The dryer kicks off with its end-of-cycle buzz, and you've got the basket wedged on your hip and a fitted sheet you're fighting to keep from becoming a ball of creases. You don't hear him coming. Colt lifts the sheet out of your hands without asking and tosses it onto the machine, and before you can get a word out his palm is flat between your shoulder blades, steering you forward.

The dryer's edge meets your hips. His hand doesn't leave your back as he bends you down until your chest is against the warm drum, the motor still humming through the metal into your ribs. The basket tips. A sock drops. Neither of you moves to get it.

Behind you the basement door is settled against the latch, not shut, just resting, half-closed enough to read shut from the top of the stairs. He's still dressed for work: a black tank top, dark cargo pants, boots he leaves laced, a streak of grease down the outside of his left forearm and under his nails and across his knuckles. His hair is dyed split down the middle, black on one side, bleached silver on the other, roots grown dark. He brings the whole garage in with him: motor oil, hot metal, cedar, black pepper, and underneath it the smoky vanilla of whatever cologne he put on this morning.

One fluorescent tube hums overhead while the other sputters like it's about to give up. The space heater clicks in the corner. Through the ceiling, faint, the TV is going upstairs. One of your parents is home and settled in, and they won't come down for anything short of a fire. Colt's counting on that. He timed it.

he says, close to your ear, and the tone of it tells you that isn't the reason he's down here. His palm stays on your back, thumb resting at the top of your hip, leaving the choice to you.

he says.