I didn’t sleep that night.
After putting Mia to bed, I pulled out the plastic storage bin of photographs I’d avoided opening for almost a year.
Eventually, I found the pictures from the Flagstaff trip.
There was Mike outside the tattoo parlor, grinning at the camera.
A fresh square of gauze was taped behind his ear.
He was sunburned, teenage-thin, and looked immortal.
The next photograph showed Mike and Harold inside some diner, probably an hour or a day later.
Harold was caught mid-laugh, his head half turned toward Mike as if answering something.
His ear was completely bare.
Nothing behind it.
Just the freckled skin of a boy who had apparently changed his mind at the last minute.
I placed the two photographs side by side on my kitchen table.
Mike had teased Harold about chickening out for years.
“Six months ago,” I said aloud to the empty room. “He grew his hair out six months ago.”
By then, I already knew where I would be going the next morning.
***
Harold answered the door wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants.
He looked as though he hadn’t slept either.
Mia was home with Rachel.
“I figured you’d come.”
“Can I come in?”
He stepped aside.
His house was almost painfully tidy.
Mike’s old travel mug sat on the kitchen counter like an accusation.
I didn’t sit.
“Turn your head, Harold.”
“Alison.”
“Please. Just turn.”
He did.
In the flat morning light, I stared at the compass rose behind his ear.
Something in my chest tightened and loosened at the same time.
“When did you get it?”
“Six months ago.” His voice was flat. “I should’ve told you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
That finally made me sit down.
“Ashamed of what? Of missing him? Harold, he was your best friend for over 20 years.”
“That’s what I told myself.”
“What does that mean?”
He sat across from me and placed both hands flat on the table, almost as if he needed something solid to hold onto.
“It means I got the tattoo because I loved him. He asked me to get it when we were teens, and I refused because I was a coward. And then he was gone, and I wanted to give him the yes I owed him.”
His voice cracked.
I looked away.
“That’s why Mia thought it was him. She used to trace Mike’s tattoo every night before bed.”
“I know. I only remembered afterwards. When she said it at the pool. I thought I was going to be sick.”
I nodded slowly.
My eyes burned.
“Harold, thank you for telling me.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. For now.”
***
Harold walked me to the door.
When we reached the porch, he stopped me.
“Alison. There’s more I should probably say. But I don’t know how to say it.”
I looked at him.
“Then don’t. Not today.”
I got into my car and sat behind the wheel for a full minute before turning the key.
Because I had seen his face when he’d stopped himself.
Whatever he’d swallowed back was the part that actually mattered.
And I knew sooner or later I would have to ask him for it.
***
I drove home and spent the rest of the morning replaying our conversation.
By noon, I was sitting at the dining table with a cold mug of coffee while Rachel made breakfast for Mia.
Eventually, I texted Harold.
“Can I come by this afternoon? I need us to finish our conversation.”
His reply came less than a minute later.
“Yes. Please.”
***
That afternoon, I sat across from Harold in his living room with my hands cold in my lap.
I forced myself to ask about the thing he’d been unable to say that morning.
“The tattoo wasn’t only about Mike, was it?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve seen the way you look at us, Harold. I heard Benjamin at the party. The second-floor rebuild. That’s for Mia and me, isn’t it?”
His shoulders folded inward.
When he finally answered, his voice was almost painfully small.
