Chapter 13 Golden Hour
GOLDEN HOUR
Discovery Park is a place people go to get lost, or at least to practice pretending they’re not a ten-minute Uber from the nearest brunch.
This time of year the air is thick with whatever pollen makes my face leak, the sunset turns the grasses nuclear gold, and there are at least three couples making out within a hundred-yard radius at all times.
I have no idea why we keep ending up here.
Maybe it’s that Darius looks like he belongs in wild spaces, or maybe I just like the way he pretends not to get winded on the hills.
We take the bluff trail, because it’s longer, and because you can see the whole Sound once you clear the treeline.
Neither of us is talking, not really, not until we hit the first overlook and Darius says, “You ever think about leaving?”
He means Seattle. Maybe he means the team, the city, the everything.
“Only every day ending in Y,” I say, but I keep my eyes on the water, where the ferries crawl toward Bainbridge in slow, painful procession.
He looks at me like he’s trying to read whether I mean it. The man has a built-in bullshit detector, but he’s so used to being the one who never blinks that when he does, it’s like a physical event.
I watch him wait for my answer. I give him nothing, just keep walking.
The path narrows, and we have to go single file for a bit, which means my view is all calves and the back of his neck, sweat-sheened and perfect. He slows up, lets me draw even.
Now it’s just the wind in the grass, the crunch of gravel under our shoes, and the dull roar of my heartbeat every time our sleeves brush.
We hit the part of the trail where the benches are all rusted out from sea air and disuse.
There’s a couple there, an older pair, the guy feeding bits of apple to his wife like she’s a bird.
Darius glances at them, then at me, and for a second I think he’s going to say something about getting old, about how the world doesn’t stop for anyone. But he just grunts and picks up the pace.
It goes like that for another mile. Us and the wind and the endless possibilities of what we’re not saying.
I can feel his mood shifting, like he’s working up to something or fighting down the urge to bolt. I know that feeling. I live in that feeling.
Finally, after the third overlook, he says, “My mom used to bring me here.”
I almost trip. “You’re kidding. She doesn’t strike me as a hiking type.”
He shrugs. “She likes the air. Says it tastes different from Oakland. She’d pack a picnic, make me sit still and look at the water. She said it was important to remember how big the world was.”
I picture him as a kid, sitting on a bench like a prisoner, forced to watch gulls and container ships when all he wanted was to go home and play Halo. “Did it work?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “I remember it,” he says. “So maybe.”
We take a left at the fork, toward the bluff where the view is pure postcard, all firs and madrona and the sound below like a sheet of hammered tin.
The wind cuts cold, and I rub at my arms, pretending I’m not freezing. Darius notices, pulls a face, and wordlessly peels off his outer layer, a faded UW track jacket and throws it at me like it’s a dare.
I put it on. It’s warm as hell and smells like cedar and the last hint of his body wash. I try to make a joke, but all that comes out is, “You always take care of people?”
He snorts. “I think you’re the only one who notices.”
We walk the rest of the way in a weird, perfect silence.
Every few steps, our hands brush. Once, when the trail gets tight, I catch the back of his hand with mine and leave it there just a millisecond too long.
He doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t acknowledge it either.
The sun’s just hitting the water when we find the last bench.
It’s half-eaten by moss and bird shit, but the view is spectacular, so we sit anyway, shoulders jammed together like we’re both too stubborn to take the edge.
From up here, the world looks small, boats crawling, clouds piled up like bruises.
Darius leans forward, forearms on his knees. “You ever miss home?” he asks.
I almost laugh, but the way he says it makes me pause. “Tacoma doesn’t really inspire nostalgia. My family’s cool, but it’s all bagels and yelling. You want to hear about my worst bar mitzvah disaster?”
He grins, the first real smile of the walk. “Hit me.”
So I tell him the story.
The ruined Torah reading, the bit where my voice cracked like a glass dropped in the shower, my grandmother’s horror, the rabbi’s subtle but unmistakable sigh when I lost my place for the third time.
I make it a show, because I know he likes the performance, but when I get to the part about dropping the Kiddush cup and splattering grape juice all over my white shirt, he actually laughs.
It’s deep and unguarded and it nearly stops my heart.
“You’re a mess,” he says, but it sounds like a compliment.
“Yeah,” I say. “But I’m a lovable mess.”
He looks at me sideways, like he wants to say something and isn’t sure if he should.
