January 15, 1999

A cold snap settled over Washington, and Jill watched the week pass from her room. Endless shakes of snow fell under hard skies the color of steel, at first pretty and ethereal, but now boring, clinical; with a sudden give, something in Jill's brain tired of white, of cold things, of bleak. Life was moving on, but not fast enough.

Jill could leave and return at her discretion, as long as she signed in and out at the nurse's station. That trip in early January to the school's playground was the first time. Jill replayed it in her mind over the ensuing days, at first from a lack of certainty, mainly of her own motivations: in moments of solitude, she turned the conversation over in her mind, tracing fingertips down its gilded edges, looking for something she wasn't sure existed. She decided that sometimes, there was no hidden meaning. She'd meant what she said, and hadn't done anything wrong. It still made her unsure for reasons she was hesitant to place, but as the days rolled by, less and less so.

Jill found reasons to venture out, then the venturing itself became the reason. She looked at apartments, visited nurseries to look at spills of brightly-colored flowers and houseplants that hung in baskets from thick brass hooks. She went to a big-box department store and bought a handful of makeup and toiletries that were more appealing than what the hospital had to offer, which naturally lead to a personal weakness in a glistening nearby storefront: clothes.

Jill excused it by telling herself that she couldn't leave in hospital gowns and forgotten, oversized items from the clinic's lost-and-found. What turned into an errand of practicality became something enjoyable and even indulgent, hours browsing the new fashions and color trends of the coming Spring. When she slipped into a pair of knee-high boots the color of cognac, soft around her calves and supportive around her feet, she felt more like herself than she had in some time, stable and strong and capable. She spent more money than her savings account could probably support, but she left feeling like Jill Valentine and not like Jill Valentine the Hospital Patient, which calmed her, made the outing easy to justify as something necessary rather than frivolous.

Dr. Behara stopped in every now and then to talk to her for five minutes and then take flight in a flutter of his lab coat. He postponed her discharge date, first the sixth, then the eighth, now the twentieth, always with some kind of vague, clinical reason — a test that had to be run again, a titer that was still a touch too high for his taste, a vaccine they didn't have but was to be delivered tomorrow, a tissue sample that hadn't come back. He was buying time, against and for what, Jill wasn't sure. That was, until she arrived.

One January day when Jill returned from physical therapy, sheened with sweat and sore all over, the doctor waited by her door, checking his expensive wrist watch. Jill sighed, and made a concerted effort to correct her face before she approached.

"Doctor," she said, "we have to stop meeting like this."

They really did.

"Miss Valentine, hello," he said, "how are you?"

"Alright, I suppose. Did you need to speak to me?"

"Yes, yes," he said, and pushed the door open, gestured for her to enter first.

She was sitting at the table in Jill's room, body language crossed and closed off. Every part of her was sharp; her tailored business suit, the short, angled crop of her blonde hair, the precarious height of her heeled shoes. She was unimpressed that she was made to wait, and her face made no secret of it.

Jill looked to Doctor Behara. He said nothing, preoccupied with his ever-present clipboard.

"Alyssa Ashcroft," the woman said, and stood up. She was tall and thin, pretty in a way that looked expensive and time-consuming, perfectly manicured and plucked and glossy in all the right spots. "Doctor Behara said you'd be expecting me."

Jill shook her hand and introduced herself. Alyssa's bright green eyes, even the way she moved — efficient without extra steps, close, in your personal space — gave Jill the strong impression that she was a carnivore of some kind in a past life, and even in this one, she would eat you alive if you let her.

"You're shorter than I thought you'd be. No offense. You hear all the stories and you think of a huge, hulking Amazon woman with a shotgun, and…" Alyssa gestured to her, a vague tilt of the hand.

"You get me," Jill said, and offered up her sweetest smile. "Don't worry. The mean is still there, just concentrated in less space."

"Ha. I like it."

"Well then, I'll leave you to it," Doctor Behara said, and excused himself, leaving them alone.

