NICO & JENNIE

The Evening We Kept

Nico waited by the old sedan as the rain sketched bright lines on its glass. Jeannie appeared like the last light of dusk — fragile, deliberate, utterly present.

They spoke in small gestures: a tug at a chin, a whisper at the ear, fingers that found fingers against the cool metal of the car. In the doorway of a tired building they stood framed by panes of glass, a black-and-white moment that could have been cut from an old movie.

Words were spare; everything else — the warmth of a palm, the tilt of a smile, the hush of an empty street — did the talking.

That night, the world narrowed to the two of them, to the quiet contract of staying near, and to the promise that some evenings are meant only to be remembered.