Epilogue Damián
The air is different in November.
Not the thick wet press of summer that sat on my shoulders and decided it lived there.
The first morning I walked this path with my feet on the ground instead of my eyes on a phone.
The heat pressing against my arms and the humidity wrapping my neck and the city being nothing like any city I’d ever woken up in.
This morning the air is cooler. Thinner.
The trees on the Beltline have gone copper and gold.
Tobík is three steps ahead. Not because he’s walking fast. Because he knows the path, and his body moves through it with the ease of a person who has done this six mornings a week for over a year.
I’ve walked this path with him for four months.
I let him lead because leading this path makes him happy and making him happy has turned out to be the simplest project I’ve ever undertaken.
“You’re quiet,” he says, turning back.
“I’m looking.”
“At what?”
“Everything.”
He smiles at me like I’ve said something important and all I said was a word and the truth of it sits in my chest without argument.
The flower stand is ahead. I know the flower stand. I’ve known the flower stand since July, and before that I knew it from eleven photos on Instagram. She sees us coming and pulls two sunflowers from the bucket before we reach her.
“Morning, honey. And the tall one.” She holds a sunflower out to Tobík and then holds one out to me. “You too. Don’t argue. The arguing stage is over.”
“The arguing stage was very brief,” Tobík says.
I take the sunflower. She’s right. I argued once and she overruled me and the overruling was swift and total and I have been a sunflower person for four months.
She takes Tobík’s phone and positions us in front of the buckets. I stand next to him. His shoulder presses against my arm. She takes the photo and studies it.
“The tall one’s looking at you again,” she says.
“He does that,” Tobík says.
“I’ve noticed.”
Claire sees us before Bagel does, but not by much. She’s holding the leash with both hands and losing the negotiation the way she always does. Bagel has decided that Tobík is the most important thing on this path. The commitment is total. The restraint is nonexistent.
“He’s been pulling since Piedmont,” Claire says. “Bagel, honey, at least try.”
Bagel does not try. Claire lets go. He reaches Tobík and sits on his left foot, vibrating, his mouth open in the wide grin that makes everything around it simpler.
Tobík crouches. He scratches behind Bagel’s ears. The dog doesn’t understand a word and doesn’t need to.
Bagel finishes with Tobík. He circles me once, inspects my shoes, and sits on my right foot. Full weight. The warmth of him pressing through my shoe and into the bone.
“He does that every time now,” Claire says. She stopped being surprised about it weeks ago, which means it’s become a fact about our mornings, which means our mornings have facts. “You’ve been permanently approved.”
“Bagel has good taste,” Tobík says from below, still crouched, his hand on the dog’s back.
“He’s on my foot.”
“That is his highest compliment. He is saying you belong here.”
I look down at the golden retriever on my foot. Four months ago a dog sat on my shoe and I stood very still because the dog didn’t know what it took to get here. Now the dog sits on my shoe and I stand very still because standing still has become the whole point.
Tobík leads and I follow. Past the bench where a woman is reading with a coffee balanced on the armrest. Past two runners who nod at Tobík and one of them says “morning, man” and Tobík says “good morning” with the careful construction that hasn’t changed in over a year of living.
A man on a bike slows down and asks for a selfie and Tobík obliges with the practiced patience of someone who has been recognized on this path enough times that the recognition has become part of the walk.
I stand to the side and watch the city see him and his hand finds mine when the cyclist pedals away, his fingers lacing through mine as the path curves.
He doesn’t let go when the path straightens.
We stop in the coffee shop. Jordan starts making the americano when Tobík walks through the door.
“Morning, regular. Morning, Damián. Black?”
“Yes, please.”
“Consistent man. Window seat’s open.”
I sit across from Tobík. The coffee is good.
It’s been good every morning for four months.
His season started a month ago with the Firebirds.
My season with United ended two weeks ago.
Our schedules run opposite but our mornings are the same and the sameness is the thing I didn’t know I was walking toward for three years.
I take out my phone. I open Instagram. The account is there, the way it’s always been there, the profile I’ve visited every day for three years without following, without liking, without engaging. The grid of a life I watched from far away. Small. Patient. Three years inside it.
I hit follow.
The notification lands on Tobík’s phone. The brief chime. I watch his face as he looks down at the screen. I watch his face process what it says.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. He puts the phone face down on the table. He picks up his coffee. Over the rim his eyes find mine.
“Finally,” he says. “Three years, Damián.”
“I know. I was getting to it.”
“You were getting to it?”
“The timing had to be right.”
“The timing.” He’s smiling now, the real one, the one that started everything. “The timing was right three years ago.”
“I’m thorough.”
“You’re Czech. We’re all thorough. You’re something else.”
My phone buzzes. A text, Czech.
?íma
Vě?, international break next month. Ková? is being weird about it. Says he’s got news. Won’t say what. Something about a person he met in Naples. You know how he is. Drinks when we’re all in Prague?
I type back.
I’ll be there. Tell Ková? drinks whenever he wants.
Tobík is watching me with his chin on his hand and his coffee growing cool and the sunflower leaning against his shoulder and the light doing what Atlanta light does in November mornings, which is come in low and turn everything it touches warm.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing. I’m looking.”
“At what?”
“Everything.”
The coffee is good. The city is warm enough.
The path outside the window is the path I memorized from a screen and walked this morning with my own feet and will walk tomorrow and the day after because tomorrow and the day after are mine now.
The man across the table is watching me with the expression that started this.
I am sitting in a coffee shop on a Tuesday morning with a man and a sunflower and a cup of black coffee and outside the window the Beltline is going gold and I am here.
Home.