My strides are long, my inhales longer. The cool air outside hits my lungs, and I whisper, “Please please please please.” I don’t beg for release like Joy did; I beg for hope—hope that Mary will do her job. Make me forget. My truck seems so far away, too far, and I can hear footsteps behind me, and please please please please don’t let the footsteps bring me Joy.

I don’t want joy.

Don’t need it.

“Logan!”

“Fuck off!”

“Just wait!” It takes a moment for me to register that it’s not Joy. It’s worse: Aubrey. “Are you okay?”

I stop immediately, turn on my heels. “I’m fine.” I’m standing on the sidewalk, and she’s nothing but a silhouette moving toward me. Stopping a few feet away, she cranes her neck, looks up at me, and I hope she doesn’t mistake the redness of my smoke eyes for tears, for weakness.

Her eyelids open, close, in rapid succession, once, twice. “Are you sure you’re okay? I saw… I mean, I didn’t see it, just the end of it, and I just—” Her breaths are short huffs, and she must have run after me.

Sweet.

Stupid.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

I take another drag, stare her down. She’s small. I never realized how small she was. Maybe we’ve never stood this close to each other for this long, or maybe her offensive words heighten her physique, either way… she’s small, like a damn mosquito that just keeps buzzing in my ear, stinging me without my knowledge, the reminder of its damage lasting days.

Minuscule.

Pesky.

I ask, “Shouldn’t you be in there consoling your friend?”

“Why?” she asks incredulously. “She fucked up. She deserves to cry.”

My head tilts to the side while my gaze stays on hers. She steps closer again, and I see her eyes for what seems like the first time.

Green like olives.

Freckles on her upturned nose.

“You look like a leprechaun.”

“You smell like a venereal disease.”

“You want to get out of here?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Aubrey sits in my truck with her legs crossed, hidden beneath her giant skirt, inhaling loudly through her nostrils, sucking all the air out of the cab. Suffocating. She doesn’t speak. She just sits; big eyes and ratty, red hair she refuses to do anything with. She’s a version of Emma Stone from Easy A, back when she was cute, not sexy. I regret asking her to come with me, and I don’t know why she agreed to it. But it’s awkward, and she’s awkward, and I break the silence with the only thing I can think to say, “Are you hungry?” I offer her food even though I don’t want her here.

“I’m starving,” she answers, and I swerve the car around, head back into town and toward the gas station.

She says, her nose scrunched, “I wouldn’t trust anything they have to offer.”

“You have little faith, Red.”

In the store, she watches me fill two Styrofoam bowls of ramen noodles with the water from the coffee vending machine. I tell her to get anything she wants, on me.

“Anything?”

I’m trying to be chivalrous. She takes it as a dare. There’s a gleam in her eye, and I nod, accept the challenge.

Bring it, Red.

I wait for her by the counter, and through the security mirror by the front door, I see her with a basket, perusing the aisles as if she has all the fucking time in the world. It takes five minutes for her to finally join me, her basket filled with Pringles and other random snacks. She’s buying food and drinks and nothing else, and I roll my eyes at her. “That all you got?”

She dumps the basket on the counter and spins the rack of sunglasses next to her. Bright red, star-shaped lenses sit on the bridge of her nose when she says, “I feel like Marilyn Monroe.” And then she giggles.

Breathy.

Husky.

Only slightly attractive.

I tell her she looks like an idiot.

She ignores my comment, turns to the guy behind the counter. “And condoms. Two twelve packs. And lube, too.” She backhands my chest. “This one has a hard time getting me wet.”

I shake my head, but I won’t let her win. “You better give me three extra bottles of lube,” I tell the guy. “You ever see the Grand Canyon, bud?”

The guy watches our exchange, bored, as if he sees this amount of stupidity every night. “Not in person.”

“That’s what her vagina’s like: a dry, giant, gaping hole of emptiness.”

“So… four bottles of lube?”

I nod. “Thanks.”

“And this,” she says, pulling a magazine from somewhere in her giant skirt: Shemale Playboy. “It’s the only thing that gets him hard.”

* * *

We sit on the bed of my truck, our legs hanging off the edge while I spread out our food between us. She’s still wearing those stupid glasses, her face directed at the empty parking lot in front of us. Her legs kick back and forth when she says, “You know, with any other guy, this might be perceived as romantic.”

But I’m not any other guy to her. She knows me, or at least her preconceived notion of me. She hates me. I hate her. And I remember that when I hand the bowl to her, shove a forkful of noodles in my mouth and say, “Romance is dead, Red. Lower your expectations.”

“Stop calling me Red.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s creepy as hell that you have a pet name for me. I don’t like it.”

“Whatever you say, Red.”

She shivers, runs her hands along her bare arms. Her nails aren’t painted, but her fingers are covered with rings, all sizes, styles, and colors.

I ask, “Where’s your ugly sweater?”

“I must’ve left it at the party.”

“You want to go back and find it?”

“Nah. I’m sure it’ll find its way back to me.”

“That’s because no one wants to claim such a horrid thing.”

“Asshole,” she murmurs, rubbing her arms again. She looks so small, so compact. I’d break her in half if we ever…

I blame the thought on the weed I’ve smoked, but maybe…

Just maybe.

She asks, “Is this what you plan on doing for the rest of the night?”

“Pretty much. Why? You disappointed?”

“I just thought you’d be out breaking shit.”

“I’m not a violent person.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

And then it’s quiet again, and I’m not a big fan of quiet, never was. I’m not a big fan of chatter, either, which is why I choose to spend most of my time with earphones on, music no doubt killing my eardrums. But, I don’t have earphones tonight, not expecting to need them. I could leave her sitting in the back of my truck while I go into the cab, listen to music. She’ll probably follow, and maybe that won’t be so bad, but I don’t like being in the confines of that small space with just her, no buffer between us. She’s a girl, which means she’ll want to talk about things I don’t want to deal with: feelings and shit. So instead, I break the silence and say, “When did you move here?”

“Right after graduation. An hour after that diploma was in my hand, I was on a bus on my way here.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, unable to hide my surprise. “What are you running from?”

She removes the sunglasses and faces me. “Nothing.”

“Okay, so… where are you running from?”

“Raleigh.”

My eyebrows rise. “And you moved to this shithole of a town? You’re definitely running from something,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no other explanation.”

“You know why I like it here?” she asks, changing the subject.

“Why?”

She points to the sky. “The stars are better here.”

“Bullshit, you moved here for the stars.”

“No, it’s just something I’ve noticed.”

“You spend a lot of time looking up at the stars?”

She shrugs, places her empty bowl next to her, and turns back to me. “I came here, alone, with a single suitcase and moved into a house I’d never even seen in person. I know no one here, I am no one here, so yeah, I spend a lot of time looking up at the stars. I didn’t realize the sky was so vast. Back home, there was too much light, too much going on, the stars didn’t look like they do here… so bright and powerful. And that’s just from Main Street and my backyard. I’d love to find somewhere around here that has nothing for miles and just stand under the starlit sky and…” She stops there, her eyes widening. “I’m totally rambling.”

I inhale deeply, coming back to the present. Because I’d been lost, drowning in her words, in her voice. What the fuck? I blow out a heavy breath, try to see the world through her eyes. Then I allow my gaze to settle on hers.

One second.

Two.

“You want to see the stars, Red?”

“Why?” she says, a slight smile breaking through. “You want to show me the stars?”