Leave Request

The thing about Towner during leave season is that it empties out in a way that feels personal. Fort Drake goes quiet, half the shops on Main close by six, and the people who stay behind are either married to each other or married to their routines. I'm Laila, I'm twenty-four, and I write filler for a base newsletter, which in October means I was writing things like "Five Cozy Recipes for Cold Nights on the Installation."

Nobody reads those. I don't even read those.

I'd been in Towner eight months. My last relationship was two years ago, back when I was twenty-two, with a fellow journalist named Cora. It lasted two months and ended because she said I kept everything behind glass. She wasn't wrong. I just didn't know how to fix it, so I moved somewhere small and quiet where nobody would ask.

That plan worked great, as you can probably guess from the fact that I was spending a Saturday night eating cereal over the sink and watching the sky go flat orange over the scrub grass.

My duplex had two halves. Mine, and one that had been empty since August. The "For Rent" sign had been gone for a week, but nobody had moved in yet, or so I thought.

She knocked on my door at seven.

I opened it with my spoon still in my hand, which is a look, I know. A woman stood on my step. She was twenty-six, short dark hair, paint on her fingers in three colors.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Randi. I moved into the other half today, like, two hours ago, and my laptop battery is at four percent, and the moving guys took my power strip in some box, and I have a deadline Monday. Please tell me you own a power strip."

"I own two," I said. "Laila. Come in before the mosquitoes find you."

"Oh, thank god. I was about to offer you money or my car or something embarrassing."

"Just bring it back. That's the whole deal."

She followed me to the kitchen, took the strip, and then didn't leave. She stood there reading the cereal box on my counter like it was a museum exhibit.

"You eat dinner over the sink?" she asked.

"Sometimes. It's an efficient system."

"It's a sad system."

"Wow. You moved in two hours ago!"

She laughed, and it was a good laugh, loud and unbothered. "Fair. Sorry. I'm just, I've been in a moving truck all day with two guys who argued about country music the entire drive, and I have nobody to talk to except a deadline. Can I sit on your porch for a minute? I promise I'm usually less pathetic."

"You're not usually on my porch at all," I said. "So there's no baseline for pathetic. Sure."

We went out front. Her half of the yard was already dying in a different way than mine, which I pointed out, and she said she planned to grow actual plants, which I doubted out loud, and she said we'd see, and that was basically the whole conversation until the streetlights buzzed on. Except it wasn't. We kept talking.

She was a freelance graphic designer, and the office she contracted for was the same one my newsletter answered to, which we figured out around minute three and then spent five more minutes mapping mutual acquaintances.

"You know Davey in print?" she asked.

"Davey who hums while he laminates?"

"That's the one!"

"Oh my god, the humming. I hear it through two walls."

"He's a good man and a terrible hummer," she said, and I laughed so hard the porch light flickered, or maybe that was moths.

Somewhere in there I stopped holding my spoon. I'd brought it out with me, apparently, like a comfort object, and set it on the arm of the chair, and at some point I noticed and said nothing and neither did she.

The orange went out of the sky and the flat dark came in, and the base on the horizon had that off-season stillness, no trucks, no planes, just the fence lights. Everyone my age in town had either driven to the city for the month or was home with a spouse. And here I was on a porch with a stranger, feeling more awake than I had in weeks.

"Okay," I said. "I have an idea. It's dumb."

"I love dumb ideas. Lay it on me."

"We write a rule for the evening. One rule. Then tomorrow night we break it on purpose. Like a game."

Randi turned her head slowly. "That's genuinely insane and I'm in. Why break it?"

"Because following rules is boring and breaking one with a witness is fun. Also I'm bored, and you're here, and leave season lasts forever."

"Sold. Okay, tonight's rule." She held up her drink, which was tap water in a jelly jar I'd lent her. "No talking about work!"

"Agreed. Rule written. No work talk tonight."

We shook on it, very formally, both of us grinning.

We broke it within ten minutes. Of course we did. She told a story about a client who wanted a logo to look "more expensive but cheaper," and I was already laughing before she finished, and I confessed that my editor had asked me to make the newsletter "pop," and we were off, both of us going yeah, no, exactly, mine too, until Randi put her hand up.

"Wait. Rule. We're breaking the rule."

"It's been ten minutes," I said.

"It's been nine. We're degenerates. Okay, new policy. When we break a rule, we have to say it out loud and take a penalty."

"What penalty?"

She thought about it, swinging one foot. "The person who breaks it first has to answer one question from the other person. Any question. Honestly."

I should mention here that I'm bad at honest questions. See above, re: Cora, re: glass, re: everything. But she was looking at me with her eyebrows raised, challenging me, and I found myself saying, "Agreed."

"You broke it first," she said. "The logo story was mine, but you made it about your editor. You escalated."

"That's a stretch."

"It's a ruling. Answer the question. What are you actually doing out here in Towner? Nobody stays in Towner on purpose at twenty-four."

The streetlight hummed. Somewhere behind the fence line, a gate alarm chirped once and quit.

"I took the job because it was quiet," I said. "I wanted quiet."

"That's an answer to a different question."

"It's the answer I have tonight."