Jill watched him leave, then turned to Alyssa. "So, are we doing this?"

"Definitely." Alyssa flicked her hair out of her eye with a practiced movement of her head, pushed the record button on her tape player, and placed it between them. "State your name and your title, please."

Jill sat across from her. "My name is Jill Valentine. I was a member of the Raccoon City STARS department, Bravo Team."

"Years of service?"

"1993-1998."

"Let's start in June of 1998. Tell me as much as you remember."

Jill talked, talked until her mouth was dry and her jaw sore and her brain tired. Alyssa pressed her on details that seemed small and insignificant, returned to points that were made hours ago, looked for cracks and inaccuracies. She found many, questioned, prodded, asked, filled in gaps and struck things out where they couldn't be explained to her satisfaction. She gave Jill breaks to collect herself when the questions were too much, but there was no sympathy in her carriage; it was all in the same of accuracy, of expedience, of correctness. She wrote pads worth of notes while Jill spoke, her thin, groomed brows furrowed by slight degrees.

Around 4pm, Alyssa looked at Jill, then stopped her tape and closed her legal pad. "I think that's enough for today. Same place, same time, tomorrow?"

"Sounds good to me. I'll be here."

Alyssa stood. Her heels clicked under the wide pantlegs of her business suit.

"You think this'll help?" Jill asked. "With your case?"

Alyssa smiled, close-lipped and sharp; there was no warmth in it. "More. They're going to regret the day they ever heard of either of us. Promise you that, Jill."

She was scary. Not sure of her opinion during the day's questioning, Jill decided she liked her.

Alyssa wove in and out of Jill's room without announcement or apology over the week, apparated out of thin air at different times of day with no reason or pattern that Jill could place. On the last day, her long, slim legs crossed, Alyssa's questions ceased with the heavy "click" of the stop button on her voice recorder.

"I think we've got it," she said, "I think this is a winner."

Jill blinked at her, surprised at the suddenness of her decision. "How do we know?"

"Let me handle that," Alyssa said, and gathered her belongings into an expensive-looking leather bag. "You focus on staying available if I need you again."

Alyssa was quiet, businesslike, offered no pleasantries or small talk. Jill stood, her arms crossed.

"So, I'm gonna ask you a personal question."

Alyssa didn't look at her. "Funny way to ask, but go ahead."

"What do you have against Umbrella? Why do you want to take them out so bad?"

Alyssa straightened then, one hand on her hip, and looked directly into Jill's eyes. "What an odd question, coming from you."

"Maybe, but I'm talking about you." Jill said.

Jill thought she saw the faintest glimmer of tension; the slight flare of nostrils or the twitch of a lip, gone as soon as it came. "Some of us don't like to rehash the weakest points in our lives," Alyssa said, "I'm one of them."

"You were there, then," Jill said, "in Raccoon City."

"And because I was, I'm going to make sure nobody else is, ever again. Take care, Jill. Watch the news for the next month."

Once again Alyssa departed, left in an authoritative clack of heels and the shuffle of fine Italian leather. The next time Jill saw her was on television, as promised.

The same night that Alyssa left for the last time, Jill's pager — the pager that had sat quiet and dark for the last two weeks while the pack of Chris' duffel bag rested against the wall — shook and rattled against the lacquer of her bedside table, awakened her from a shallow, fitful sleep.

Have some time off tonight, it said, I'll be by at 7 or so. Something important to show you.

Jill took a little extra time to make herself presentable under the threat of company. Because it was Chris, she spent a little extra time on her makeup — time to make things even, sharp, special.

Chris was a strange case. By his appearances he was strong and intimidating, but he hesitated with a boyish awkwardness when it came to interpersonal matters, in direct relief of Jill's own sometimes overbearing directness. He had always stood a little too close too her, laughed a little too long at her jokes, even the stupid ones, and people noticed — she was dubbed his "work wife", whatever that meant, a title they'd rolled their eyes at, dismissed it as the immature jest it was. Neither rose to the bait, and Jill appreciated it; Chris became a place where she could escape to, someone who took her seriously professionally, but also respected her as a person, free of the co-ed messiness that defined the RPD at times. The drama of being an attractive woman in a sea of gun toting Midwestern Good Ol' Boys seemed to fizzle and die at Chris' borders.

