Kinda Complicated

On Laundromats & Running Away

Mikey’s head tilted, a wet dog’s curious wiggle. ''More depressing than a charity ball?''

Ash’s mouth twitched, feral and fond. ''You ever seen a coin laundry after midnight?''

There: the dare hung between them, as serious as a secret handshake. Mikey grinned, the cigarette still balanced behind one ear, and looked up at the lambent, low cloud ceiling. ''Lead the way,'' he said, voice steadier than it should’ve been.

They walked. Not close, not apart—just that unscripted side-by-side that happens when neither person wants to startle the other with intention. The city chattered around them, rain darkening the sidewalk and haloing the streetlights. Ash walked with hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against his own reputation. Mikey kept glancing over, as if he needed periodic proof that this was real, or maybe that Ash was.

The first five minutes were wet and wordless , except for Mikey’s delighted breaths as each passing car slashed them with new mist, and Ash’s occasional grunt of contempt for potholes. The next five minutes got easier, their footsteps syncing up by accident, until they reached the corner where the gas station’s neon sign fuzzed sundown orange through the drizzle.

The laundromat was two doors down, glowing fluorescent from the inside out, its plate-glass windows beaded with condensation. There were only two patrons: a woman asleep with her head against the dryer, and an old man in a fleece vest, staring into the rotation like he’d spent years waiting for some coded message to appear in the tumble.

Ash shouldered the door, not asking if Mikey wanted to go in. He just did, letting Mikey follow and then gesturing him toward the row of chipped plastic seats by the window. Mikey sat, hands folded, as if expecting to be tested on detergent brands.

Ash wandered the rows, peering into hoppers, idly fingering the warped dimes left in the change troughs. He returned with vending machine snacks—two mini bags of pretzels, and a bottle of root beer.

Mikey watched him set the loot on the folding table, considering the arrangement as if Ash had just performed a card trick.

''You don’t strike me as a guy who eats carbs,'' he said, but took the pretzels anyway, shaking them like dice before tearing the corner.

Ash shrugged. ''You don’t strike me as a guy who stands in the rain with strangers.''

Mikey smiled—small, inward, unpracticed. ''Tonight’s special, I guess.''

The washing machines churned, their sound somewhere between lullaby and machine shop, and the city’s world receded. Outside, car tires whispered against the wet. Inside, the old man watched the swirl of socks and someone’s forgotten bedsheets.

''You ever wonder who invented laundromats?'' Mikey asked, watching the foam begin to churn inside a machine.

Ash shrugged. ''People who hated waiting in the rain, probably.''

''Or people who liked to make other people sit under bright lights, stuck with their own thoughts.'' Mikey leaned forward, chin in hands, and squinted at the sleeping woman. ''I bet she’s got a whole family’s worth in those dryers. Probably left her house at midnight to escape something. Or someone. Or just the boredom.''

Ash stared at Mikey's profile, the slightly fogged lenses, the intent way he made up lives for strangers. ''You're a writer too, aren't you,'' he said. Not a question.

Mikey sat back, flushed, as if he'd been accused of something illicit. ''No, just a note-taker. I don't have the stamina for narrative.'' He spun the root beer bottle on its base. ''I'm better at beginnings. Not so good at endings.''

''Endings are overrated,'' Ash said quietly. ''Most people just stop showing up. That's the only ending that matters.''

The words hung there, muffled by whirring dryers and sudden hushes. From outside, a bus thundered past, splashing the glass with a slap of city runoff. Mikey traced his thumb over the condensation, drawing a quick ghost-circle at the corner of the window.

The light overhead was surgical, and the root beer bottle cooled the heat in Ash's palm.

''You ever want to run away?'' Ash asked, and the question was so sudden, so direct, Mikey's teeth bit a pretzel in half without chewing the rest.

''Yeah,'' he said after a moment. ''When I was ten, I made it as far as the storm drain at the end of the block before I chickened out. Packed two PBJs and a flashlight. I'd still live there if it had wi-fi,'' he deadpanned.

Ash considered this, rolling the bottle between his hands. He did not say, Me too. He did not say, Sometimes I already have.

Instead: ''I did once. Ran, I mean. Made it to the city, survived on vending machine crackers and bus station coffee for a week before I went back, because nobody was looking.'' He let the words hang, then crushed the plastic bottle in his hands, the sound small and oddly final.

Mikey watched him, no pity in his eyes, just a kind of patient curiosity that felt, to Ash, like the safest interrogation in the world.

