I have a key, and I let myself in, unreasonably relieved to find Duo simply asleep on the couch. I just stand for a moment and take things in; everything about the place telling a tale. I don’t know what happened yet, I only know that there had been something in his tone of voice on the phone.
‘Everything is fine,’ his voice had said.
While that tone had said, ‘I need you.’
He’s never been one to ask, never been one to reach. It makes me good at listening between the words for what he needs to say but can’t.
He’s sleeping, but his face still looks tense with some worry. There’s a book in his lap that I realize after a moment is an album. He’s fallen asleep leafing through it.
Standing solitary in the center of the coffee table is an unopened bottle of whiskey. The lights are low. The stereo plays a song meant to fill a brooding silence. It’s a poor choice in both lyric and time; amplifying instead of easing the melancholy that somehow hangs in the room.
‘Duo?’ I call, and wait until his eyelids flutter open before crossing to his side. He looks both surprised and relieved. Chagrined and resolved, his glance falling on the bottle at his right hand.
‘I didn’t…’ he begins, but I stop the words with a brush of lips.
‘I know,’ I assure, having seen the unbroken seal. A near thing though, and I can’t help but say, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here.’
He smiles gently and looks down, drawing my gaze with his to the pictures in his lap. Pictures of us. ‘But you were...’