The porch swing groaned like it always did. One of those high-timber sounds—half furniture, half ghost.

 

"You want a blanket?" she asked.

 

He shook his head. “It’s October. October’s supposed to bite.”

 

They sat in the quiet for a while. The sky was uncommonly clear. Stars like pinholes in black paper.

 

She took a sip. “I thought the sky would look different.”

 

“Different how?”

 

“I don’t know. Scorched. Glowing. Biblical.”

 

“Disappointing, isn’t it? All that anticipation. Then nothing.”

 

She watched him over the rim of her mug. “You really think it was nothing?”

 

He shrugged. “Maybe we misunderstood. Maybe the scientists were wrong.”

 

“They said 99.9% certainty.”

 

“They also said kale was a superfood.”

 

She chuckled. “So you don’t think we were spared?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

Down the road, somewhere past the cornfield and the cell tower, a dog barked like it had something personal to say.

“I dreamed last night,” she said. “That we were the only ones left. That the world did end, and we just... didn’t notice.”

 

He tilted his head. “I think I’d notice.”

 

“Would you? If it ended quietly? Politely?"

 

The swing shifted slightly as he crossed one ankle over the other. “Some things end without a bang.”

 

“Or they don’t end at all,” she said, softly.

 

He looked down into his coffee. Steam curled upward, like a whisper.

 

“You sleep okay?” she asked.

 

He hesitated. “Not really.”

 

She nodded. “Me neither.”

 

A pause.

 

“I kept hearing... something. Not a sound exactly. More like a pressure.”

 

He turned to her. “Like a weight?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She stared out toward the dark treeline. “Felt like something was leaning against the world. Waiting.”

 

“And then?” he asked.

 

“It left,” she said, “like someone told it no.”

 

He looked at her for a long moment. “You think someone... stopped it?”

 

She met his gaze, steady. “I think someone offered something.”

 

He shifted. “You think it cost them?”

 

She shrugged. “Always does.”

 

They sat. The wind ran a slow hand through the dry maple leaves in the yard.

 

She pulled her sleeves down over her hands. “Do you feel different?”

 

He took his time to respond. “A little. Like I... left something behind.”

 

“Did you?”

 

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then said, “Not sure yet.”

 

More silence. The kind that held gravity.

 

“You ever wish,” she said, “you’d gotten to explain something before it wasn’t yours anymore?”

 

“Every day,” he said.

 

That was the closest he would come to saying it.

 

It was the closest she’d get to asking.

 

The sky hadn’t fallen.

 

They sipped and the swing creaked again. A sound that embodied the things he’d loved most all these years. The sound he’d give anything to hear, even for just one more day.