The city slogged through March on the promise of spring.

April was the dawn of new life—green shoots in the cold mud, sunlight that actually meant something. Everything would wake up, except for the leaves, which would make you wait, and then burst out all at once in early May.

Everything would wake up, except for Newt.

No, not Newt. Because he hadn’t slept.

He’d been wide awake all winter.

This bout of insomnia was not his first. But sometime in January he realized this one was different. He was keeping busy—in between Black Tapes seasons, the station had moved him to BPR as a producer. This kept him working weekdays, even if the work was dull and his coworkers cold. And Mako insisted she still needed him as her producer on Stranger Danger. For that, he was silently grateful. It kept him busy and in touch with her, the only person who knew. And he needed someone who knew.

Frankly, all in all, he was keeping it together exceptionally well for someone with such extreme insomnia. Exceptionally well, he thought, staring into the utter blackness of the space where his ceiling probably was.

Tonight he had blacked out his windows with a wool blanket like it was Blitz-era London and done the same to his doorframe. The room was absolutely black. Worth a try, right? Do-it-yourself sensory deprivation. Yet his senses were awake, alive, charged like a defibrillator.

Where was he?

Four months. Not a word. And not an hour had gone by that Newt didn’t wonder.

Goodbye, Newton...

What would they do if Hermann never answered? For months, between their other jobs, they tracked leads down dead-end threads and spun theories out of insubstantial wisps. They were out of ideas. And nearly out of time.

There were a million mysteries to keep Newt awake, and Hermann was the knot at the center of the snarl. He was the hole in the needle in the haystack. The ghost who vanished when you looked right at it; the ghost who kissed you to shut you up, and then vanished.

Goodbye, Newton...

Why? What had possessed him to do it? Ever since that moment, Newt had been beset by images and imaginings he had never permitted himself. Whatever he had felt for Hermann, all those months, he had kept presentable to everyone. Including to himself. But from that moment forward it was irresistible truth.

Newton...

Oh, God. Once Newt’s heart had stopped trying to pound out of his ribs every time he thought about it, noxious shame descended. Never in his career had he been so unprofessional. And never had he expected Hermann of all people—professor of propriety, doctor of decorum Hermann Gottlieb—to breach his professional boundary.

Every time Newt asked himself why, he circled the horrible truth like a drain: Hermann would only do it if he expected never to see Newt again.

But why? Where had he gone? Why wouldn’t he answer? The radio silence had at first worried Newt. Sometime later, after the media frenzy about the painting died down, he grew angry. He stopped calling the Institute sometime in February. When they got the green light for season two, he watched the date approach with resentful, obstinate silence. Now Mako was the one who left the messages that went unanswered.

Most days he kept his head up. Pre-production got off to a good start. But some days he was consumed with the unbearable feeling of a spectacularly failed shot, an irrevocable mistake on an unmissable chance. Some days the ache was enough to overwhelm him. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, only that he had, and that it had led to some tragic first-last kiss and a slammed-shut door. Everything inside him would open like a trapdoor and pour out his stomach. He would feel sick. Helpless. He would stand in the office kitchen at the window overlooking the frozen Charles River and watch the lamps turn on all at once on the Esplanade. Then he’d go back into the studio to edit more listener call-ins for BPR, sift through another twenty emails from Black Tapes listeners, try not to think, try not to think, fail. The thoughts pressed into the periphery of his vision like sleep paralysis specters.

He heard Hermann’s goodbye breath as he pulled away. He felt Hermann’s hand so lightly on his chest—so polite, even as he reached across an unbreachable boundary. He heard the door slam over and over like his own thrumming pulse.

And when his days were not numb or drowning, there were days—moments, usually—where he simply missed him. Could you miss someone who wouldn’t let you know them? If you could, he did. And if you couldn’t, then he did know him, despite Hermann’s best efforts. Newt missed his know-it-all voice, his frustrated sigh, his unmistakable step; the back of his head as he bent to read something intently, the cropped hair fading to nothing on his neck; the tightness of his hands; the answer he had for everything, the answers he wouldn’t give up for anything; the truth he kept behind him, stepping a circle with his back to it, whether to protect it or avoid it, Newt never knew. And then Newt would want to drop everything and run outside, dash across the frozen river, up the bank, pound on the Institute door until it opened. To see him again. He wanted to know what it meant—the tapes, the kiss, everything—he wanted to know what the second one felt like, to know the width of his waist and the strength of his fingers, the sound of his unmeasured breathing, the thrum in the cage of his chest.

But he didn’t call. And he barely slept. And still the trees budded threateningly, the river thawed, and May drew closer.