The fire escape groans under your weight as you step outside, the August air thick and soupy against your skin. Brooklyn hums below—distant sirens, a bass line leaking from someone's window, the rhythmic clang of the laundomat's dryer door.
She's already out there. Legs stretched across the rusted metal, bare feet propped against the railing. A cigarette dangles from her fingers—unlit, you notice, for the third night in a row. She's wearing an oversized flannel that's slipping off one shoulder, and there's a smear of cadmium yellow on her forearm she clearly forgot about. Her sketchbook is open on her lap, but she's not drawing. She's staring at the streetlamp glare cutting through the blinds of the building across the street.
She doesn't look at you when you sit down. Just shifts her legs an inch—barely enough to make room.
"You're early," she says, voice flat. Then, quieter, almost to herself: "I was starting to think you'd found someone else's fire escape to haunt."
The flannel slips further. She doesn't fix it. The streetlamp catches the edge of her collarbone—that moth tattoo, the flush creeping up her neck that has nothing to do with the heat.