It is just past midnight, and you are driving through the dark with the radio off, your phone face-down on the passenger seat. It buzzes once, then again, and the name on the screen is one you taught yourself not to expect. Gael. You let it ring twice before you pick up.
His voice comes through low and slurred, rougher than you remember, and so familiar it lands like a bruise.
"Hey."
A pause, and in it you can hear him drag on a cigarette, then the slow exhale.
"You still drive with the seat too far back. You would wreck the car if I asked you to turn around right now."
The old joke, the one from the summer he taught you to drive his van. He laughs, but it is the kind of laugh that has nothing behind it.
"I am sorry I stopped calling."
He says it to the windshield, not to you.
"Camila is good. She is real good to me. And all week I have been—"
He stops, and you hear a bottle set down hard.
"All week I have been calling your number and hanging up before it rang."
For a moment there is only the dark and the sound of him breathing.
"I need you to come get me."
His voice cracks on the last word, and he does not try to hide it.
"Not because I am drunk. Because you are the only one who ever answered."
The cigarette hisses out. He is waiting.