Friday evening, 11:47 p.m. Alexandre Cuna would never again know the precise time after this moment. His apartment's humidity seemed to have taken a life of it's own. Alexandre had given up on clearing the fogged windows back in May. It was late July now, or was it August? He didn't really give a damn about the precise date. The weekend was all that mattered because it was the only aspect of his life that he could fully control and own.

He sat on the edge of his couch, which served as his living room, dining room, and office (if you counted the desk), allowing him to see around him. He was now in the third year of his lease and had grown accustomed to the creaking springs in the couch.

He had a 50-inch television that he bought off Craigslist from some guy. The seller claimed that the TV was only a few months old, that was obviously a lie. The colors were off, with the blacks leaning toward grey, but Alexandre never bothered to fix it.

On the screen, the digital city of Los Santos was ablaze with unnatural colors. A police helicopter pursued a stolen Banshee through narrow alleys, where neon signs cast pink, green, and electric blue reflections on the wet pavement.

The car flipped, exploded, and then respawned. Meanwhile, the pedestrians went about their routines as usual.

Alexandre wasn't really playing anymore. He held the controller, his thumbs moving out of habit, his eyes taking in the chaos without fully processing it. After three hours, the excitement had faded. Now he was just keeping his hands busy to avoid doing anything more demanding.

Alexandre is a handsome man by any objective measure. Vanity wasn't his thing, so he didn't think about it much, but he couldn't ignore the evidence. For a few years, he had been meaning to address his broad shoulders, which had become slightly softer over time.

His dark, thick brows had a small angled cut on the right side, a scar from slipping on a tree branch when he was a child trying to climb a tree. His eyes were a deep brown, like embers in coffee. The fact that girls used to go crazy around him and remark on how "cool," "mysterious" and "tough" the scar made him look is evidence that the scar enhanced his appearance.

Even today, the teenage girls at school have made him the object of their lust and desire; it used to make him uncomfortable back then and still does now. How is he aware of such behavior? He had confiscated a phone from the hands of a girl in his class, who seemed to be the popular mean girl and queen bee type.

Dear Lord, He may not believe in God or Jesus, but these kids really needed saving and Christ in their lives over what they were saying about him and the nasty things they were saying about another coworker of his that he had a mild crush on.

He read out loud what was on the screen because he wanted to project an authoritative image, similar to the teachers from his past and those he saw on TV. However his voice began to die slowly the more he kept on reading.

He was aware that today's youth were forward, just as his friends were in the past, but the incident was also a first and a major shock to him, to the point where he returned the phone out of embarrassment.

He had a strong jawline, sunken cheeks, and prominent cheekbones that gave him a serious, stoic appearance. His beard, which was cut on Monday and has been growing for five days, both covered up and highlighted his good looks.

In the cheap blue light of the TV, his dark brown skin turned lavender. On top of his head, his tight curls, which had not been shaped since the morning, formed a distinctive landscape.

Alexandre was thirty-two years old and taught high school history at a public school about forty minutes away from his apartment, or longer if traffic was heavy.

He earned an M.A. in European history with a focus on the early modern period. His thesis on the Defenestration of Prague had taken three years to complete and, as far as he knew, had only been read by four people: his advisor, his second reader, his mother, and a cousin who was attempting to impress a girl with intellectual interests.

For the most part, his students didn't give a damn about the Defenestration of Prague or anything else that didn't fit into a fifteen-second video. After four years of teaching, Alexandre came to terms with this fact, moving from enthusiastic lessons to merely crossing things off the curriculum like a grocery list.

He received payment, the students passed their exams, and his Texas certification remained valid. Everyone fulfilled their end of the agreement.

However, Alexandre did not teach history on Friday nights. He was just a man wearing gray boxer briefs and a white t-shirt with a coffee stain on the collar and a hole beneath the left armpit. His only objective was to make it to Saturday morning without considering Monday.

The coffee table in front of him wasn't a real coffee table. It was made from two milk crates he had taken from behind a bodega in his second year of teaching, topped with a piece of plywood he found on the curb another year.

The plywood had a deep gouge in one corner from when he tried using it as a cutting board during a brief phase of wanting to learn how to cook. That phase lasted about six weeks, but the gouge remained.

Remnants of Alexandre's Friday ritual were scattered across the plywood, like a still life painted by someone with no aesthetic sense. A plastic takeout container from the rib restaurant two blocks away sat in the center.

Its lid was off, and the inside glistened with barbecue sauce, which most likely contained at least four unapproved chemicals. He had cleaned the bones so thoroughly that they could be used to teach skeletal anatomy.

Everyone pretended not to notice the artificial smoke flavor, despite the restaurant's claims of real wood-smoked barbecue. The artificial smoke had permeated the meat, sauce, and air, leaving the apartment with a faint aroma of liquid hickory and sugar.

Next to the ribs was a pile of onion rings. He ordered them out of habit, not desire, and now they sat in their greasy coating like unwanted relatives at a reunion. He had eaten three, leaving the others to become cold and rubbery.

At twenty-two, this would have horrified him; at thirty-two, it only made him feel slightly guilty about wasting food.
The chips were salt and vinegar, his favorite, and the bag was folded and clipped with a clothespin he'd had since college. It had endured three relationships, two roommates, and a relocation.

