It starts with a hat.

Not even a good one—bought off a clearance rack outside a gas station somewhere between El Paso and oblivion. But it fits. It hides. It lets him pretend.

He’s never worn a Stetson. Baseball caps as a kid. Helmets in combat. But never this.

It’s a sad little Texas cliché, and maybe that’s fitting. Because none of this feels real—not the ranch house with the quiet, not the Sunday dinners with too much silence, not the job driving strangers through a city that doesn’t feel like his.

He should’ve stayed. Should’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with the people who raised him up. Should’ve held the line with them one more time. Should’ve let himself grieve Bobby the way he needed to—with family.

Instead, he left. Got back on a plane two days after the funeral, told himself Christopher needed him. That maybe he needed the quiet.

Now he drives Uber to pay the bills. Wears the hat low, eyes lower. Hiding in plain sight. Because going back means facing what’s left—and who’s not.

One night, it starts as a dare—small talk with a passenger turns into “you look like you could use a drink,” and suddenly he’s standing in a neon-lit bar that smells like whiskey and rhinestones and other people’s memories.

He doesn’t dance. Not the first few times. Just sits with a beer and the ache in his chest that he still can’t name.

She works there. Or maybe she just lives there—on the floor, in the music, in the space between songs. She’s bright and warm and easy to talk to. She reminds him of LA in a way that catches him off guard. Not the city—the people. The firehouse. Buck. Home.

He notices the way she lifts people when they’re too far gone into their night. Calm hands. Sharp eyes. Like someone who’s seen the inside of chaos before.

On his fifth visit, she steals the hat off his head and drops it on her own like she’s claiming him. He should leave. Instead, he lets her pull him toward the music.

“I don’t dance,” he says.

It’s a lie. He knows it. She doesn’t call him on it. Just smiles like she sees right through him.

She’s not Buck. But she’s got that same mirror energy. That same fearlessness when it comes to his silence. She doesn’t flinch when he finally says Bobby’s name. Doesn’t back away when he talks about LA like a city that still owns pieces of him.

They dance once. She brushes her fingers across the scar beneath her eye, barely noticeable but familiar. A quiet echo of something he still dreams about.

She finds him every time he comes in, which is frequently since meeting her. He’s a man with grief in his bones and a mirror in his eyes.

They don’t exchange numbers. Don’t promise anything. She only knows his first name. He never asks hers.

But the night he leaves—for real, this time—he leaves her the hat. And a note:

Los Angeles County Fire Department. Diaz, Eddie.

The hat is as much a goodbye as it is an invitation. And she’d come find him, eventually.

For now, she was gonna dance.