I even type a draft, because I’m me:We’re fine. She’s with us. Touch her and we’ll end your week.I stare at the words until they look stupid and true at the same time. I hear Quincy telling me to count to ten. I picture Lou’s DMs if I hit post. I picture my mother reading the replies and calling me by my full name, so I feel like I’m nine years old and got caught smoking a cigarette behind the studio.
Lou reads over my shoulder without touching me. “Don’t.”
“They’re turning you into content.”
“They’ll do that anyway. If we feed them, we teach them to come back. I’ve already received threats for holding Troy’s hand. I’m not giving them a bigger target.”
“What if I take the target?”
“You are the target,” she says, which is rude and true. “We all are. Silence and strategy. We do the work. We post art. We goquiet where they want noise. If we go official right now, it goes nuclear.”
I want to argue. I want to throw a brick through the internet. I want to say I’m not built for silence or stillness or normal. I look at her fingers on the edge of the table, ink on the cuticle from where the pen fought back, and I shut up.
“Fine.” It tastes like swallowing a lit match. I swallow it anyway. “Going for a ride.”
If I stay inside, I’ll put my fist through a window. Out past the garages, across the overpass, into the ugly parts of town that don’t sell postcards. The air bites at fifty, forgives at sixty-five. I let my head clear at the edges and keep my hands clean in the middle. A bar with a parking lot like a scar pulls me in without trying.
Inside is low light, a jukebox that hates everything after 2005, and three women who smell like they know how to ruin a day on purpose. I take a stool, order club soda with lime, and watch my reflection in the back-bar mirror until I’m sure the guy looking back won’t start a fight to prove he’s breathing.
A brunette touches my forearm and introduces herself like she’s late to a party. “Aren’t you?—”
“I’m a guy drinking soda,” I say, friendly enough to be rude later if I have to. “You want the stool?”
She laughs, surprised I told the truth out loud. “You’re cute.”
“I’m trouble. Tonight I’m off-duty.”
She leaves a number on a napkin anyway because people like to try doors even when the lights are off. I tuck it under my glass so the water wrecks it. Another girl floats by looking like vanilla andknives. Just my type. She settles in next to me, asks my name. I nod, polite, and keep my hands to myself. “Just here for a drink.”
“Drinks are better with company.”
“Not the way I drink.”
Dejected, she trots away. It’s a cute trot, to be fair, but nah. Truth is, I’m not interested. Not in anyone else. Not sure when the last time that happened was.
I text Lou instead and find out she’s still up. Thank fuck. I pay, tip heavy, step into the heat, and ride back before my better self gets bored and wanders off.
The suite is dark except for the TV. Knox’s door is closed. Houston’s light is out. Lou’s a blanket mountain on the couch, a horror movie throwing blue and red across her cheekbones. “You okay?”
“No,” I say, kicking my boots off. “But I’m trying.”
“Come here. Be still for ninety minutes.”
“Cruel.”
“It’s a horror movie, so that seems appropriate.”
I snort a laugh and slide under the blanket and sit close enough to feel the heat coming off her without taking any. On screen, a woman walks into a basement even though she was told not to. Classic.
Lou’s hair smells like hotel shampoo—floral—and her day. She hands me the bowl of popcorn, and I take three pieces so I don’t make a mess of the salt.
We watch in the kind of quiet people mistake for tension. It isn’t. It’s two humans making room for their own lungs. My knee stops wanting to drum when she sets her calf against it like a doorstop. She’s not cuddly. She’s decisive. I like that better.
The movie does a jump scare. She doesn’t move. I flinch because I always do. Doesn’t matter how many horror movies I watch. She grins into the throw and hides it, which is rude. I elbow her, gentle. She elbows back, less gentle. I catch her wrist under the blanket and hold it for a second because I want to, and because she lets me.
The hand I’m holding threads our fingers. My other hand goes to her knee, warm through her leggings. She breathes in, deeper but not dramatic, and then moves closer so the edge of the blanket tents over us, and the rest of the room doesn’t exist. My mouth finds her temple, then the shell of her ear, then her mouth. She tastes like popcorn and cola. Perfect.
She answers like she meant to do this and got tired of waiting for me to catch up. A kiss that says we have time even if we don’t. My hand slides higher, and she nods. I move over her hip, under cotton, palm mapping heat and shape and wetness. She exhales into me, and the sound short-circuits me in the right way.
