"Have you seen my car keys?" Mel shouted from the kitchen.

"They're on the bookshelf where you left them."

"No they're not!"

Josh sighed and shook his head, he walked over to the tall mahogany case and retrieved the keys from the top shelf.

"Ah, thank you," Mel beamed pecking his cheek.

"Thanks for letting me come over," Josh said soft.

Mel pursed her lips and gave him space. It was best to back away when he was like this. When in rotten opinion of himself nothing would persuade him. A shadow came over this whole countenance, sparks flying from the tips of his fingers as he anxiously drummed them against tables and walls, computer keys and notebooks. 

"You know you can whenever you need to. I worry about you," Mel professed quietly.

He nodded, he knew how she felt. It was an eternity of foster care, and even now he spent time with that strange little knot of something terrible about to happen even when the worst had already passed. 

"Josh?" she said, her voice melodic and low.

"Yes?"

"Promise me you'll try?"

His face contorts in confusion, "Try what?"

"Try to be happy?"

-------------

He hates it when it's like this. When the snow is all but melted and yet the rains still come in frozen sheaths across the land. The wind whipping against his slender frame pushing him back  feels like it might burn him into ash.

The scenery is blurring past as he drives. He misses fall, the long bleeding endless colors there and gone in an instant. Now there is only streaks of watercolor in bleeding brake lights. Elementary constructs of shape assembled in the yield signs he can never ignore.

He brakes and bends over to pick up his coat from the floor. Through tinted glass in the next car over he sees the seams. Red and bold stitches across worn down white. A aged baseball and mit dimly lit in the night commute.

He wonders how many generations have tossed it before it landed in that back seat.

If: He never asks

Then: He'll never know

Baseball, he wishes he was good at baseball. Baseball doesn't advance intelligence, just skill in muscle memory. But he doesn't care. He's sick of waiting for red lights to catch a glimpse of real life in other cars. There used to be a system, at his elementary school. Green lights were good, yellows and warning and red a trip to the principle. He used to hate the color red. Green was wonderful. Everything it stood for, life, vivacity, beauty in simplicity. How he longed to be united with green, but there were only tangy yellows and cherry purple reds within him. Ones that stained and branded his skin beyond hiding away in trench coats and sweatshirts.

He cranes his neck further left, to another car. He watches as it flies past, a scream barley able to echo from his lips as it barrels into the intersection and seemingly implodes. Brakes screaming and gears flying to the air.

He sits up in his bed with a start, breathing heavy as he gets his bearings. Had he become distracted, had it been his fault he hadn't called out sooner- but a dream, that was all.

He puts his feet down over the side of the bed and rubs his eyes. He's slept with the light on since he was eight, keeps the blinds pulled down even during the day. Theres an extra lock on the door, he inspects the fire alarm once a week. He misses being able to go down the hall and wake up Adeline, to sit with a glass of water and just talk and not be judged.

Melanie isn't a cure. He see's that now, the nightmares still come, the sleepless nights persist. But she is an ally. And as he checks his phone and sees the unread message marked two minutes prior he smiles. 

She's wide awake too.

--------------

"He was different before you," Jack notes as he drinks his water. 

Mel looked up from her book and recrossed her legs. The bus stop was empty and they'd decided on it as the only equidistant location between all three of their apartments. There was graffiti on the walls with neon yellow spray paint. She wiped the rain from the metal bench and thought of the Brooklyn bridge in spring, of city lights in cloudy weather and lighthouses in storms. 

"Hm?" 

"Josh, he wasn't how he is now. You've been good for him. More good than any of us." 

She closed her book and tucked a Polaroid between the pages, the usual flower falling unnoticed to the asphalt. "What did he use to be like? He never says much about before." 

Jack rubbed his neck. He was laughing a little to himself just thinking about it, he knew Josh and his emotions better than anybody and yet he constantly found himself a bit perplexed by the recent turn of events. 

"Well, he didn't always like computers. And as far back as I can remember he never liked a single girl.  His Dad worked on them, had some bad memories with that and then one day, I came home and that scrawny little kid who had sat staring at walls in the living room alone for weeks was jabbering on about some hardware with some kids from the radio shack. And after that he just, he was always alone Josh. And he didn't mind that except sometimes when I wasn't around to talk to him about the things he liked. He built cassette players and listened to Springsteen, and sang off key. Normal kid, except-" 

"For everything?" 

Jack nodded quietly, pulling at the cuff of his shirt and evening it out with the other side, "Except for nights when fireworks would go off and he'd practically hide under his bed. Or when people dropped a glass at a restaurant and we'd have to take him home cause he was so shaken he'd nearly throw up. I think he was about twelve the first time he took his bike out alone? And it just got worse up till he was seventeen and then after that he just bottled it up, sent it all away like something snapped and he deleted it off the mainframe all together." 

"Sounds like a precious kid, your parents must have loved him a lot." 

"They did but... it was hard. They couldn't take that away you know, only try to fix things up, mend what they could." 

Mel took out her umbrella, "He's just lived through the kind of pain I don't think I could process. How does he?" 

"He doesn't. It's not his personality Mel he does what he has to to survive. You don't reason that stuff out, theres no answers. Bad things just happen, I get patients in every day, sometimes I can help them, and sometimes I can't." 

Mel frowned, "Now you make it sound like its just numbers." 

"He isn't wrong. Sometimes it's easier to think that way. Josh doesn't think in numbers, he is numbers. Hes statistics and algorithms, and before you he just lived to work; and now all of that, every last bit of that is focused on being somebody you can count on. It's like he's back to being that funny kid laying upside down on his bed reading comic books and catching popcorn in his mouth. Before you, it was time schedules and half loosing his mind in business meetings. I'd talk to him and he wouldn't even look up from his screen. He never smiled, he never laughed, he rarely spoke to anybody he didn't have to. He was dying Mel. And you saved him." 

