Stone is standing beside the fire with a certain repose, the way a person only stands when they think no one’s watching. Lance walks closer until Stone’s features clarify in the flickering light. Vacant eyes. His mouth, without expression.

“James?”

He twists toward Lance. Military training springs out like a blade: straight back, tensed fists. A different person.

“Who is it?” Stone asks.

“Just me. Lance.”

“Why are you calling me James?”

“That’s what you told me to call you. When we met.”

“Bullshit.” Stone turns away, looking bored. Lance gets closer.

“You were in the car. With blood all over your face. I remember it pretty well.”

“Huh,” he says. “Maybe you’re right.” The military part of him retracts, and he’s just Stone again. The guy grinning through the service window of The Float. Easy smile. Soft eyes.

“Sorry about my friends,” Lance says.

“No big deal,” Stone says. “It’s universal.” He stares at the tracks and shakes his head, losing a silent argument. The flames make a dry flapping noise.

“You’re not going back to Bend?” Stone asks.

“Not tonight.”

“Bend sounds nice,” Stone says. “Mountain town. Breanna says it’s awesome.”

“It’s no Telluride. We should’ve gone while we had the chance.”

“Yes! Yes, we should’ve,” Stone says. He looks over his shoulder, searching the shadows. There is no one there. “You know it was voted the most beautiful main street in America. Have you seen pictures?”

“No.”

“It really is, man. If you have the money, you could just sit in a café all day. Your whole life could go by while you’re sipping coffee. The mountains are right there. They come right up out of the fucking town. You climb. You ski. Sit in the cafés at night. Maybe work a restaurant gig. Life can start over that way. Find a shit job in a beautiful place and go from there.”

“That sounds about perfect,” Lance says.

“I can see it.” He shuts his eyes. “Just like a picture.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“I can’t see myself in the picture,” Stone says. He opens his eyes. Looks at Lance.

“You don’t know unless you try,” Lance says. But his words sound flat. Stone, in his cooking pants. Those giant black boots.

“This place,” Stone says. “This fucking place.”

“So go.”

“It’s like a horror movie. You can’t outrun it,” Stone says, his eyes sharp. “Mason’s right. That’s why I enlisted. To get away. I brought all my favorite books to basic training. Even wore my glasses. A few of the guys started calling me professor, you know?”

Stone’s gaze moves down the long, dark tracks.

“I believe it,” Lance says.

“But it always catches up with you,” Stone says. “We were in the mess hall for dinner, and I made a joke—I don’t even remember what. And this guy McQuarrie flung a spoonful of mashed potatoes at me. They hit me right here, in the chest. He’s this rich prick who everyone likes and he says, Ain’t too bright, are you, DeWitt? And other guys started in with their own stories. And this place found me again. Right there at the table.”

“So you left?”

“Nope,” he says. That small smile. “I went over the table. I’m not even that strong, but no one could pull me off the guy. I was going to rip the box straight out of his throat. My fingers were all dug in. Someone hit me with a chair, and that was it.”

“You left?”

“Discharged. Want a shot?” Bottle on a stump. The whisky goes down like hot water from a rusty teakettle. Lance chokes it back, eyes stinging. Stone pats his shoulder, something opening up between them.

“Nice job. You’re getting good at this, Wildman.”

“Blower,” Lance says, exhaling.

“To hell with that. Fuck Mason. You’re still Wildman. You know what’s crazy? The only people who know my real story about basic training are you and this guy who comes into The Float sometimes, John Ganz. Giant beard. Old timber dude.”

“What did he say?”

“He got it,” Stone says. “Same deal, you know? This guy listens to classical music. Reads like three books a week. But who knows that about Ganz? You’d have to pay attention to know that. So there’s the fry cook and the broke-down lumberjack sitting at the bar talking about The Martian Chronicles and The Clan of the Cave Bear. And I’m telling him things nobody knows about me. I’m telling John Ganz, this total stranger.”

“Yeah,” Lance says, looking at the fire. The way Stone’s voice is, it’s hard to look at him.

“He got me,” Stone says. “You ever had that feeling? When someone gets it?”

“Yeah,” Lance says. And he’s looking back toward the woods that lead to a parking lot and a window where she might still be awake. Then he makes himself look at Stone, who says:

“How can a total stranger understand you better than the people you’ve known your entire life?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s fucked up, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “It is.” Stone nods and walks toward the tracks. His boots crunch on the ballast. He hops up, balancing on the nearest rail.

“So how about you?”

“What about me?” Lance asks.

“What’s your Telluride?”

Lance is warm and light-headed from the whisky and before he can say I don’t know, he says Dakota.

“Ha!” Stone lights up. He claps, hops down. “I knew it! No wonder Mason’s been such a prick. Man. The way she looks at you. Goosebumps.”

“Yeah?” Lance says. “Do they have a thing? Dakota and Mason?”

“Not yet,” Stone says. “He’s working on it. Has a bet going with Rocco, I think.”

“He still owes me a thousand dollars.”

“Good luck with that,” Stone says. “So hey, what are you still doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re leaving tomorrow, right?” Stone says. “Why aren’t you with her?”

“Why aren’t you in Telluride?”

“Hey,” Stone says, crunching down toward him. “Telluride is a thousand miles away. Dakota’s right there in her bedroom.”

“It’s too late, man. She’s—”

A hot flash of pain and Lance staggers sideways. His right cheek burns, tears dribbling from his eye. Stone just slapped him. Lance laughs a long, rolling laugh. It’s amazing. Hilarious, being slapped for that.

“Wow, Stone,” he says. “That really hurt.”