Things had turned when he came to her about the woman in the picture on his desk, young and cherubic and model-pretty with thick auburn curls and eyes the color of a cloudless sky, who turned out to be his younger sister. His younger sister who'd developed a habit of partying too much, of dating men Chris didn't approve of, and he feared, of binge-drinking at college. It was a stark contrast to his otherwise bulletproof tight-lipped professionalism. She gave him advice over lunch, and was pleased that he trusted her with such an intimate topic. She felt special.

One night last year, when the friendly July humidity bordered on August's oily, gravid heat, after too many nights together, alone, faced with the overwhelming bleakness of their circumstances, their will-they-won't-they office flirtations had eventually culminated in a night spent together. Then, with a speed that was strange (and maybe even offensive, depending on her mood) he was gone to what was later revealed to be some far-flung part of Europe. A "mission", he'd said. He hadn't said goodbye, but rather promised Jill he'd return.

Six months on, Jill wasn't sure what Chris' words or visits meant. She knew what she wanted them to mean — and what he'd promised her they'd mean, when he returned — but his comforts and kind words cut with extended silences and endless distractions had begun to confuse her as they had in the past. It had always been his way to give her too much personal space out of respect, so much space that it appeared he'd lost interest. This time was, with growing realization, no different.

About twenty minutes after the promised time, Chris pushed her door open, peeked his head inside to check if she was there. When he noticed her sitting at the window, reading a book, he smiled.

"There you are," he said, "how are you feeling? Has to be close to go-home time, doesn't it?"

"Hi," she said, "where've you been? It's been a while. I was starting to get worried."

"Work," Chris said, with a sigh. "There's a lot to do. You know how it goes."

"Would definitely prefer that to this," Jill said, and gestured to the room around her, "right now even field deployments sound nice."

"Don't be so quick to want to get back to it, not in this weather. I've been pretty sure I was going to lose all my fingers a few times. I brought something for you to look at."

It was a manila file-folder stuffed with printer paper, reams of information that had been scanned or photocopied in a rush, tilted just slightly on the page. All about Umbrella, its unit movements, its recent sales of bioweapons despite sanctions by NATO abroad. Chris pulled up a chair beside her, and while they pored over the documents, Jill felt normal — normal like she had before everything. She was half-paying attention to the documents themselves and her mind began to wander. She looked up at him and he noticed, gave her an awkward smile.

"What?"

"I was just wondering," she said, "we should go sit outside somewhere, sometime, and just talk. Catch up. You know?"

Jill expected him to accept this with his trademark pleased confusion. Instead, she received something very different.

"We're talking now." He said.

"I mean —" Jill said, "Like we used to. You know? Maybe just catch up, away from all of this. I haven't heard what Claire is up to."

Maybe at a playground, somewhere.

Chris considered this. "You know we don't have time for that." Careless, it struck her, and something inside her stomach sunk, embarrassed. "I mean — we don't have the luxury of time to spend on anything but…" he sighed, frustrated, "you know what I mean."

Jill didn't know, but didn't say as much. Then, he said something that pitched the intellectual benefit of the doubt out of the window: "You were there. You know? You should know that."

Jill blinked, unsure she'd heard him correctly. She looked at his face again, already preoccupied by the documents on the table, her question forgotten — he blinked, rapidly, as if trying to dislodge something from his eyes, squinted them closed.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"Just a headache," he said.

Jill sat, in her new outfit and her perfect makeup and her hope, and felt foolish.

Shortly after, Chris stood from his chair, pushed it against the table with a squeak of wooden legs against tile. "You can keep those," he said, "I've gotta hit the road. Are you still set up okay here?"

Jill nodded. "Yep." Her voice seemed frail and weak even to her own ears. "You know me… I think of everything."

