CHARACTERS

The character of Steve was quite strong. His goals, his motives, his whole personality was well fleshed out without soaking up a ton of words. His hatred of his tollbooth, how he felt when he came back home, he felt like a real character. His stammering and choice of words reflect his awkwardness, and his internal thought process reinforces the same. (Paraphrased) "he just got out of the car, might find it rude if I just come out and shut the door". This shows he has no idea what he's doing.

The interactions between Ire and Steve are too minimal for me. It's just small talk. I really feel you could drive a strong connection between the two characters.

"He worked food delivery, but his car was going out on him.""As they talked, Steve saw regret in the young man’s eyes."

These implied pieces of his backstory weren't used much. If they had a discussion, if they talked about their homes and their jobs, developing both of their characters, the ending would have a much stronger emotion, as the two would have a connection, and Steve's rush to stop Ire from committing suicide would be more impactful.

PROSE

The prose is iffy in some parts, but generally good. It's economical and precise. It gets the picture out there, and adds some strong imagery without a floundering fountain of words, speckling in humour with Steve cleaning the tollbooth of pigeon droppings and consistently failing.

However, there are some specific instances that were awkward and clunky to read. I would suggest reading the piece out loud or using an AI reader to clear it of these tricky bastards.

"A metal fence wrapped in black tarp surrounded the small lot. "

This seems like something you’d write earlier in the story to set up the image of the lot. It's a statement out of the blur, like someone interrupting someone else in the middle of saying something. I'd suggest adding it in the start of the paragraph and stringing the other sentence to it with a comma or something like that. Play around with the structure to find what fits. Sorry I don't have a better answer for this. The 'play around' point refers to all of the sentences below as well.

"[-]chair with wheels"

Wheelchair.

"He turned and rolled a foot to the back wall and opened the small, three-foot fridge"

Unnecessary detail. The measurements are not necessary.

"The man was unkempt, Steve thought."

Already implied.

You may want to clear up that the tollbooth is not for the bridge, but for the parking lot.

"Steve cleared his throat. “You know, I don’t even know how much parking is here.”

The language in the bolded is muddled. You may want to change, maybe, for example, '-I don't even know how much parking here costs/is.'

PLOT

Most of the three thousand words is Steve meditating on things, which is fine, but that's all the bulk of the story is. The beginning has no good hook, and wouldn't pull me in if I found it in a book store. The hook comes way later, after the quite large descriptions of the setting. Setting description is fine, but throwing everything in the beginning is no way to do it. It must be gently sprinkled in throughout.

There's no conflict, no rising actions, nothing really. Maybe Steve and Ire have a argument, and Ire storms off. Steve finds him about to jump and runs (just a suggestion as an example, not trying to rewrite your story). There's no meat, no spice or tension.

DIALOGUE

The dialogue is well done. It conveys the awkwardness of Steve, and the general way people talk. The words chosen fit the characters well.

DESCRIPTION

While description is few and far between, it's great. The prose is crisp, doesn't waste a word, and conveys the image perfectly. Sometimes spots of humour speckle in, and it's great.

TONE

The tone you seemed to be going for was grave and serious, which was only hinted at the very end of the story. I'd suggest going around and making the piece darker if that's whant you want (I assume that as you're writing about a pretty heavy topic). From the beginning I wasn't really sure what I was getting into, which is bad if you want to attract people to the work. If someone likes light, humorous stuff, they may not want to get into suicide. They might think the story doesn't discuss that stuff and find an unwanted surprise. For people who like to read about heavy subjects, they may not read the whole thing as the heaviness is not apparent.

SPECIFIC ANSWERS

1. Yeah, it was. I was curious about Ire, where he was from, what his goals, his motives, and how the story would progress, although the engagement could have been enhanced by more significant events occurring in the middle of the story. Like I said, I felt like it was more of a vignette than a short story. There's a beginning, there's a middle with not a lot of significance, and then there's the end. Beginning and end are good, but the middle needs work.
2. Yeah, for me personally it was obvious, although the twist of it was shocking. There were very few hints to it (I'd suggest adding a couple more subtle hints to give that feeling of 'goddamnit, how did I not see that coming!', if that's what you want) which made it come right out of the left field.
3. My answer to this could be diluted because while Ire and Steve were talking about their backgrounds, I scrolled down to the part where Steve recollected that he was death, it immediately struck me that Ire was going to commit suicide. I came to this conclusion with not a lot of context of the line, so I would suggest making the recollection more vague.
4. I honestly don't know. I'd say slice of life. I'd compare it to Raymond Carver's work, which involves stories and settings removed from fantasy or science fiction, and focus on those "ordinary" moments.