Page 60 of Stripped

I cover his hand with mine. Palm to his knuckles, fingers in the spaces between his — not laced, not gripping, just resting, one hand on a hand on a chest with a heart that's been beating for this man since we were kids in that bed, neither of us brave enough to name what lived in the air between us.

We stand there. His hand on my chest, mine over his. The crickets. The cool. The paint buckets waiting. The porch boards he secured this morning holding our weight without complaint, which is more than I can say for most things in this town.

Cole picks up the drill. Holds it out, handle first. The battery's warm from the sun, the bit still seated in a screw head he stripped a little at the edges, because he's never met a screw he didn't try to drive with more force than it needed.

I take it. The weight's familiar, the balance good — a tool built for one job, and the job is fixing what's broken, and broken is what we know, so fixing is what we're learning.

We turn to the rail together. Side by side, his shoulder against mine — not leaning, just there, the kind of contactthat would be accidental anywhere else and is deliberate here, because we both know what deliberate means and we're both too tired to pretend otherwise.

He points to a board near the far end. "That one's soft. Feel it."

I kneel. Press my thumb to the wood. It gives — a quarter inch, maybe less, but the giving's the point: things give when they're tired, and tired is what this house is, and tired is what we've been. I seat the bit in the screw Cole started and pull the trigger.

The drill whines. The screw turns. The board pulls tight to the joist beneath it, wood finding wood and staying, and that sound is its own kind of music.

Cole lifts a stirrer from one of the buckets, turning it between two fingers, weighing how much the paint will need before it's ready to go on. Application's the point — that we're applying ourselves to something, finally, together.

The crickets don't stop. The porch has twenty-three more boards that want securing. The house has two stories of wood-frame bones in their slow surrender to the weather, and the surrender can be delayed, not stopped — never stopped — but delayed is what we're after, and aiming for it is the only move left, so we make it.

Side by side in the cooling afternoon. The drill in my hand, the stirrer in his. The Purple Heart on the step between us, catching light — not hidden, not buried, just sitting where things go when you're finally ready to carry them the right way. Or ready to try.

Cole reaches for another screw. His left side goes tight.Half a second — the body remembering what happened even with the scar healed.

I hand him the drill. He takes it. Our fingers brush, and we both feel it — a small jump of static off the dry fall air, nothing, and not nothing.

We get to work.