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My hand drops. I turn toward the sink.

From the other side of the wall, slow and heavy, as if a man were laying each one down on the plaster, three knocks.

I stop. I stand there with my forehead against the wall and my eyes squeezed shut. I hear his screen door scream again. Boots on the porch boards, fast and getting faster. Then my own door, shaking under a fist.

I open it.

He's standing on my porch in the last of the light with sawdust on his forearms and in his hair. His face looks as if it's been rubbed raw. He isn't carrying anything. The porch light is above him, burning yellow. He looks up at it and then back at me.

"It's been on the whole time," he says. His voice is wrecked. "I sat in that truck for two hours, and your porch light was on in the daytime. I watched it."

"I couldn't turn it off."

"I know."

"Ben."

"You said to say it in a whole sentence." He draws a breath. "I've been trying to find one since you closed that door."

"And?"

"I want to stay."

I stare at him.

"That's four words," I manage.

"It's a whole sentence."

A sound breaks out of me, a laugh and a sob. He doesn't stop. His hands are open at his sides, not entirely steady. He's looking at me with nothing held back anywhere on his face.

"I called Dale at four-forty. Before you knocked." He swallows. "I took the instructor job at Marion. Ninety minutes. Home every night. I told him to fill my slot with someone who can climb out of a truck. I wanted you to know I didn't do it because you knocked. I did it because I sat in a cab with the key in my hand and my ear started ringing again, and I couldn't stand the idea of being in a place where it did."

"You called before."

"I called before."

"I knocked before I knew you'd called."

"I know. We're terrible at this timing." His mouth moves. "And I lied. To Dale. I said nothing was holding me. It was the only lie I told all weekend, and it was the worst one, and I'd like to take it back, if I'm allowed."

I step out onto the porch. The boards are cold through my socks. I'm standing very close to him, close enough to feel the warmth coming off his chest. My whole body is trembling like a plucked string.

"Can I tell you what I want?"

"Please."

"I want you to stay." My voice shakes and I let it. "Not just for tonight or Monday or the weekend. I want the two a.m. and the counting and the ear and the fourteen steps. I don't want the easy version of you. I want you to be a burden. Do you understand? I'm going to be a burden, too. I leave paint on the towels. I talk through movies. I cry at insurance commercials. I want you to wake me up, and I want to wake you up, and I want you to knock on that wall so many times that Mr. Alfred files a complaint. I want all of it. I want to be asked to stay and I want to ask you to, and I'm asking. Stay."

Something gives in his face, like a wall that has been holding for a very long time. He puts both his big scarred hands on either side of my face. He rests his forehead against mine.

"Yes," he says.

"Yes?"

"Yes. I'll stay. I'd like to. God, Hollis." His thumbs move along my cheekbones. He's shaking. "It's rule one. No lies. I don't want any more rules. Can we start over, and not pretend?"

"No rules."