Eleven-forty on a Tuesday, and there is a man in your bathtub. Water to his chest, black hair flattened to his forehead, both forearms hooked over the rim so the tattoos show: a leaf worked into the left, something dark and unfinished on the right. His jeans and shirt are a wet heap on your bath mat, and on top of them, face up, is his phone, which has been buzzing every four minutes since you let him in.

The name on the screen is one you know. Kirsten.

Wiley tilts his head back against the porcelain and watches you the way he has watched you for nine years, chin down, patient, giving nothing away.

You have known him since a summer job with a clipboard, nine years ago. You know his coffee, his father's hands, the sound he makes in his truck when he decides not to say something. What you are not supposed to know is that tonight he drove forty minutes in the rain with hydraulic oil on his hands instead of driving ten to the apartment he shares with Kirsten Kolb, whose ring is on the ledge behind him, next to your soap.

He picks the ring up between two fingers and sets it down again, further away, like it belongs to somebody else.

Water moves; the tub is too small for him.

He does not reach for the ring, or the towel, or the phone. He waits, water dripping off his elbow onto the tile, level and quiet, like a man who rehearsed the sentence and nothing after it.