''Were you disappointed or relieved?'' Mikey asked.

Ash shrugged. ''Both. Nobody tried to find me, but that meant I got to start over. And sometimes, if you go far enough, you get to be someone you actually like.''

Mikey smiled in a slow, sidelong way, as if this was precisely the answer he'd hoped for, but couldn't have named. ''You did okay, then. You seem like someone I'd want to run into at a bus station.''

Ash snorted, but the sound was warmer now. ''You'd be surprised how few people want that.'' He nodded toward the row of vending machines, humming with their own static loneliness. ''You’d be surprised how few people want anything real at all.''

A pause. Mikey inspected the contents of his palms as if searching for a counterpoint, but nothing surfaced except the runny blue ink from a pen that must have leaked in his pocket. ''I always thought I was invisible at parties,'' he said, peeling a label from the root beer. ''Turns out, you can hide anywhere if you try hard enough.'' He smiled at the bottle, then at Ash. ''Even in here.''

The sleeping woman stirred in her seat, shifting her weight and snoring once, a cartoonish yelp from the back of her throat. Ash grinned at that—a full, unguarded grin this time—and Mikey saw the boyishness in him, the ridged vulnerability that had survived whatever storms Ash had already weathered. Mikey liked that, liked him, with an intensity that felt at once obvious and brand new. He looked down, abashed, as if the thought had a volume he couldn’t quite control.

The old man retrieved his laundry and left, moving slow enough to seem leisurely but with the faint urgency of someone who didn’t want any more stories written about him tonight. The glass door rattled in his wake, and then it was just Mikey and Ash, the rows of machines, and the sound of the city exhaling.

Mikey shifted in his seat, looking uncertain for the first time since they left the party. ''I should probably get back, before my sister initiates a search and rescue.'' He said it as a joke, but the hesitation was genuine, as if he’d already begun unspooling a different kind of night in his own head.

Ash nodded. ''She’ll want evidence you survived.'' He stood, stretching his arms overhead until his shirt rode up, exposing a sliver of stomach. ''Want to split something from the gas station hot case, for the walk? My treat.'' Mikey, surprised, couldn’t help laughing. ''Isn’t that where you get your dinner?'' ''Breakfast, dinner, therapy sessions. All-purpose.'' Ash kicked the bottle into the trash, waited.

The streetlights threw sharp halos onto the pavement as they stepped out. The storm had done its work — gutters were full of upended leaves and trash, the scent of ozone and oil on the air. Mikey’s shoes squeaked, and he found himself humming tunelessly, a soundtrack for the space between conversation.

At the corner, the gas station interior was all stainless steel and insomnia. Ash made a beeline for the hot food, returned with two congealed mozzarella sticks and a pair of orange Gatorades. He handed Mikey one with a little flair, as if it were a martini at a rooftop bar.

Mikey raised it in mock salute, but Ash, oddly formal, clinked their bottles together. Gatorade fizzed slightly out of Mikey’s, and they both watched the little rivulet run down the plastic before Ash wiped it away with the back of his thumb.

''I never drank these before dawn,'' Mikey confessed, unscrewing the cap and taking a tentative swig. ''They taste like hangovers and soccer camps.''

Ash smiled with something like nostalgia. ''I used to think if I drank enough of the blue kind, I’d turn into the kind of person who wins. Never worked, but it made losing feel more intentional.''

They wandered back up the block beneath leaking streetlights, their shadows pooling and stretching in the uneven glow. Mikey didn’t check his phone, didn’t even seem to remember it was in his pocket. All the rush of the city streamed around them, buffered and blunted by exhaustion and the last shivers of rain.

''You think,'' Mikey started, then hesitated, rolling the question on his tongue like a hard candy. ''You think it’s possible to become a different person? At, like, this stage. Or are we all just… already written?''

Ash sucked the last dregs out of his bottle, didn’t answer at first. ''If I thought we were set in stone, I’d have done us both a favor and drowned in a puddle years ago.''

The laugh that broke out of Mikey was sharper than he’d meant, echoing up over the rain-gutters and for a moment startling a cat that was rooted out by their passing. For the first time in hours—or maybe ever—he stopped walking. The world pooled around them, neon reflected in every c***k and pothole. The street was empty, except for them.

''You’re not like anyone I know,'' Mikey said, and that was the closest he could get to admitting the thing he wanted to say.

Ash’s mouth did its old half-smile, this time not even pretending to hide the pleasure.