Nolan checked his phone for the third time. The last bus home was supposed to leave seven minutes ago, and the bus stop was empty. The cold wind from the sea had grown stronger, and his phone battery showed four percent. "Great," he muttered. "Just great."
He had stayed too long at Daniel's birthday party. The music had been loud, everyone had been dancing, and he had promised himself he would leave at ten. Now he was alone in a part of Portland he hardly knew, and his parents thought he was already on his way home.
He was about to call his mother when an old man with a walking stick sat down on the bench beside him. "Missed the last one, didn't you?" the man said with a smile. Nolan nodded, embarrassed. "Happens to the best of us," said the man. "Once I missed the last bus from Chicago on the night before my wedding. I walked for hours."
Despite himself, Nolan laughed. "Did you make it to the wedding?" "Just in time," the man answered. "My wife never let me forget it. Fifty years, and she still tells the story at every family dinner."
They talked for a few minutes, about buses, weddings and the strange way that bad nights become good stories. Then the man pointed to a small sign that Nolan hadn't noticed: on weekends, a night line left from the next street every hour. "Five minutes' walk," he said. "You'll make it if you hurry."
Nolan thanked him, called his mother quickly with the last of his battery, and ran. He caught the night bus just as its doors were closing. As it pulled away, he looked back at the bench. It was empty. Nolan realized that he had never even asked the old man's name. Still, he had a feeling that one day, he too would tell this story at a family dinner.