Chris smiled at her. "Get some rest. I'll page you, okay?"

When? "Okay," Jill said. She didn't press, and he left her. The door closed behind him with a quiet clap, and she was alone.

Jill struggled to make sense of it. It was possible things had changed and she had been so fixated on what she wanted to happen that she just hadn't realized it. It occurred to Jill that she was not the only one fixated on something other than what was presented to her.

She looked at the Umbrella logo on the leaf of paper, printed in gritty grey-and-white facsimile, and it taunted her like a giggling eye.

You thought you were done with me, it seemed to say, I can take so much more from you. Just wait. We haven't even gotten started.

Jill closed the file folder.

January 20, 1999

January was full of what the military had called "hurry up and wait": false-starts, announcements of maybe possibly sort of deploying, then nothing, just a wall-to-wall month of field exercises in the frigid resistance of the snow. Carlos' unit didn't end up being deployed that month, but were worked as if a tour were imminent. He had time for little else besides work and sleep, returning home to his apartment with no energy to do anything but shower, eat, and fall asleep on the couch in front of the TVs soft flickering glare, only to roll into the exact same routine the next day.

Near the end of the last day, Carlos was knelt beside Kevin's prone form, watching him shoot downrange behind the sights of a rifle. Carlos gave the man no end of shit, as they all did, but Kevin had a natural proclivity towards marksmanship; when he knocked off the third mannequin's head in so many seconds, Carlos wolf-whistled at him, low and impressed.

"If only you could get that accurate with darts, you might be in business."

Kevin didn't look up at him. "Shut the hell up, you Andre the Giant-looking ass motherfucker."

Like a ticking clock, sure enough, from downrange: "Hey Ryman, you're one to fucking talk! You look like the Republican National Convention ate a hair metal band and threw it up all over a Hustler magazine!"

"HEY!" Kevin yelled as Carlos lost his footing and landed with a hard sit in the snow, holding his stomach in laughter. Kevin turned back to him, shoved him. "And you, I told you to shut the fuck up! Why do you always start this shit?!"

"Would you all just stop?!" Kennedy demanded from where he shivered behind a thick coat and scarf. "I'm younger than all of you and I swear I'm tired of your stupid schoolyard bullshi—" From somewhere beside him, unseen, a snowball sailed through the air and nailed him on the side of the head, exploding in a starburst of white powder. "OW! What the fuck?!"

"Okay okay," said one of the other men, "Let's just get back inside before we kill each other."

Carlos headed up the back, wiping stray tears from his eyes. Kevin turned and looked at him, as if in warning. Carlos held up his hands, still breathless with laughter.

"I'm Switzerland, man. I got no part in this."

"Yeah," Kevin said, and pretended to clinch with him, punch him in the stomach, "sure you fuckin' don't."

Carlos sat down at his work station, a small sliver of the single table where he'd permanently posted up his magnifying glass arm and soldering tools. He slipped on a pair of wide, clear goggles, and began to work, when his phone rumbled against his leg. He rooted around in his pocket, retrieved it to check the message on the small, glowing rectangle on its face. He hit the "accept call" button, tucking the phone between the side of his face and one of his large shoulders, and stood from the table, pushing the goggles back into the dark riot of his hair.

"Hello?"

"Hey! It's me." Jill. "Is… this a good time?"

Her voice was as welcome a feeling as anything ever had been. "Hey, Jill! Yeah, it's okay. What's up?"

Carlos was aware of both eyes and ears on him as he wandered away for quiet to take the call.

"Hey, they're discharging me here today — finally get to go home."

"Hey, that's great news. How you feeling?"

"A lot better, honestly. They said everything checked out, so, away I go. Are you busy tonight?"

Carlos was — it was Friday, and Friday meant beer and dive bars and darts and relentless dunking on each other under clouds of cigarette smoke in the name of camaraderie and "team building". But as soon as she said it, he wasn't anymore.

"Nothin' I can't rain check. What you have in mind?"

