was different. This was curdled.
“You’re such a coward,” he spat. “Can’t handle one fucking emotion that isn’t pre-approved, Hallmark-card bullshit.”
“And you’re a narcissist. Couldn’t just let us be. Had to drag your fucking… feelings into it - “
His laugh was a serrated thing. “Sorry my humanity inconvenienced you.”
“Your selfishness. You knew I didn’t - and you still - “
“What? Told the truth? Should’ve stayed your fucking circus clown, huh? What are you even holding on to?”
The mug sat on the counter, Darth Vader’s helmet gleaming under the sickly fluorescents. Mark grabbed it, coffee sloshing.
“Stop,” I said.
“Or what?” He stepped closer. “You’ll leave? Again?”
“You’re acting like a child.”
“And you’re acting like a stranger.” His voice broke. “I showed you everything. Gave you the worst fucking parts of me, and you - “
“You didn’t give them. You drowned me in them.”
He reared back like I’d slapped him. The mug slipped. Or he threw it. Later, we’d never agree. Ceramic exploded against the wall, shards lacerating the silence. Coffee dripped like old blood.
“Get out,” he whispered.
I went. Halfway down the stairs, I realized I’d left my hoodie slung over his chair. Maroon, threadbare, stitched with a hundred nights I’d crashed here. Let him burn it, I thought.
He didn’t. When I came back months later - after the diagnosis, after the silence - it was folded in his closet. Salt-stained. Smelling like him.
***
Mark’s apartment building crouches between a pawn shop and a defunct laundromat. The fire escape is more of a fire hazard. The lobby smells like turmeric. He pauses at the stairs, gripping the railing. “Fourth floor’s a breeze,” he lies.
I follow. He’s a little slower at the top than he was at the bottom. His keys jingle - a stupid Kermit the Frog keychain I won him at Coney Island. He jams it into the lock. “Home sweet shithole,” he says, kicking open the door.
The place hasn’t changed. Same IKEA futon with the crater from where he dropped a lit joint in 2019. Same wilting succulent. That fucking Darth Vader mug on the bookshelf, its handle glued back crooked. A souvenir from the night he said the thing. The night I left.
“Sit,” he says, tossing his honey jar onto the counter. “I’ll brew us some dysentery. Or tea.”
“Don’t.” I shove the mango ice at him, now a radioactive puddle. “Eat this. Last rites.”
He squints at it. “Admit you’re trying to kill me.”
“Admit you’d deserve it.”
He licks the lid, wincing, but doesn’t flinch. The AC groans. Two work Slacks blink on my phone. Mark catches me staring. “Stay. Your spreadsheets won’t disintegrate if you play nurse for an hour.”
“Can’t. Deadlines don’t care about your martyrdom.”
“Your eloquence,” he mocks, tossing the ice container into the sink. It clangs. “Priorities, right? Always been your specialty.”
This time, the bite sinks deeper. I turn to leave.
“Why’d you come back?” His voice cracks, stripping the sarcasm bare. “Guilt? Or just checking the ‘supportive friend’ box?”
I face him. He’s propped against the counter, all collarbones and defiance. The radiation’s chewed him raw - sunburned neck, tremor in his fingertips. But he’s smirking, like always. Like that night.
“You needed someone,” I say.
He barks a laugh. “Needed you. Back then. Before you decided my fucking feelings were a biohazard.”
The air turns to glass. The mug. The confession. You looked me dead in the eye after twenty years and said “I’m in love with you” like it was nothing. Like it didn’t rewrite every goddamn memory. I’d frozen. Then exploded. You’re gonna drop this on me NOW? His fists balled. Yes, now. When else? When I’m dead?
He picks at the honey pouch’s label now, feigning nonchalance. “Remember the mug? Still can’t believe I have that stupid thing. Can’t even drink out of it now.”
“You threw it first.”
“I dropped it.” His voice sharpens. “You’re the one who made it a grenade.”
