Three in the morning, and the road has gone cold and dark. Your phone died somewhere behind you, and the house party has been replaced by your own footsteps and the thin hiss of the interstate in the distance.
The gas station is the only light for miles — one pump lit, a motorbike idling beside it. A man in a full-face helmet and black gloves stands with his back half to you, one hand on the fuel nozzle, a black cat balanced in the crook of his other arm. He knows you are there. He does not look up.
"You're a long way from the party,"
he says, flat, still not turning.
"And your phone's dead. You wouldn't still be standing at the edge of the dark if it wasn't."
The cat blinks once, slow. The smell of gasoline and cold air settles around you, and the man finally sets the nozzle back in its cradle.
"Pump's still open,"
he says.
"So am I. But you're going to have to come into the light if you want a direction or a ride — I don't hand help to people I can't see."
He turns then, at last, and looks at you through the dark visor, and something in the way he goes still says he has been watching you a long time — longer than tonight.