"Okay. Well — you feel like dinner? Maybe?"

If Jill was there, she would have seen him bite his lips together and pump one fist at his side, in victory. Carlos kept himself silent until his voice was even. "That sounds good to me. What time you thinkin'?"

"Call it 8?"

"8's perfect. I'll pick you up. I got a place in mind."

"Okay! I'm excited. I'll see you at 8."

"Me too. See you then." He hung up, holding the phone in one hand, and then a peal of wolf-whistles and ow-ow-OWs sounded from the table.

Carlos took his seat again, replaced his goggles. "Shut up, fuckers."

"Jill, huh?" Kevin said, and Carlos thought his expression looked sly. "She sounds hot. You got pictures?"

"Yeah, well…" Carlos said, "hey, mind your business."

"Dipping on guy's night? She must be hot."

"Or he's just desperate." Kennedy chimed in.

Carlos tilted his head as if he was trying to decide between the two possibilities. "Desperate's kind of a harsh word… I prefer 'focused'."

"This is twice. You better come back with a good story," Kevin warned, "or you're never gonna live this down."

Carlos left his apartment at 7:00 and made the trek through the crawl of Friday-night traffic, thankful for the buffer of time. The sky was pink and orange in a picturesque winter's sunset when he'd set out — now it was black, hard and cold. No more than three wrecks had elongated the route, snarling traffic back into an endless line of glowing headlights and honking horns.

Carlos parked nearby in a spot that didn't have any signs or fire hydrants or things that would get him towed that he could see, and then approached a squat set of granite steps, flanked on either side by a low stone banister. He checked his texts one more time to verify the number, screwed over the doorway in plastic numbers that were painted gold. This was the place. He helped himself inside, out of the cold, and blew on his hands while he looked for her apartment number on a list of names printed in an irregular white typeface against black plastic. He didn't see a "Valentine" or a "J. —" anything. She'd just moved in today, so hers didn't have a name, not yet.

He pressed the white button beside the single nameless number with his thumb. Somewhere inside, a bell rang, strident.

"Hello?" Came her voice, over the speaker.

"Hey, my name's Carlos. You got a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?"

Silence. It was like he could hear her eyes rolling. "I'll be right down."

Carlos waited and looked around the small room between the outside door and one that blocked the complex's main hallway; this door was glass, lined around its periphery with solid wood, locked from the inside. When he sensed movement out of the corner of his eye, he glanced over, and was summarily distracted; she was descending the steps, in a black skirt that hit her legs at mid-thigh, knee-high riding boots, and a thin sweater, her jacket slung over her arm. This was the first time he'd seen her in a skirt, and he made a concerted effort to not let his eyes linger over long on her legs, though his success in this was probably a matter of opinion.

One thing was not opinion, though — one way or another, he was fucking doomed.

"Hey. Hope you're hungry." He said, as she pushed the door open, "I got reservations at this place that's supposed to be awesome."

"Reservations," Jill said, a lilt in her voice, as if she were impressed by his forethought. "Fancy. Good thing, 'cause I'm starving. Don't judge me if I'm a total pig."

Carlos made a dismissive noise. "You kiddin'? You'll be in good company, promise." It was an awkward pivot, partially to fill the silence with something, partially fueled by honesty that refused to be left unspoken. "You look real nice, by the way."

"Thank you," she said, and he thought he saw a tiny glimmer of bashfulness. No workboots, a skirt, makeup — so this really was a date, or at least looked like one to him. "It feels nice to have something to get prettied up for again."

"Like you're ever not?" It was a feeler, a test-the-waterer, a line thrown out to decipher just how forward he could be.

Jill didn't roll her eyes, didn't push him by his shoulder. She just smiled.

"Listen to you," she said. He thought he saw a touch of color in her cheeks — maybe a trick of the light.

At least it wasn't a refusal. Progress.