The guilt coils at the base of my skull. You showed me you at your worst, and that was your fault. Your messy, inconvenient love. Your refusal to let me pretend.
“Why’d you even tell me?” It slips out, sour.
He stills. “Because you asked. That night. ‘Why are you being so fucking weird?’ Remember?”
I do. Drunk on his couch, Molly texting me to come home. His eyes glassy in the dark. Just say it, Mark.
He takes a step closer, unsteady. “You called me a coward after. For waiting. For fucking up the ‘vibe.’ Like I ruined some bro code - “
“You did!” The words erupt, edged with old anger. “You made it - I couldn’t breathe around you after that. Every joke, every touch. You turned us into a risk.”
He flinches. The truth hangs, bloody. Downstairs, someone’s TV blares a laugh track.
“Go,” he says, voice sanded thin. “Save your productivity metrics.”
“Saturday. Noon.”
He doesn’t look up. “Whatever.”
Halfway down the stairs, his voice rasps after me: “Amir?”
I glance back. He’s a shadow in the doorway, backlit, blurred at the edges.
“If you no-show,” he says, “I’m haunting your ass. I’m going to be the most annoying poltergeist you could ever have.”
I force a smirk. “So nothing’s going to be different.”
But as I hit the street, the guilt lodges deeper. You showed me you at your worst.
Yeah. And I walked.
***
The Guilt Trip (EBRT Edition)
Mark’s texts started as rogue missiles dressed as memes.
July 2: [photo of his radiation schedule pinned to the fridge]
“30 sessions. Think of it as a season finale you can’t skip.”
July 5: [selfie with his face scribbled out by a red Sharpie]
“Radiation tan coming in HOT. You’d be jealous.”
July 9: “They gave me tiny tattoos. I’m basically Post Malone now.”
I caved at July 14: “Radiologist asked if I had a ride home. Told her my best friend ghosted me. She cried. You’re welcome.”
Mark’s Apartment
The place stank of burnt popcorn and the aloe vera gel he slathered on his radiation burns. He answered the door in a t-shirt and shorts, which I would later realize was to hide that his torso was mapped with faint marker lines and three tiny blue dots - pinprick tattoos for targeting the beams. A patch of raw, pink skin bloomed over his left collarbone where the radiation concentrated.
“Welcome to the fry lab,” he said, sweeping a dramatic arm toward the couch. Terminator 2 was paused mid-explosion on the TV.
“You look like a rotisserie chicken,” I said.
“You look like you cried in the elevator.”
The hoodie sat folded on the armrest, staged like a prop. What am I even doing here? I thought.
He flopped onto the couch, wincing as the fabric brushed his burnt skin. “They made me wear this fucking mask,” he said, nodding at the rigid plastic shell on the coffee table - a mesh molded to his face, dotted with screw holes. “Looks like a bondage prop.”
“Fitting.”
He lobbed a popcorn kernel at me. It missed. His aim had gotten worse. Was it the fatigue or the pain meds?
“Why’d you text me?” I asked.
“Because you owe me,” he said, too quickly. “You left. I got cancer. Coincidence? I think not.”
“That’s not how illness works - “
“And yet.” He grabbed the remote, unpausing the movie. Liquid metal bubbled onscreen. “They zap me daily. Least you can do is walk with me to the slaughter.”
The Routine
EBRT was a grind - daily 8 a.m. sessions, the machine humming like a vulture as Mark lay trapped under his mask. I’d wait in the waiting room or outside at a coffee shop, ACDC blasting in my AirPods to drown out the guilt.
Afterward, he’d emerge sweaty and jittery, his skin smeared with disinfectant. “Fuck that mask,” he’d mutter, buckling in. “Feels like getting gummed by a robot.”
One morning, he lost it a little, scrubbing at the marker lines with a Wetwipe. “It’s sharpie. How hard is it to remove?”
“They’re guidelines, Mark.”
“For cancer. Not a fucking Pinterest craft.”
