Nighttime in the city is like a vinyl record — slow, crackling, nostalgic. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. There’s a rhythm to the way the streetlights flicker like lazy fireflies, how the world hums just beneath the surface, quieter but no less alive. That’s why I like walking alone at night. The world loosens its tie, takes off its shoes, and lets you see its bare, weird soul.

I had just passed a shuttered bakery with gingerbread men still taped to the window — an oddly macabre sight in May — when I saw you. Like a misplaced painting in the wrong gallery. Stumbling in shoes that had clearly turned on you long ago, arms flailing in what I can only describe as interpretive dance meets battle with invisible gravity.

At first, I thought maybe you were talking to yourself, which I’m a huge fan of, by the way. I talk to myself all the time. Sometimes as an old sea captain. Don’t ask. But no, you weren’t talking to yourself — you were muttering in a language only the very drunk or very poetic understand.

“Hey,” I said, stepping closer. Not too close. Just enough to make myself known. I didn’t want to scare you. I’ve got the kind of face that looks like it’s always mid–ghost story, so I tend to approach gently. Like a cat. A very tall, nervous cat.

You blinked at me, then squinted.

“Do I know you?” you slurred.

I smiled. “Only in dreams.”

That got a laugh. A real one. The kind that hiccups halfway through and threatens to turn into tears. I recognized it because I’ve laughed that way before. Once in a bathtub full of cereal. Again, don’t ask.

You tried to take another step and failed spectacularly. I caught your elbow instinctively, like I do with falling books or collapsing art projects.

“You’re like… like a weird giraffe,” you said, blinking up at me.

“Thank you,” I replied, genuinely flattered. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since I got mistaken for a haunted librarian.”

There was a long pause where you just looked at me. Really looked. And for a moment, I felt like a mirror you weren’t ready to see yourself in. That happens sometimes. People look at you and accidentally see themselves.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I said softly.

“Neither should you,” you shot back, swaying slightly.

There was something in the way you clutched your purse too tightly, the way your mascara painted tiny black comets beneath your eyes, that told me you weren’t out here by choice. Not really.

“I’m not following you,” I said quickly, raising both hands in exaggerated surrender. “Unless you go somewhere dangerous. Then I will absolutely follow you. Possibly with a kazoo, for dramatic tension.”

You giggled, wobbling again.

“That’s it,” I said, stepping beside you. “This is a two-person adventure now.”

You looked up, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, offering you my arm in the most gentlemanly, Victorian-ghost way I could manage, “let me walk you home.”