We promised to write letters every day that summer. Her dumbass stepfather didn’t think I was worth a damn, so he shipped her off to some camp. Piano camp. Seriously? Like that was even a thing? As if that would stop me from seeing her? He sent her away, so I drove up there to see her. I parked about two miles away from the camp and walked through the woods the rest of the way. It reminded me of some old-school horror movie where I was the killer. Not that I would ever hurt her. Not a chance. She had tamed the wild beast inside me the second I met her.

She was shocked to see me there.

Her face turned red, and she wouldn’t look at me for a little bit. I finally convinced her to sneak away to a picnic table and talk to me. Something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then she hit me with it.

There was a boy there. From another school. Another town. And he liked her.

Shit. She had been there for less than a week.

Not that I could blame anyone. She was beautiful. Far beyond her years. That was the crazy thing about her. Just shy of turning eighteen, stuck under the control of her mother and stepfather, but she could pass for her mid-twenties.

That so-called boy turned out to be one of the piano teachers. Some blonde-haired, blue-eyed fucking guy who’d had everything handed to him in life. She told me he told her he wanted to kiss her. Then she said that he tried to kiss her during their last lesson together.

I stood up…she grabbed my hands and said she loved me. Only me. That she slapped the guy and said if he ever did that again she would tell on him.

I liked that.

I trusted her.

Nobody could get to her like me.

She told me the story, and I believed her, but there was something else in her eyes. Something really hidden in her eyes. When I asked her what was wrong, she confessed that she hated the camp. She hated her stepfather. She hated that her mother never stuck up for her. She hated that all her friends were already eighteen, and they were going to the beach, taking road trips, doing adults things, and there she was, stuck in a piano camp for six weeks.

The camp was supposed to make her fall out of love with me.

But it only brought us closer.

I kissed her that day. Right at the picnic table. My mind raced with all the places in the woods I had seen where I wanted to gently lay her down and show her how much I loved her.

I kissed her hard. I slid my hand behind her head.

Then I felt someone grab my shoulder.

We were busted.

Totally fucking busted.

It was some skinny-necked dude.

So I bolted.

I yelled to her that I loved her, and I took off into the woods.

Fast-forward a day, and I was getting a visit by the police and was that told if I went to the camp again, I’d be arrested for trespassing. Oh, and her cell phone was taken away. But she managed to get a call through to me. She said she loved me. She said she’d write me.

And she did.

The letters only took a day to go back and forth.

At first, it was annoying.

But now, it was actually kind of fun.

My life was a wild mess, but the letters were the calm in the storm.

I sat on the floor in the loft above the garage that I called home. I didn’t tell her that I’d gotten booted out of my house and was crashing in a garage. I didn’t want her to worry about me. She always worried. Well, not so much now, but maybe on the inside.

I was in the middle of writing her a letter when I heard the garage door open.

It felt like a damn earthquake. It shook the loft, and I felt like I was going to fall through the floor to the concrete below.

I kept writing…

… so it’s been great with these warm nights. I listen to the crickets and it makes me think of you. Sometimes I think I can hear music from them. I know the piano thing is dumb but it’s really cool you can play. I want you to play something for me when you get back, okay? I’m going to work and save up some money and get you a keyboard. You can keep it at my place. The other night it started to rain. I didn’t move though. My head on a rock, staring up. Watching the clouds move in and then the rain. It was so calming and refreshing. It made me whisper your name over and over…

I felt something hit side of my head.

“The fuck you writing? Don’t tell me you’re into that dumb-shit poetry?”

I looked up at Night. I thought of something to say—you know, about me actually being able to read and write—but I stopped dead when I saw his hands. His right hand was swollen, his knuckles like marbles, split open and bloody.

I flipped my notebook face-down and pulled myself to my feet.

“Shit,” I said. “What happened to you? What went down? How can I help?”

My mind shifted gears. Into survival mode. Protection mode. To make sure my best bud was safe.

“Shit,” I said again. “Did someone jump you, man? You should have ran. Called me. Fuck. I need to get a working cell again. Night, whatever happened…”

Night just started to laugh.

I froze. “What?”

He lifted his right hand and flexed his fist. His knuckles throbbed, and I saw ripped flesh and fresh blood ooze out of him.

“This is nothing, man,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

“What do you mean nothing? Look at your arms, man. They’re all scratched…”

The word rolled off my tongue. It echoed around the loft.

I stopped and really looked at Night. There were scratches from his forearms to his wrists. Like someone was clawing to get away. To get away from Night. I looked at his hand again. Busted up. But his other hand was fine. If Night got into a real fight, both hands would have been roughed up. And his face…was clean. Night was tough. But he wouldn’t have been that bloody on one hand without his face getting tagged at least once or twice.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered.

“Communication error,” he whispered. His voice was low, rumbling like thunder. “Do we have a problem here, Daw? Do we have our own communication error?”

I shook my head. “No, Night. You need a bandage or something, man?”

“I need a beer.”

“You know where the fridge is.”

“Fucking right I do,” he said.

He walked to the little fridge I had.

I went back to my notebook.

I wasn’t sure about Night or the life he lived. But I sure about what I was writing to her. We were going to figure it all out and be together. She always told me she was afraid to jump. I guess that meant jumping into my arms because of what it meant for her life and her parents. But I’d make that all work out.

I thought of the perfect thing to write to her right then.

Don’t ever be afraid to jump…