The Hoodie
He started wearing it to appointments. “Camouflage,” he claimed, though the maroon fabric clung to his red skin. One day, I found it balled up in my backseat, reeking of hospital-grade soap and his clove cigarettes.
“Take it,” he said when I tried to return it. “Smells like regret. Just like you.”
The Fight (Reprise)
He was frying eggs when I snapped. “Why’d you really ask me to do this?”
The pan hissed. “Because you’re good at pity.”
“Bullshit.”
He jabbed the spatula at me. “You don’t have to be here.”
“I’m the only one here,” I countered. “Who else is going to come?”
The eggs charred. “You wanted me to stay in the best friend box. I can’t fucking do that.”
I gripped the edge of the counter. “Your mask came off. Your mask came all the way off. What would you have done?”
“Yeah.” He killed the stove. “And you ran. I’m sorry for expecting anything else.”
The mask leered from the table.
I left.
The Aftermath
He texted that night: [photo of the mug glued back together, filled with pens] “Darth says you’re a prick. Also, free hoodie pickup.”
I went. We didn’t really talk.
The hoodie stayed.
***
The Atlantic rumbles as we trudge across the sand, our shoes filling with grit. Mark’s hoodie - my hoodie, the one he stole - hangs off him like a deflated parachute. He’s carrying a six-pack of Tecate with a solemn determination.
“Tide’s out,” he says, squinting at the foam-flecked horizon. “Looks like God forgot His laundry.”
“Your metaphors are dying faster than your liver.”
“My liver’s a fucking Olympian.” He kicks a knot of seaweed, nearly losing his balance. I catch his elbow instinctively. He shakes me off. “Hover somewhere else, helicopter parent.”
The boardwalk looms, half-consumed by dunes. We pass a gutted lifeguard stand, its wooden bones bleached gray. Mark nods at it like an old friend. “Take a shot every time a tourist gets dragged out by riptides. Oh wait - we’d die sober.”
It’s a script. Same punchlines, same rhythm. But his breath hitches on die, just a half-step stumble. I pretend not to hear.
We claim a patch of sand near the pier. Mark collapses like a marionette with cut strings, Tecates clanking. The waves chew the shore, violent and methodical. He cracks two beers, passes one to me. Foam spills over his knuckles.
“To cheap beer,” he says, clinking the can against mine.
“To piss.”
“Same thing.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s full of old road trips, nights crashed on this same stretch of beach, the time he kissed a guy behind the concession stand and I pretended not to see. You’re the first person I told, he’d said later. Don’t make it weird.
He shivers. I toss him the hoodie from my bag - dry, warm, the one he’s been hoarding. He freezes mid-swig.
“This mine?”
“Nope. Bought a new one.”
He smirks, slipping it on. Smells like his apartment - cumin and him. “Liar.”
The wind picks up. A kid’s abandoned sandcastle crumbles nearby, its turrets collapsing in slow motion. Mark watches it like it’s prime-time drama.
“Remember when you tried to build a moat here?” he says. “Got your ass kicked by the tide.”
“I was nine. You called me Poseidon’s bitch.”
“And you cried.”
“And you stole my Snickers.”
He grins, sharp and true. For a second, it’s just us - two idiots in the spill of sunlight, no IV stands or meltdowns or confessions lodged in our throats.
Then he coughs, harsh and wet, the sound scraping the air raw. He spits into the sand - pink-tinged.
“You good?”
“Peachy. Just shedding a lung.” He wipes his mouth with the hoodie sleeve. “Fuck, do I have to start a GoFundMe for new organs?”
I chuck a shell at him. “Who’d donate? Your fan club?”
“You’d be surprised. I could at least get some donations off Grindr.”
He leans back, letting the sun carve shadows into his face. The red radiation burns creep above his collar, angry and gleaming.
The waves rise - a brutal, beautiful growl. Mark stills. We both do. It’s not peace, exactly. More like surrender. The ocean’s screaming. We’re listening.