The bag was almost empty after three days of snacking.
The beer was lukewarm. It began cold, with condensation trailing down the bottle, but warmed to room temperature and became undrinkable. Nonetheless, he drank it to prevent waste.

His chest was marked with a sticky trail of barbecue sauce. He felt it land but opted not to wipe it. On Friday nights, personal grooming guidelines were relaxed.

He should have been content. This was the dream he worked for: enduring Monday through Thursday, the morning alarms, parent-teacher emails, meetings about assessment rubrics, and the lunchroom's mix of industrial cleaner and body spray.

All of it was just the burden he carried to reach this moment where nothing was required, just beer, ribs, and screen explosions. Yet, his eyes kept drifting to the kitchen counter.

The book sat next to his bowl of keys and a stack of unopened mail, which most likely contained at least one overdue notice from the electric company. It was small and pocket-sized, bound in a black material that attempted to resemble leather but felt like the inside of a 1998 Honda Civic door panel.

The gold foil lettering—HOLY BIBLE—was already flaking, revealing the cheap cardboard beneath. A red ribbon hanging from the spine resembled a tongue. The pages were the thinnest paper he'd ever felt, crinkling easily, with two columns of tiny text per page, and each verse numbered in superscript like unneeded footnotes.

He'd been carrying the book under his arm for three hours. It was given to him by an unusual woman whose details he couldn't quite recall.

She'd been waiting outside the subway station. Their meeting was not accidental or planned, but it felt significant, as if their brief interactions had led to this special moment.

He'd seen her before, but he couldn't say how many times. She was a familiar sight on his commute, just like the homeless man selling a single rose or the guy in a wheelchair playing the same three songs for tips. Her silver hair was pulled back into a bun, and she wore a washed-out beige cardigan.

Every Friday, she stood on the same square of sidewalk, holding a small stack of these low-cost pocket Bibles, like a vendor with the world's least desirable inventory.

Unlike the other religious figures on his commute, she did not preach. The others were loud—the man with a sandwich board warning of hellfire and the woman with a megaphone proclaiming the end times and accepting Jesus as savior.

However, this woman was different. She simply stood there, looking into your eyes and offering the book. If you declined, she'd nod, and the moment would be over.

At least a hundred times in his life, he had said "no thank you" to her offer, as if it were a flyer for a club he would never attend. She gave a slight nod each time, and he continued to walk away, following his weekly routine of refusing. Because he had grown accustomed to it, she became more of a challenge than a person.

Nevertheless, his headphones did not work tonight. At 7:30 a.m., he realized he hadn't charged them because both the headphones and their case had no electrical activity. As a result, he felt mildly irritated throughout the day, and he suspected that his technological armor had failed.

By the time he left work, he had been without his usual podcast for twelve hours. The podcast was about the late Roman Republic, and the voice was usually playing in the background like constant noise. When that voice disappeared, he felt strangely raw and exposed to the outside world.

So when the woman crossed his path, he heard her. "Excuse me," she said softly, with the tone of someone who had spent years conversing quietly with strangers.

"Do you have a moment?"

He came to a halt because it is socially acceptable in cities. The alternative was to brush past an elderly woman in public, and Alexandre, even at his most cynical, did not want to be that person.

"I appreciate it," he said, raising his hand to politely decline, "but I'm fine. Really."

"Are you?"

she inquired. It was neither an accusation nor a challenge. It was asked in the same way that a doctor would ask about pain on a scale of one to ten: with genuine interest. She tilted her head slightly, and her expression was reminiscent of a bird examining a curious insect on the sidewalk.

Without thinking about it, he felt his defensiveness rise. He answered, "Yeah, I'm fine." It has been a long week. Going home is all I care about.

The way she nodded made it look like this was the best answer ever. Then she held out the Bible to him and placed it on her palm like she was feeding a small animal. She told him, "Take it."

"Please, you don't need to read it tonight. You don't need to read it. Take it. For when you need it."

He was ready to say no. The words were already there: No thanks, ma'am. I'm not religious and don't believe in any of that. Thank you for your kindness, and have a wonderful evening. He had given this speech so many times that he could do it while sleeping. But something in her eyes made him stop.

It wasn't religious zeal. Alexandre had seen people with fanaticism before. They had the intense, fixed look of someone who had given up the world for certainty and was eager to join their group. This time, things were different. This looked like someone who had been standing on the same sidewalk for years, offering something to strangers who only sometimes took it.

This made the atmosphere calmer. She didn't have to accept it anymore; she just said it as if it were true, like rain that doesn't need to be thanked or appreciated.

"For when the sky changes," she said in a whisper, almost as if she didn't want him to hear. "Just in case the sky changes." Then she put the Bible in his hand and held it there.

Her fingers were very warm, almost to the point of fever, which made him wonder if she was sick and whether he should check on her well-being.

However, she no longer had her hand on his and was already turning and disappearing into the crowd, her cardigan blending in with the other things, like strollers, gym bags, and suits.

He stood there for a moment, feeling foolish as he held the cheap pocket Bible. A grown man in a button-down shirt and slacks stands outside a subway station, holding a Bible.

He imagined how he appeared to strangers, the potential photo they might take, and the caption they might write. He even imagined his face on a Reddit thread called "guy gets converted on the way home, lol."

He considered throwing it back at her, leaving it on a bench, and a variety of other options in the few seconds he stood motionless. Finally, he chose the simplest solution: tuck it under his arm like a folder of work papers and walk away.