Two years later, the bench outside Callahan Industries felt more familiar than any home I had ever known.
That should have bothered me more than it did.
The concrete was hard beneath my back, and the metal armrest pressed uncomfortably against my shoulder whenever I turned the wrong way. In the winter, the cold settled into my bones before morning. In the summer, the Georgia heat wrapped around me before the sun had fully risen. Still, night after night, I returned to the same place. Beneath the same trees. In front of the same polished sign. Under the shadow of a building filled with people whose lives seemed to keep moving while mine circled the same broken routine.
Two years had passed since I first walked into The Kitty Kat with a bag over my shoulder and desperation sitting heavy i