It was a short distance to the restaurant, and Jill suggested they walk, citing that parking would be hard to find in a downtown district on a Friday night, which was true. She was the one in the skirt, Carlos figured — she knew her cold tolerance better than he did. So they walked together, her boot soles made delicate taps against the concrete beside his heavy thumps. In a gradual, uncomfortable creep, Carlos couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, like something had run its finger down his spine and leapt out of frame just in time to not be seen.

"You okay?" Jill asked, and her eyes — somewhere between blue and silver, a color he could never place — looked concerned.

"I'm good." Carlos said. "Sorry, I just keep thinkin' I hear someone I recognize."

The restaurant was warm, lit a cozy shade of deep orange, like firelight. The wafting scents of cooked rice and sizzling chicken, overlaid with something sweet provoked Jill's stomach into an empty and unhappy grumble.

One of the waitresses intercepted them over the soft hum of chatter and clinking utensils. She showed them to their reservation, a black lacquered table polished to a shine that was almost reflective, behind a set of short crimson curtains accented with gold. Jill took it in, hands clasped in front of her chest, and slipped into the seat.

"I'm so excited for this," she said, "this place really is fancy. It smells so good in here."

"Just don't look at the bill when it comes or you're gonna think I had a stroke when I picked it."

"Thank you again. This is really nice."

Carlos smiled, unbuttoned his heavy wool coat before sitting down; he was likely too broad to do so comfortably while parked behind the table. He tossed the coat down onto the bench with a thump. "Glad you like it. So, I got an idea."

Jill looked up at him from where she was shrugging off her own jacket. He took a seat opposite her and leaned his forearms on the table; he was wearing dark jeans and a white dress shirt that looked remarkably undressy on him, opened at the throat buttons and rolled up to his elbows. The coarse, dark hair on his forearms was carved through with a series of shallow scars, scars she thought she knew the origin of.

"You and me, we know a lot about each other but... don't, really?"

"What do you mean?" She asked with a laugh. "Of course I know you."

"Yeah. But — we don't know know each other. You know?"

Jill could sort of understand what he was trying to say; when she had to think about it, she both knew him intimately and didn't know him at all topically — she'd learned that he could both operate a crane and fly a helicopter before she'd learned his last name or where he was from. She knew almost nothing about him as a person — or he, her.

But wasn't that stuff something? Wasn't that more than something? People fought to know each other as they already did, and many people, even married couples, never got there. It was an honor, a privilege, one shared with squad-mates and siblings in arms. But she was willing to try, at least to make conversation. To make him happy, maybe.

"Okay," she said, and settled on the dumbest question she could think of, with a teasing expression. "What's your zodiac sign?"

"Sagittar… are you makin' fun of me?"

"I'm an Aries. I think that makes us mortal enemies. Blood type?"

"What, you need some?"

The waitress interrupted then, with a cringing apology, asking for drink orders and appetizer selections. When she retreated, they picked up where they'd left off.

"Well… okay. If you wanna know, let's do it. How spicy can these questions be?" Jill asked. "What's off-limits?"

"Nothin'," Carlos said, and looked up at her in a mild breed of surprise from where he was reading the menu. Even when he tried to conceal his emotions, his heavy eyebrows tended to make up a majority of his facial expression, and they raised up when he was taken aback. After a moment of thought, he returned his attention to the black leather book in his hands. "Unless you want somethin' to be."

"Politics? Religion?"

"Okay, now you're startin' to scare me. You're not gonna try to convert me or anything, are you? 'Cause I was kiddin' about the whole Lord and Savior thing."

Jill settled in. He'd given her enough permission to make this interesting.

The night blazed by at a brisk clip, minutes and then hours eaten in chunks that seemed surreal in their speed. Their food arrived and sat uneaten, except for Jill's roll of sushi. Carlos asked to try it because of the golden deep-fried shoot of asparagus peeking out of its center, and they ended up sharing it as a novel bonding experience, unsure if they liked it or not until it was completely gone.

