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The lights are still on in the bar when Raylan pulls up, but there aren’t any cars in the parking lot save Boyd’s. It’s nearing to midnight – maybe a little past, he’s never sure if the clock in his car is fifteen minutes slow or fifteen minutes fast – but when he ducks inside, Boyd’s sitting at the bar. There’s a glass of whiskey in front of him, condensation dripping down on the coaster.
“Bar’s closed, Raylan,” he says, but he doesn’t tell him to get out. Raylan can’t see the boy anywhere – Johnny, maybe, or Jimmy, one of those names that begets a nickname because there are six other boys with the same name your same age – and he takes it upon himself to go behind the bar and get what he wants. Boyd watches but doesn’t try to stop him, and when Raylan takes the stool next to him, he doesn’t say anything, just glances at him.
Raylan’s not sure what he’s supposed to say, or if he’s supposed to say anything. It’s been a week since Ava got taken away, and he’s seen Boyd since, but never alone. He feels like they’ve both been avoiding it.
How’ve you been keeping, he thinks, but doesn’t say.
Neither of them try to make small talk for the first – ten, fifteen minutes, Raylan’s not sure, and then Boyd starts do you remember, and there it is. For a little while, it’s safe: the time Jesse McClain drove his truck into Boyd’s daddy’s pond, the night Raylan had helped both of the Crowder boys sneak out of their grandmama’s house, the night, a week later, he’d just helped Boyd. They’d been fifteen and Boyd had dropped out of high school that next winter, and Raylan thought, when it happened, that he’d known it, somehow, that summer, known to get as much in as he could. Like he’d been digging a well for fear of a drought.
“You know, Raylan, after you left,” Boyd starts, then pauses, takes a drink, and Raylan is suddenly very still, “I had dreams about you comin' home.” Boyd's voice is soft and Raylan wants to tell him to shut the fuck up but the words stick in his throat when he tries. “I used to dream about you... showin' up at my daddy's lookin' for me.”
Another pause. Raylan wants to say something to take the importance away – what brought this on or what made you think of that, like he doesn’t know, like there’s no connection. Like he doesn’t remember. But Boyd wouldn’t believe him if he did, Boyd’s always known when he’s lying and when he’s not.
“And you’d find me,” Boyd continues, looking at his drink, not blinking, “and you would apologize. For leavin’ like you did.”
“For not sayin’ goodbye.” Raylan doesn’t mean to say it, not really, but he knows what Boyd’s talking about, he knows how it goes, how this dream progresses. He used to have it a lot when he was married, he’d wake up and wander downstairs for a drink and that would be how Winona would find him, stretched out on the couch with half a glass of whiskey on her expensive little end table. He’d call them bad dreams, and she’d think they were related to the job.
They weren’t bad, not always. Sounds about fucking right that he couldn’t get rid of Boyd Crowder even in his head.
“Yes, Raylan,” Boyd says, deliberately, and he’s not looking at him. Raylan wants to take him by the back of the neck and make Boyd look him in the face like an unruly dog, and clenches his fist for a heartbeat, then another, instead. “For not sayin’ goodbye.” It wasn't about the goodbye and they both know it, Boyd's never been one to give a shit about that sort of thing. Raylan knows what he did wrong, and not telling him goodbye, of all fucking things, isn't on the list. It's easiest, though, pretending that's it, pretending that's his sin. He skipped the niceties and left, that's what he did wrong. If Boyd wants to pretend, that's fine with him, only he knows he's not that lucky. He's not sure he wants to be.
Raylan takes another drink, swallows it slow and lets it burn. He doesn’t usually drink vodka but Boyd makes him want something different, less comfortable than whiskey, something that might keep him on his toes. That should tell him something, he thinks, but he doesn’t want to listen to it, not right now.
“I felt bad about that,” he says, and there’s been too long a pause, long enough that Boyd probably though he just wasn’t going to say anything. “I regretted it. Not tellin’ you.”
“Why didn’t you?” Boyd’s facing him, now, not looking at him but bodily facing him, turned on his barstool so he can’t look at anything but Raylan. There’s an edge in his voice that Raylan can’t miss, but it doesn’t send up any alarms. Maybe it should. Maybe that’s what will end up killing him, one of these days, not some Miami gun thug with a Sig Sauer, it’ll be the edge in Boyd Crowder’s voice.
“I couldn’t,” he says, not quite intending the shortness in his voice but doing nothing to make up for it, either. “I figured you’d understand.”
He can hear the breath Boyd takes at that, wonders if he caught the almost-insult he’d slipped in – you’re smart, you figure it out, except Boyd doesn’t sound angry when he says, “Enlighten me.”
“There’s nothing to enlighten you on,” Raylan says, hand curling around his glasses for a moment before he sets it back on the bar with a sharp, unpleasant tap. It’s empty.
Boyd’s still facing him, and after a moment or two, Raylan looks at him, sidelong at first and then moving to face him, turning his body halfway to look at him full-on. Boyd’s still facing him completely, open as he ever gets, and Raylan wants him to turn back around, wants him to go behind the bar and get them more to drink, wants him to stop asking questions like this and stop being so goddamned honest. He doesn’t want that anymore.
(You don’t deserve that anymore, something small and honest in the back of his head says.)
“Raylan,” Boyd says, that’s all, and then Raylan’s saying, sharp and quiet, “If I come for you that night, I would’ve told you to go with me.”
Boyd doesn’t say anything to that for a few long seconds and Raylan knows what they’re both thinking: you oughta get out of here, you could go anywhere you want.
“I would have gone,” Boyd says, and he’s turned away from him, now. For a moment all Raylan can really focus on is the sharp arch of his shoulder and the line of his neck, and then Boyd’s sliding off of the stool to go behind the bar. Something aches low in Raylan’s chest, like he’s been hit.
“Boyd,” he says.
“Bar’s closed, Raylan.” Boyd’s taking the glass from in front of him to set it in the sink, and Raylan, before he can think about it too hard, reaches out for his wrist, thin and bony and alive under his palm. Boyd always ran cold when they were them, always wore Bowman’s big UK hoodies and Raylan’s gloves, tugging them out of his coat when he thought he didn’t notice. He’s not warm now, either.
Boyd lets him, lets it go for a few heartbeats, slow steady pulsing under Raylan’s fingers, before he’s tugging out of his grip.
Raylan opens his mouth, and what he means to say – I ought to go and it’s late and I’m sorry – isn’t what comes out.
“Do you want me to go?”
Boyd looks at him and Raylan looks back. He feels simultaneously too drunk and not nearly drunk enough for this, for Boyd, and Boyd almost looks like he's smiling when he turns around to put the vodka back where it belongs.
“What, all of a sudden you're gonna do as you're told? I tell you to leave, you're gonna get?”
“You tell me to leave,” Raylan says, “I'll leave.”
Boyd looks at him, and no, there's no smile there. There's something dark and serious in his eyes that Raylan can't quite place, something that searches him like it's going through his pockets, and then Boyd says, “I'll be done in a few minutes.”
Raylan doesn't smile, not quite, but it's a near thing.