I leave the Jeep in the driveway and take the regular boring car instead. Not that it’s cheap. Just kind of boring.

I’m not even halfway out the driveway when my phone rings.

I check the screen, thinking that it must be Lia calling. Hopefully she doesn’t want to cancel. Hopefully she’s not getting cold feet.

It’s an unknown number.

I groan. I know very well what that means.

“What’s going on, Jack?” I say, picking up the phone.

“Hey brother,” says Jack. His voice is scratchy and he coughs twice after he speaks. He sounds like he’s twenty years older than he really is.

“Hey, Jack. What can I do for you?”

“Why you gotta start off like that? Who says I need something? Maybe I’m just calling to check up on my little brother.”

I sigh.

“Habit, I guess,” I say. “You never call me unless you need something.”

“Well,” says Jack, his voice turning slick, like a traveling salesman of junk. “Now that you mention it, I do have a little favor for you… Just a little one. Nothing major.”

“Great,” I mutter. “What is it this time? Another one of your scams? Are you selling vitamins, or trying to sell dolphins again? Remember how that ended up for you?”

Jack’s been in and out of jail more times than I can count. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember whether he’s locked up, free, or on parole.

“No, no,” says Jack. “Nothing like that. I mean, I made some bad business decisions. But that can happen to anyone, right?”

“Sure,” I say, sarcastically. “I’m on the way to meet a lady friend. So make it fast, OK? Tell me what you need.”

I’m on the highway now, driving along. I pass a couple cars, moving over to the left lane to do so.

The night is dark, with only a sliver of the moon hanging in a cloudless sky. Some of the stars are out, rare for these parts. There’s so much light pollution these days that sometimes it seems as I’m living on a starless world, a little spinning rock in a huge void, nothing else out there at all…

“I need a place to stay,” says Jack. “I’m actually headed your way on some business and…”

“No way,” I say, without hesitating.

It may sound cruel. He’s my brother, after all. But he’s seriously screwed me over too many times at this point. He’s pretended he was me, while trying to make illegal sports bets. Shit like that could get me in serious trouble. He’s stolen my credit card numbers, and he’s even tried to steal my Jeep once. But he couldn’t drive stick, and got stuck in the driveway, after doing some serious damage to the clutch.

“Seriously?” says Jack.

“I’m serious,” I say. “You’re not staying at my place. I can help you get a room somewhere.”

“Forget it then,” says Jack, sounding hurt.

“Dude,” I start to say, before realizing that he’s hung up the phone.

I let out a big sigh.

I keep on driving. There’s no point in thinking about it too much. That’s Jack. He’s more than just a fuckup. He’s… I don’t know how to describe him. I just don’t have the words.

I’ve still got about ten minutes before I get to Lia’s house.

I can’t wait to see her. And it’s fine if we don’t have sex. I mean, it’s not fine. My cock is hard just thinking about her… But I want something else… I actually want to talk to her. And trust me when I say that’s rare for me. Like really rare.

For some reason, I start thinking about the book I’ve been reading. I’m sure the rest of the guys on the team are thinking about the upcoming game, or about getting laid or drunk. But with my mind half on Lia, the book by Bolaño comes to mind, The Savage Detectives, Los Detectives Salvages.

Bolaño was a Chilean poet and novelist who wrote in Spanish. His family moved to Mexico City, where he spent a lot of time before moving to Spain as an adult. He wandered around Mexico City, as a young virgin poet, before becoming moving in with a woman who worked at a café. At that same café, he would sit and write poetry and meet with the other visceral surrealists, a group that Bolaño himself was a member of.

Weird where the mind takes you sometimes. I can almost picture the scenes in my head.

I guess in a strange way the book is a sort of romance story, albeit a very odd one.

I pull up to her apartment building. It’s a somewhat drab looking, dismal building, to be honest.

I suddenly realize I don’t know much about Lia’s life right now. How’s she doing with money? Apparently not so well.

I get out of the car and survey the apartment building with a little bit of dismay. It’s not a terrible place by any means. It’s all right, certainly safe looking. But… there’s something wrong here.

I knock on the door and Lia appears before me, opening the door and letting the light from inside stream out onto the small porch.

“Hey,” she says.

“You look incredible.”

She blushes.

“It’s true.”

And it is true. She has this thing where she looks better each time I see her. It’s incredible.

“Come on in,” she says.

I walk past her into the apartment and look around.

It’s decorated nicely, somewhat simply. I can tell that the furniture isn’t high quality stuff. Not that I care about that, but I know she probably does, and I wish she had better things.

“It’s nothing fancy,” she says, looking a little embarrassed.

“No, it’s really nice. Feels really homey.”

I notice she’s speaking quietly, since she doesn’t want to wake up her son. I do the same.

“How’s he doing, anyway?”

“He’s still asleep. Hopefully he’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“What’s his name, by the way?” It feels weird to talk about him without even knowing is name.