As promised, no topic was off-limits: even the most impolite questions were answered with simple, direct honesty and good humor. He rarely gave more than a few moments thought to his answers, and they always seemed to err on the side of minding his own business, of giving people the benefit of the doubt, pitching the situation to and fro searching for some kind of a silver lining or a way it could be improved. At first it was frustrating and smacked of ambivalence, or maybe a diversionary tactic, but as the night wore on and his approach didn't change, it became apparent this was just who he was. It was something she realized with grudging acceptance, which then settled down into a sort of lingering affection.

Somewhere during their conversation, she hit on the topic that really opened him up — culture. Movies, music, languages, travel. He was an immigrant — a refugee who had fled from South America with his family and now had his American citizenship for many years — and his point of view on cultural institutions she took for granted was engaging and, at times, challenging. He spoke about these things with an excitement and depth she wouldn't have expected from his answers to her previous questions. Jill leaned her face on her hand and watched him as he talked. At one point he stopped and looked at her, as if she'd interrupted.

"What's that look for?" He asked, laughing, suddenly self-conscious.

"Look?" Jill said, and straightened up.

"Yeah — that one."

Jill shook her head. "Nothing… just listening. Keep going."

Her pager, now rattling for her attention, lay forgotten in the handbag at her side.

Some hours into the dinner, they had decided they should probably eat their food. The conversation continued, albeit at a slower pace. Jill caught a quick glimpse of his wrist watch as he reached for his glass of water — 12:12am. She did a double-take, and grabbed his hand, turned his arm over, heavy and warm in her fingers.

"Oh wow," she said, "we've been here four hours."

Carlos finished chewing his food, and when she released him, wiped his hands on a napkin. "You need to get back?"

"It has been kind of a long day. I'm sorry."

"No, no, don't be. You've been movin' and stuff. I'll walk you back."

"Oh? You going to protect me?"

"Hey, it's a dangerous city. It's the least I can do."

When the bill came, he paid as promised, something she was uncomfortable with but didn't fight. They donned their coats and, leftovers in hand, Carlos opened the door for her again.

Something in the walk home was not as excited as the trip to the restaurant, but a happy, relaxed sort of lull. The nerves had died down, and the silence was a peaceful one, a recurrence of that warm, companionable feeling that had begun to take over whenever he was around. Jill thought of reaching for his arm, cocked out from where his hands were shoved in his pockets, but thought it a touch too forward.

They approached the staircase in front of her complex, and she turned to him.

"So… this is me."

Carlos scuffed his shoe on the ground, then looked up at her. "Yeah." Then, "I had a good time tonight."

"Me too."

There was a moment where neither moved, and he simply looked at her. Then there was a slow, intentional movement, one without hesitation: he put his hand on the side of her face and leaned down, placed a kiss that was somehow both firm and soft against her other cheek. Something in Jill's expression made him chuckle as he pulled away, a warm sound free of his normal taunting. His fingertips left her face, and he took a few steps backwards.

"Night." He said, and waved once.

"Goodnight," Jill said, and he turned, walked away. Jill stood before the stairs, rooted to the ground in indecision. She thought again about being too forward, about interpersonal issues, about many things, all in the span of a single second, and then decided — if she wanted something, well, she would take it, and if returning the attention and care someone gave her was disloyal, she supposed she was just disloyal. She turned, and walked in his direction.

"Carlos!" She called. He didn't hear her — he was distracted with his phone, which he pulled out of his pocket to check a message. Jill took off in a jog, and as if challenging her to race, beside her a black van tore down the street with a loud squeal of tires. It rolled to a stop in the middle of traffic, and the sedan behind it almost crumpled its hood against the van's broad chrome bumper. The sedan wheeled out of the way at the last moment, laid on its horn, and was gone. A door slammed and a man in a leather jacket and baggy dress pants circled around the back of the van — tall, rail-thin, with shaggy brown hair and a stooped posture.

"Hey, you Carlos Oliveira?" He called. He mispronounced the last name by a mile, but the intention was clear.

Carlos looked up in the direction of the voice. "Depends. Can I help you?"

"Yeah," the man said, and reached inside his jacket, "yeah, I think you can."