MoM Series: Stories from the Edge of Change – Part 4

Jake worked nights.

He liked the quiet. Fewer eyes. Less explaining to do. The outreach center kept him on the roster as a volunteer—two days a week, graveyard shift. It was mostly sweeping, coffee refills, folding blankets, and unlocking doors when someone showed up crying, shaking, or bleeding. They didn’t advertise the hours. The ones who needed it already knew.

He didn’t talk much to the clients. Just nodded. Kept his voice low. Gave out clean socks and disposable razors, and sometimes leftover sandwiches if the early crew hadn’t raided the fridge. A woman once called him a ghost in a hoodie. He took it as a compliment.

---

They didn’t know his history.

Most of the staff thought he was someone’s cousin. Someone in the program. He was both, in a way. Still figuring out what version of himself was worth keeping. He told the director he didn’t want to lead groups or give speeches. He just wanted to stay close to the door—for the ones who weren’t ready to walk through it alone.

That night, it was cold again. Not dramatic. Not headline cold. Just the kind that seeps through your boots and settles in your bones. The kind that makes concrete ache. Jake had learned the difference between degrees that made headlines and those that just broke people.

He was wiping down the intake counter when the door buzzer snapped.

The front desk kid—a college intern with a buzzcut and the stubborn optimism of someone who hadn’t failed big yet—waved him over.

“Guy outside’s got no ID. Twitchy. Keeps asking for someone named Pete. Said you’d know what that means.”

Jake’s stomach knotted. He did.

---

Pete had been there in Jake’s first rehab stint—loud, bitter, always quick to spot your softest spot and stomp on it. He was the kind of man who’d mock your breakdown and then sit with you on the curb afterward, passing a half-smoked cigarette like it was communion.

They’d had a moment, months ago, after the group. Pete had come apart in the stairwell, cracked wide open from something the counselor said about fatherhood. Jake had sat next to him, quiet. Didn’t try to fix it. Just stayed.

That was the last time he’d seen him.

Now Pete was back. Gaunt. Twitching. Cheeks hollowed like spoons. His hoodie was soaked around the collar, eyes glazed like bad glass.

Jake opened the door.

---

Pete stumbled in, clothes clinging wet. The rainfall outside had picked up, soft but relentless. He looked like a man who’d slept under bridges and crawled out just long enough to fall again.

“Shit, man,” Pete mumbled. “Didn’t know where else to go.”

Jake didn’t answer right away. The smell of damp wool and stale sweat filled the gap between them. Pete’s arms trembled at his sides like he was holding invisible weights.

“Come in,” Jake said. “You need a blanket?”

Pete blinked. “You still here?”

“Still here.”

---

They sat him down. Pete wouldn’t sign the detox papers. Said he just wanted warmth. Just wanted to sit somewhere without a knife in his back or a siren in his ear. Jake gave him coffee. Black. No sugar. His hands were shaking so bad that half of it sloshed onto the floor.

“I was clean,” Pete muttered. “Six months. Then my brother died in a car crash. I don’t even cry. Just go buy a bottle like I’m on autopilot.”

Jake said nothing. Let him say it without interruption.

“I thought I was good, like I was done paying. Like I was… exempt.”
He laughed once. It cracked like a cough. “Grief doesn’t work like that. No punch card. No discounts.”

Outside, the rainfall whispered against the windows. Steady. Relentless. A low percussion against the building.

Jake thought of that phrase Pete used to say in rehab. “You want grace? Get a dog.”
He understood now. Grace wasn’t something you earned. It was something that showed up when you didn’t run from the stoop.

---

Later, when Pete fell asleep curled around a donated coat, Jake stepped outside. The pavement was slick with oil and rain. Steam rose from the sewer grates like the city was exhaling something it didn’t need anymore.

He didn’t feel proud. Didn’t feel like a hero. He just felt… rooted. Present. Like a chair that had stopped wobbling.

Some nights, that was enough.

---

🖋️ Author’s Note:

Written for today’s FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day prompts: stoop, rainfall, and pavement.

Second Shift is part of Stories from the Edge of Change, a series about quiet recoveries, unglamorous grace, and showing up when there’s nothing left to prove. Sometimes, staying close to the door is the most radical thing you can do.