"I- I don't think I did. That's just Josh, I'm sure that's always been Josh, he's creative and patient and wonderful..." 

"Well, your Josh and my brother are two very different people." 

"You really think he's that different?" Mel asked quietly, "I guess I just had this idea of what he was like before we spoke. My first impression was that he was...happy." 

"He's a new man. Dare I say a better one. Thank you, from all of us. You saved him Mel. And I don't care to think what conclusions he would had come to if you hadn't come along." 

Mel swallowed and nervously tugged at the clasp of her necklace. 

"Mel." 

"Yeah?" 

"Josh isn't Josh without you. He won't ever be again either." 

 --------------

Now he's been called inside the big room with the oak doors. Commendation, he at first assumes. This guess is soon turned away cold by hawk like noses turned to the air and angry eyes that dart as if trying to catch him from across the room.

Accusations unfounded. 

"I've told you everything," he stated firmly, "I have been a loyal asset to this organization, and to the principles it abides by. I caught your guy okay? What more evidence could you want?"

"Then why is your signature on the feed, our experts have confirmed it. "

"First of all what experts? Dave? You're going to trust Dave? I'm your expert, and I don't know, really, I don't, it just means someone better than me is out there. That's possible isn't it! The last thing I would want is a bunch of stupid codes to stupid bank accounts! And if I were to do it I'd cover it up a whole lot better than this botch job. Mr. Steele-"

"I know," Jacob Steele said low and soft, "And me and Mel will always trust your word-"

"But under the circumstance," another man said rising to his feet, "We are going to place you on temporary suspension followed by a full inspection."

"You can't do that!" Josh yelled standing and slamming his fist on the table, "I haven't done anything! No ones going to hire me with a freeze on my assets. I live off my credibility and reputation if I don't have that- I won't be able to work. I quit my job for this."

"Me and Mel-"

Josh's eyes were ablaze with fire, "I don't need your pity sir."

"And we, Mr. Taylor, are no longer in need of your services."

---------------

"Josh," Mel sighs heavily as he walks hurriedly through the crowd. "Josh you have to eat something." 

He's always loved bridges. Bridges that tower over the powerful force of water. He's always thought it was wrong to say you're afraid of bridges. You're only afraid of what roars and waits beneath. Scared of your car tumbling off the edge. He won't tell her, not yet. The more he pretends it isn't happening the better he feels. 

"I'm not hungry!" he laughs paying the street vendor for a picture of some person who had long since walked on.

He's always been fascinated by art, the way the colors blend and bend across the page. The time and energy of a single heart channeled into a memorial that is equally everlasting and easily destructible. Well, maybe not always, just recently he's started to be drawn to things like that. He understands now it isn't all pure emotion, there is a calculation and thought to it that he appreciates even more than C++.  

"Josh!"

He places the three dollars in the man's hand, looks into his eyes and turns to face her with a sad smile. He knows, he knows back then he was killing himself slow because he didn't have the courage to do it fast. He never wanted to die, not really, he just wanted the stress to stop.  But now he has others to worry about. Others with blonde hair and desperation in their eyes at the thought of losing him. 

Just as he pressed the money into the man's palm she turns and presses a small box of raisins into his. 

"What are these?" 

"They're for you." Mel smiles, "I keep em in my purse now." 

"Raisins?" Josh laughed, "How did you know I loved raisins?" 

"I've watched you eye them in every store from here to timbucktoo." Mel laughed, "Now whenever you get hungry, whenever you feel like you should skip a meal so you achieve that impossible ideal of physical health in your head, I want you to have a raisin and think of me." 

"Raisins?" Josh teased raising an eyebrow. 

"Shut up I'm trying to be nice!" she laughed. 

Physical contact has always been something strange to him. Hugs feel like attacking, kisses like chills and hypothermia. Who would want their space invaded? Their life wounded by another person. 

She takes her cold hand and gently presses each finger to his palm. He strengthens his grasp, determined to not let it slip of fall away. He doesn't mind it now. Now every touch is something of subtle comfort, music in his ears. It brings a vivacity for life and living that he hadn't experienced in years. 

He quickly entraps her hand, coaxing a timid smile from her face.

"I like you alot Josh."

He bashfully turns away with a chuckle, "I like you too Mel."

--------------

They sit at the bench, two and two. Jack and Josh, just like old times. The dull roar of the city goes on endlessly. And when he listens close enough, he thinks he can almost hear the soft rush of the seas across the sands.

"What are you going to do?"

"There's only one choice isn't there? Wait and see I guess."

Jack's chest constricted in grief, it was getting harder to breathe. Harder to live.

"And Mel?"

He's spent his whole life sacrificing, putting everything on the line for the sake of others. If he can look into a pair of eyes, see the pain, theres no force on Earth that can stop him.

His favorite color has always been green. At least...he thinks it has...hasn't it?

Just like her eyes.

"I can't let her down Jack. For the first time in my life I have something that I care about- she's- she's everything Jack, she's my best friend. I love- I love my life how it is. I won't loose out on something like this again, this is my one shot."

Jack was quiet a moment before offering his reply, "How bad is it Josh?"

"I mean- God, theres always corruption, always people who don't deal with the accounts right. And if it was a question of my integrity fine. But I won't get blamed for hurting other people, I won't stand for it! I can't- I can't stand for that. I'm going to fight it but it might mean things don't end too well," Josh said and ran tense fingers through his hair, "I'll figure it out. I'm going to figure this out, no matter how many spread sheets I have to read through. I'm getting reviewed next week, if they find me not guilty, then fine. We go on as we are. If I'm not-"

"Then what?"

Josh gave a heavy sigh, a part of him shattering, "Like I said, then I'll figure something out."