The laundromat was nearly empty, humming only with the low spin of dryers and the faint buzz of a flickering fluorescent light overhead. Midnight in New York never truly slept, but here, tucked on a quiet block, the city felt muted.

Harry “Hank” Thompson sat slouched in one of the cracked plastic chairs, nursing a lukewarm coffee from the bodega across the street. He was waiting, like always. Waiting for the machines. Waiting for a fresh shirt. Waiting for his life to feel like something more than borrowed time.

When the dryer door finally clicked open, he pushed himself up and started tugging out his clothes. Jeans, t-shirts, socks that never stayed paired. Nothing surprising. Nothing out of place.

Until his hand caught something soft.

Something lacy. Something bright.

He held it up in disbelief. Red underwear. Not his. Definitely not his.

Hank froze, staring at it like it had come from another universe. It had been years since he’d even touched something so delicate. Years since the mess with the heist, since the blood, since he’d lost the only woman who’d once looked at him like he wasn’t all ruin.

He glanced around the room.

The only other person there was a girl in the far corner. She had her earbuds in, head bent toward her phone, her leg bouncing faintly to the rhythm of whatever song played. Her basket sat beside her, half-full with neatly folded things—soft sweaters, faded denim, the kind of clothes that spoke of someone who had a life outside of chaos.

Hank cleared his throat, but the sound barely carried over the whir of another dryer. He considered just shoving the underwear into the lost-and-found bin by the door, pretending he never saw it. But something about the flash of color in his hands, something about the way it belonged to a world he hadn’t touched in so long, rooted him to the spot.

He looked again at her. She hadn’t noticed him yet. There was a crease between her brows as she scrolled, a soft focus that made her seem almost untouchable.

For a second, Hank felt ridiculous. A washed-up ex-ballplayer, a man who’d stumbled through crime and consequence, standing in the middle of a laundromat holding a stranger’s red underwear.

But maybe it wasn’t ridiculous. Maybe it was the closest thing to fate he’d been handed in a long time.

He lowered the lace carefully onto the top of the dryer, as if it were something fragile, something sacred. His chest tightened, memories pulling him back to all the things he thought he’d buried. Love. Loss. The fear of wanting again.

And still, he found his voice—rough, uncertain, but steady enough.

“Think this belongs to you,” he said, breaking the silence.

She looked up then, startled, eyes flicking from his face to what rested on the dryer. A flush rose to her cheeks, fast and unguarded.

Hank felt the corner of his mouth twitch, almost a smile. Almost.

He hadn’t expected her to be beautiful in the quiet way she was. Not the loud, sharp beauty of models on billboards, but the kind that crept in slowly, in the tilt of her head, in the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she pulled the earbuds out.

Their eyes met, and the air between them shifted.

It wasn’t a beginning—not yet. But maybe it was the start of something Hank hadn’t let himself believe in for far too long.

Something human. Something alive.

Something red, lacy, and left behind on a Tuesday night in a laundromat that smelled faintly of detergent and second chances.