Garage Lights

At 1:13 a.m., every garage on the block was dark except his.

The light leaked out in a clean rectangle across the driveway, like a stage no one bought tickets for.

He sat on an overturned bucket, laptop balancing on a paint can, rewriting the same line of code while the radio whispered old songs through static.

By morning, the bug was gone. No one would know. That was part of the deal.