“Will.”

I nod and smile.

“You want to sit on the porch?” she says.

“Sure.”

“I’ll get some wine and bring it out.”

I nod my head and head back out onto the porch.

I settle down in a cheap lawn chair and wait for her to come back out.

“Here you go,” says Lia, returning and handing me a glass of red wine.

“Smells good,” I say, taking a deep breath.

Lia settles down into the chair next to me. I notice that she pulls it along the concrete floor so that it’s closer to me. When she sits down, her leg rests partially against mine. It feels good, the physical contact with her.

“Sounds like you know a lot about wine.”

“Not really,” I say, laughing. “I’ve just seen that wine snobs do that. They smell it and then swish it around.”

Lia laughs. It’s a beautiful laugh, with her voice rising as she laughs, to some kind of perfect musical-like note.

“It’s actually just a cheap wine,” says Lia.

“Well, I’m sure they say that some of the cheapest wines are the best.”

“I don’t think anyone ever said that.”

I laugh. “Maybe not.” I take a sip of the wine and swish it around my mouth. Not bad, for all I know. I’m more of a beer guy. It’s not like me and the football guys in college sat around sampling red wine. No, it was either beer, vodka, or whiskey. Occasionally tequila, if it was a really crazy party. Some of the guys on the team now I know are beer snobs, but personally I’ve never much seen the point in that. When I have a beer, I just want to relax and chill out. I don’t want to have to worry about the taste and whether or not I like it.

“Well,” says Lia. “It’s definitely not good. It’s from a box, not a bottle.”

I laugh. “I think they say that’s the worst type of wine. Not that I care. To me, wine is wine.”

“Me too,” says Lia.

We fall into a silence. Her eyes lock onto mine, and I see how they glow. I see their intense beauty.

Have you ever really studied someone’s eyes? They’re incredible, little biological jewels of pure joy. And when you’re staring into the eyes of someone you… someone like Lia, it’s a whole ‘nother world. I could get lost in her eyes.

She doesn’t break her gaze as I stare back into her eyes.

“So,” I say, after a pause. “Tell me about your life. It’s not like we got a chance to talk much this afternoon.”

“No, we certainly didn’t,” says Lia, laughing.

She starts telling me about her life. She tells me about work, and about raising her son. He sounds like a cool kid, although somewhat of a handful, as I’m sure all kids his age are.

The truth is that I don’t know much about kids. I haven’t spent much time around them, and I really couldn’t tell a 2 year apart from a 3 year old. I don’t know what they do at different ages. I don’t know when they start to talk or when they start to walk. I know they’re cool, pretty interesting, and that’s about it.

Maybe someday I’d like to have kids of my own. It’s not something I’d given much thought about until fairly recently. I mean, when I was in college, I never thought I’d have kids. And I mean never. But things start to change when you get older. Just a couple years can make a huge difference. I know I’m more mature now than I was back then.

“Sounds like you’ve been having kind of a hard time of things,” I say.

Lia’s just told me about how she wasn’t able to continue on with her schooling.

“I guess so,” says Lia. “But I wouldn’t change anything… I mean, Will’s everything to me.”

I nod my head. I’m not sure what to say, honestly.

“Sounds like you’re only missing one thing,” I say.

“And what’s that?”

“A man.”

She catches my meaning, and smiles at me as I look into her eyes. Our eyes lock again. My cock is growing in my pants, getting stiff and ready.

“Maybe,” I say. “We could head to the car for another…”

“The car?”

“I know you don’t want to wake up your son.”

“The car, eh?” she says, a twinkle in her eyes. “I guess that could work.”

My cock’s at full mast now. I’m ready to penetrate her, to get inside that glorious and tight pussy again. It seems like it’s made just for me. It fits me like a glove. I want to bury myself again inside of it. I want to taste her and savor her.

Off to my right, the door to the house opens.

A little kid appears standing there, holding the door open.

“Mom?” he says.

“Hey honey,” says Lia, setting her wine down and getting up. “What are you doing up?”

“I don’t feel well.”

“Did you throw up again?”

The kid shakes his head.

“Do you feel sick to your stomach?”

He nods his head.

“Hey there, Will,” I say, waving at him.

Will just looks at me, a little confused.

“This is my friend, Shane,” says Lia.

She seems flustered, nervous, and a little embarrassed. I guess that’s understandable. Maybe she’s not used to having her son meet her male friends or something.

“Sorry,” says Lia, making an apologetic face at me. “I’m going to have to help Will. Let’s hang out soon, though, OK?”

“OK, sure,” I say, trying not to look too disappointed. “I’ll see you soon.”

I watch her beautiful figure as she disappears inside. I stay on the porch for a couple minutes in the dark, contemplating the darkness of the night.

I want her. I want to make her mine. But there’s something in the way. She’s holding onto something and I don’t know what it is…