Fridays became protected territory whenever Caleb could manage it.

Sometimes they sat on the fourth-floor landing.

Sometimes Harold invited him inside, where photographs of Diane covered a bookshelf.

Caleb learned that Harold liked his coffee almost offensively weak.

Harold learned that Caleb hated pickles, had once wanted to become a physical therapist, and secretly watched cooking competitions despite surviving mostly on sandwiches.

After three weeks, the tiny grocery orders stopped.

Caleb noticed before Harold mentioned it.

“No emergency banana today?” he joked one Friday.

Harold smiled.

“I appear to have recovered.”

Something else changed too.

Caleb started answering Jasmine’s messages.

At first, only brief replies.

Then phone calls.

One Sunday afternoon, instead of accepting another delivery block, he drove to his mother’s house carrying fried chicken and a supermarket cake.

Jasmine opened the door.

She stared at him as though he had returned from another country.

“You actually came.”

Caleb felt the words land harder than she intended.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I actually came.”

His mother hugged him for so long that he stopped pretending he was embarrassed.

A month later, while Caleb and Harold sat on the fourth-floor landing, Harold asked, “How is your sister?”

“Annoying.”

“Good.”

Caleb laughed.

“She says I’m less annoying lately.”

“That is significant progress.”

For the first time in years, Caleb began to see time differently.

He had always treated it as a resource that other people stole from him.

Traffic stole time.

Customers stole time.

Family obligations stole time.

Slow cashiers stole time.

But Harold had shown him another possibility.

Time could also be given.

And sometimes giving ten minutes created more value than squeezing ten extra dollars from an evening.

Two months after their first conversation, Caleb arrived at Harold’s building on a Friday carrying two coffees.

The moment he reached the third floor, he knew something was wrong.

Harold had developed a habit of opening his door when he heard Caleb climbing.

“You still walk like the staircase owes you money,” he would call.

That day, the fourth-floor hallway was silent.

Caleb knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again.

“Harold?”

Nothing.

The door across the hall opened.

A woman in navy medical scrubs stepped out.

“You looking for Mr.

Bennett?”

“Yes.”

“They took him to St.

Joseph’s early this morning.”

Caleb felt the coffee cups flex beneath his fingers.

“What happened?”

“He fell in the kitchen.

I heard him calling.”

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.

His daughter is flying in.”

Caleb looked at Harold’s closed apartment door.

Within five minutes, he was downstairs canceling the rest of his delivery block.

He lost his Friday-night bonus.

He drove to the hospital anyway.

Harold was in a room on the sixth floor with a bruise near his temple and a sensor clipped to one finger.

When he saw Caleb, he smiled.

“You brought coffee to a hospital?”

Caleb lifted the crushed cups.

“I panicked.”

Harold laughed, then winced.

“Do not make me laugh.

Apparently I am delicate now.”

The doctors believed Harold had become dizzy because of dehydration and low blood pressure.

Nothing was broken, but they wanted to keep him overnight.

Caleb sat beside the bed.

For several minutes, neither man spoke.

Then Harold said, “There is something I need you to do.”

He reached into the bedside drawer and removed a