“It hurt when you put those towels behind my head,” Stone says.

“What?”

“After the accident. When you saved my life. That hurt too.” Stone grabs him by the shoulders. “I will slap the ever-living shit out of you, Wildman, if that’s what it takes to wake you up. Go get her.”

Lance wonders if there is enough time. The woods are dark, but it’s not far to her door.

Stone laughs.

“What?” Lance says, barely hearing him.

“You’re freaking out,” Stone says. “It’s not too late. Go!” Stone pushes him, and Lance stumbles. He’s out of the firelight and walking, almost to the trees when Stone calls out:

“Lance! You told the cops I was driving?”

“Yeah.” He stops, turning back. “That’s the story, right?”

“That’s the story,” Stone says. “Promise me you’ll get Dakota. No matter what.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re even,” Stone says. “You saved my life. I saved yours. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Lance walks back to the fire. They shake hands, and Stone claps him on the shoulder.

“Goodbye, Wildman.”

Then Stone is alone, orange and flickering by the fire. Same easy posture. Same faraway look. Like Lance had never been there at all.

He is already moving—climbing up the slope through the trees, heart pounding, counting his steps, shedding the weight of Darren and Miriam and Breanna and even Stone. Sweating through his clothes and sucking in night air and breathing it out until there’s only Dakota and his footsteps, shrinking the distance between them, dissolving the woods into a parking lot, magnifying her window until he’s there, fist raised in front of the glass.

Is this happening?

He knocks. Three stiff raps, but the knocks keep beating, echoes reverberating in walls and windows. He can still run away. There’s still time. Then the zzzwwoooooop of a cord and clattering blinds. There is only a thin sheet of glass between them. Dakota stares as if taking in a painting. She unlatches the window. Slips it open.

“What are you doing?”

“Ghost hunt,” he says. “Want to come?”

A smile breaks through, wild and bright. She vanishes from the window, leaving a dark void of space and the distant blue flicker of a television. The sigh of weather stripping and she’s out the door, pulling on shoes.

His teeth are chattering so hard they’re bouncing his right leg. Or the other way around.

“Trying to tell me something?” she says.

“What?” he asks.

He looks down. Locks his knees.

“Want to come over?” he says. He can barely talk. Done talking.

“Yes.”

That moment of unreality: her hand slipping into his. A new sensation he’s coming to know. The drop of shoulders. Opening of lungs. The heart-hammering, gentle drift of Dakota’s company. All that’s left for them to do is cross the parking lot, so the parking lot becomes treacherous. Every creak and rustle, someone racing to stop them. An impossibly long walk and somehow they’re across, upstairs, and standing at the door to his room.

The key won’t fit. This key never fits.

He’s drilling at the lock when Dakota runs a finger across the back of his neck, right at the hairline. The sensation! A tickling, shivering, stop-and-do-it-again. He’s up on his tiptoes. He could melt into the floorboards and live for a week, just on that touch.

The key slips in.

The door closes behind them, and he and Dakota are alone in a dark room. He turns and she’s staring at him. Such a small space between them. He tries to close the gap with words, but they go liquid in his head, sloshing into one another, leaking from his mouth. He doesn’t understand himself.

“What do you, so, do you—”

She leans in past the place where words snap off. Their lips touch. Heads tilt, mouths opening and he’s drinking her in. Her mouth is hungry, moving against his, a pulsing rhythm. A current, carrying them downstream, their bodies together, crashing onto the bed.

The kiss deepens, unbreakable. When he moves his head or brushes back her hair, she always rushes back to rescue him. Like breathing for one another. There is a dark velvet cloth over everything.

Hunger turns feverish. Hands fight their way through buttons and zippers, snaps and clasps, until everything is skin and Dakota’s mouth. Every part, surprising. The channel down the center of her back, the shape of her breasts and how they fit in his hands, the glide of her stomach under his palm. How she moves. Her hips, shoving against him until it hurts. No shyness. Only what they both want.

It’s too much. Fingernails on flesh. Her tongue against his earlobe, buried in his ear. The taste of arms, calves, and thighs. Sweat. Suffocating under bedsheets. Her mouth around individual fingers. Index, middle, shaking, laughing. So many sensations, all flooding toward one place. He stops her.

“It’s my first time.” She’s breathless, glowing. “What do you want?”

“I want to try.”

“Try.”

He goes to his suitcase, takes out the blue plastic bag he’d gotten in Seattle, unwraps it. Wrestles through cardboard, trying to find the edge of the packet.

“Let me help,” she says. “Come here.”

She opens it for him. Helps him put it on. Helps him the whole way. It’s not like he expects. No sudden pop and blur. No moment where everything turns to golden light and he stops thinking. He’s thinking now. He worries. There are mechanical issues. Is it still on? Is he doing it right? Even the kissing gets tricky, and his head is so full that maybe it’s over too soon. Was it? He’s shaking again, peeling things off. Tissues. Crossing back and forth to the bathroom. Is this just what people do, every time?

Finally they’re back under the sheets. Back to blue light and smiling.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “Are you?” He laughs.

“What?”

“The way we’re talking. It’s like we’ve just been in a car accident.”

“A train wreck,” Dakota says.

“Was it?”

“What?”

“A train wreck?”

“No!”

“Good,” he says. He slips his arm beneath her neck, pulls her close. “So I’m a natural.”

“Supernatural,” she says.

They’re kissing again. That is their magic—an endless kiss. When hands come off clocks and words crumble and the room loses traction and they’re slipping off a ledge, flying or falling, too fast to tell the difference.