She looked at me, and for once she didn't push. "Fine. Banked. I'll ask again when you're braver."

"You're very confident I'll get braver."

"You let a total stranger sit on your porch for two hours. You're already braver than you think."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so I picked my spoon back up off the chair arm like an idiot, and she noticed, and we both cracked up, and the moment broke the good way.

"Tomorrow night's rule is mine," she said, standing up and stretching. "And I'm not telling you what it is until you're over here."

"Over where?"

"My half. I have a table now. And half a bottle of wine, because apparently I thought I'd celebrate moving alone."

"I'll bring the glasses," I said. "Mine are better than yours."

"Deal. And Laila? Thanks for the strip."

"Bring it back tomorrow. That's the deal."

"That's the whole deal," she said, grinning, and disappeared into her half of the duplex, and I sat out there a few minutes longer listening to the fence lights and thinking that leave season had just gotten a lot less empty.

* * *

The next night was Sunday, and she showed up at my door at seven sharp with two wine glasses and no pride. She'd actually set the table. Her table, the one thing she owned besides a laptop, had two placemats on it that I'm pretty sure she'd made out of printer paper.

"You drew placemats," I said.

"I drew placemats. The wine's the cheap kind. Sit down, we have business."

She'd written tonight's rule on a sticky note, folded in half like it was a fortune cookie. I opened it while she poured.

"No touching without asking first," I read out loud. "That's tonight's rule? That seems backwards."

"It's a good rule. Very civilized. Very professional workplace appropriate." She sat down across from me, looking way too pleased with herself. "Sign here."

"There's no line to sign on."

"Sign the placemat."

I signed the placemat. Don't ask me why, it felt right at the time.

So we ate, if you can call crackers and the world's saddest cheese plate eating, and we talked about everything but work, which lasted a full forty minutes this time, a personal best. And then I reached up to tuck my hair back, because it was doing the thing where it falls in your face when you lean over a plate, and Randi reached across the table first and brushed it behind my ear for me.

We both froze.

"You broke the rule," I said. "Thirty seconds ago you wrote it."

"I know what I did, Laila." She hadn't moved her hand yet. Her fingers were still right there by my jaw, and they had paint on two of them, blue this time. "I broke it on purpose. That's the game. We wrote it down so breaking it would count."

"That's not how the game works. We break it tomorrow."

"Well, I'm an innovator. Ask me why."

"Why did you break the rule?"

"Because asking first is the rule, and I wanted to find out if you'd say yes." She pulled her hand back slowly and sat there with her palms up on the table like she was under arrest. "So, hypothetically, if I'd asked first. Could I have done that?"

The honest question thing again. I hate that I'm telling you this, but my face went hot and I'm pale enough that there's no hiding it, she definitely saw it.

"Probably," I said.

"Probably."

"Ask me next time and find out." I picked up my glass, mostly to have something to do with my hands. "God, you're forward. Does this work on everyone?"

"It's never worked on anyone. You're the pilot program."

She refilled my glass without being asked, which I noted was technically not touching, so no penalty. "Okay. That was a lot. New topic. Did you hear that awful gate alarm again last night?"

I let her change the subject. I'm telling you, though, my ear was on fire for the next hour. Just the one ear. Like a sunburn in one spot.

* * *

Tuesday, she came to my half. My porch, my jelly jars, my territory, and I felt weirdly smug about that even though I couldn't tell you why. She brought over the half bottle of wine from her place, the last of it, and I brought out a bag of those frozen potstickers I keep for emergencies.

"Tonight's rule," she said, holding up a folded napkin. She'd written on a napkin this time, we were upgrading our materials. "You read it."

I unfolded it. "The door stays open."

"Meaning no closed doors between us. We hang out with the door open. Keeps things honest. Very frontier town."

"That's such a weird rule," I said, but I said it while looking at her mouth, and I knew it, and she knew it. "Fine. Door open. Agreed." I signed the napkin with a pen from the junk drawer. We were building an archive at this point.

We ate potstickers at my little kitchen table with both doors standing wide open, the screen one and the wooden one, and the flat orange dusk came in and lit up her whole face, and we talked about her deadline, which was against some rule or other, but neither of us called it, which I think counts as a mutual amnesty. Around nine she got up to get the wine bottle from the counter and on her way back she paused at the open door.

Then she closed it.

Both doors. The screen and the wooden one, with this little click, and then she turned around and stood there with her back against it.

"Rule's broken," she said. "I broke it. Say it so it counts."

"The door is closed. You closed it. Rule's broken." My voice came out lower than I planned. "Penalty. I get to ask the question."

"You get to ask the question."

I should have asked something safe. I want you to know I thought about it, for maybe two full seconds, and then I heard myself ask, "Can I kiss you?"

"You're asking me the rule question?"

"I'm asking. Yes or no."

"Yes," she said, "obviously yes, I closed the door, what did you think the door was," and I was already crossing the kitchen, and she was laughing, that thing where she laughs while she's doing something she absolutely means, and I kissed her and she kissed me back with one hand flat on the door behind her like she needed the anchor.

Then she pulled back, still laughing, and held up a finger.

"Wait. Wait wait wait. Hold on."

"What? What did I do?"