“My mom,” he says, “she made this dish, griot. Pork, fried, soaked in citrus. She said it was the only thing that made her think of home. Every time we ate it, she told me, ‘The world will try to make you bland, but you need to keep your flavor.’”
“That’s actually awesome,” I say, and I mean it.
He nods, but he’s staring at the water again. “I never told her about Nia. Not really. I think she always knew, but I couldn’t get the words out. It’s stupid, right?”
“Not stupid,” I say, and I don’t even try to make it a joke. “It’s hard to say some things. Even to the people who care the most.”
The bench isn’t that big, but we’re sitting so close now our thighs are pressed together, the heat of it shocking through the denim.
My hands are in my lap, his too, but the pinkies are a hair’s breadth apart. I want to reach over, to link them, but I don’t. Not yet. The pact is still too new, the world too raw.
Instead, I just let the wind whip my hair, let the last of the sun burn my face, let the moment hang between us like a dare.
We don’t talk for a long time. The air’s gone sharp with salt, and the only sounds are the water and the distant squawk of gulls.
I don’t know if he’s thinking about me, or his mom, or the team, or all the ways the next few months could go wrong.
But I know he’s here, right now, and that’s more than I’ve ever had.
Finally, he says, “You want to head back?”
“Yeah,” I say, but neither of us moves.
We sit there, side by side, bodies touching, until the sky goes dark and the only light left is the city, miles away, promising nothing but itself.
Neither of us says a word.
But it’s the best conversation I’ve ever had.
———
The best part of the day is the five minutes before Darius shows up.
There’s a kind of electric hope in the air, like the universe is holding its breath just to see if he’ll bail or if this time I’ll get to see that look on his face when he spots me, like he can’t believe we’re still doing this, like maybe I’ll vanish if he blinks too hard.
Green Lake is fucked at this hour, not in the scary way, just in the absolute bleakness of the wet running path and the city’s ghosts, dog-walkers, insomniac retirees, the ever-present smell of fertilizer and stale weed.
The lamps flicker orange over the water, which is black and perfectly still, and every now and then I catch my own reflection in the glassy surface and almost recognize the guy staring back.
I do a few high knees, pretending I’m not freezing, and check my phone even though I know there’s no new messages.
I scan the lot for Darius’s car, knowing it by the missing hubcap and the way he parks slightly crooked, like a warning to anyone who thinks about getting too close.
He’s always late, but only by a minute or two.
Enough to keep me guessing. He rolls up right on schedule, window cracked, and nods at me like we haven’t seen each other in years.
“You ready, old man?” he says, voice still rough from sleep.
“I was born ready,” I lie, and we both know it.
We take off, shoes hitting the path in perfect sync. We don’t talk, not at first.
The run is its own language, the way he accelerates on the downhills and I catch him on the turns, the way our arms brush when we try to pass a stroller without breaking stride, the way he grunts at every quarter-mile marker just to remind me he’s keeping count.
The cold cuts through my lungs, every breath a shock, but after the first mile it gets easier.
We settle into a pace, side by side, eyes fixed on the black strip of trail ahead.
When we hit the north end, he tilts his head, just a fraction, and I know he wants to double the lap. I nod, and we keep going.
We’re communicating in grunts, in the set of our jaws, in the way we both slow to a walk at the same point, like we agreed on it without ever saying a word.
“Good pace,” he says after we catch our breath, hands on his hips, sweat steaming off his neck in the cold air.
“You were dogging it,” I reply, but he just smirks.
The walk back to the cars is slow, the sky starting to pink up at the edges.
I can feel him watching me, not in a creepy way, just in the way people do when they’re trying to figure out if this is real, if we’re going to keep doing this, or if it’s all just a hallucination brought on by trauma and caffeine.
We stop at a coffee place in Fremont, one of those ancient joints that looks like it should have closed in the nineties but keeps hanging on by sheer spite.
The neon sign is barely alive, flickering “C F E” above the door like the universe is making a joke at my expense.
Inside, it’s dead quiet, except for the barista, who’s wearing headphones and reading a physics textbook the size of my leg.
Darius orders black coffee for both of us and a cinnamon roll the size of a hockey puck. We sit by the window, the glass fogged up from our body heat, and stare at the traffic inching by on 34th.
He tears the cinnamon roll in half, gives me the bigger chunk, and says, “My dad would hate this place.”