Twenty years of friendship, and this is the quiet we earn. Not forgiveness, not absolution. Just salt and a six-pack and the unspoken pact to stop pretending we’re anything but wreckage.
When he finally speaks, it’s sideways. “If I croak today, drag me past the breakers. Let the coral form on my bones.”
“Cremation’s cheaper.”
“Cremation’s boring.”
A seagull swoops, snatching a fry from the sand. Mark lobs a beer cap at it. Misses.
“Asshole,” he mutters.
“That’s your soulmate.”
“Nah. That’s you.”
The joke hangs, delicate. Not a bridge, not a bomb. A flare shot into the dark. A flirt? Who the fuck knows with him?
***
The Atlantic breathes in and out, dragging its ragged tongue across the sand. Mark walks as deliberately as a man crossing thin ice - slow, precise, the hoodie’s sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms gone ropey from months of weight loss. But his eyes are bright, a struck match in the gray afternoon.
“Bet that seagull’s got a better dating profile than you,” he says, nodding at a bird pecking at a chip bag. “Likes long flights and emotionally unavailable squid.”
“At least it’s self-aware,” I say.
He snorts. “Self-awareness is for people who can afford therapy.”
We sink onto a warped bench, its wood tattooed with initials and sun-bleached gum. Mark sets the six-pack between us, a flimsy barricade. He cracks two beers, foam hissing. “Remember when you tried to propose here? To whatsername?”
“Allison. And it wasn’t a proposal. It was a…”
“A conversation about shared priorities,” he mimics, pitching his voice into a robotic deadpan. “She ghosted you after. Poetic justice.”
The bite isn’t malicious - just Mark, needle-threaded as ever. Still, it hooks something tender. “You cheered when she dumped me.”
“I applauded. There’s a difference.” His smirk fades. “You wanted suburban hell. She spared you.”
The words land sideways, a serrated edge poking through. I stare at my beer. He’s right, of course. Mark’s always right, in that infuriating, clairvoyant way.
He’s quiet for a second, and then - “You ever wonder what we’d be if we weren’t us?”
“If you weren’t you? World peace. Clean beaches. Functional metaphors.”
“Ouch.” He presses a hand to his chest, the picture of mock agony. “Butterfly effect, though. Without me, you’d’ve married some stockbroker. Gotten a timeshare. Died of respectability.”
There it is - the blade in the joke, the truth he spins into a gag to keep it from clotting. I watch him, this bruised marvel of a person, still glittering with the same wit that once drew crowds at parties. Even now, eroded by illness and whatever ghosts haunt him, he’s the sharpest thing on this beach.
A vendor trudges past, hawking churros. Mark sits up, animated. “Race you. Loser’s debt increases by six bucks.”
“You’ll lose.”
“Only if you cheat.”
He’s off before I (take my time to) stand, legs pumping with a gawky fervor. I trail him, close enough to hear his breath rasp, to see the tremors in his shoulders as he slaps the cart first. The vendor eyes his flushed face but hands over the churros.
“This is what you being a loser tastes like,” He declares, collapsing back on the bench. We eat in silence, sugar crystallizing on our fingers. The waves fold into themselves, relentless.
“I like it here,” He says abruptly. His voice is softer, the showman’s edge sanded down. “Not ‘cause of the shitty beer or the sea herpes in the sand. It’s… simpler. Reminds me of when we’d ditch class to come here. You’d nap. I’d steal sunglasses.”
The memory unfurls - sixteen, sprawled on a towel, Mark’s laughter as he modeled a pair of heart-shaped shades. No hospitals. No ticking clocks. Just salt and sunburn.
He balls up the churro wrapper, bouncing it off my knee. “Don’t get weepy. Nostalgia’s for eulogies.”
“You’re the one getting misty.”
“Allergies. Ocean’s pollen as fuck.”
A gust yanks at his hoodie. He shivers but doesn’t do anything else. Pride or forgetfulness? With him, the answer’s always both.
I look at him. He’s looking at the ocean.