It’s a lie that fits, so I wear it.
Friday comes with damp heat and low clouds, the kind that make the whole town smell like wet gravel and gasoline. I’ve got a paper due by midnight and my head full of numbers and paragraphs and the constant, stupid thought of a man I barely know but somehow can’t stop feeling.
By late afternoon I need gas, and I need air, and I need to stop feeling like my own house is shrinking around me.
The Pump N’ Shop, the station on the edge of town is small and half-lit, the kind of place that always has somebody lingering by the ice chest like they’re waiting on a sign from God or the devil. I pull in, kill the engine, and sit for a second before I get out.
I’ve been doing that lately. Pausing. Listening. Checking the mirror. Hell teaches you habits and fear teaches you quicker.
The humid air sticks to my skin the second I step out. My tank top clings. My hair is up, still damp from the shower I took after work like washing can rinse off a week’s worth of nerves. I’ve got my keys threaded between my fingers like a weapon even though I hate that I do. I hate what it turns me into.
My gaze sweeps the lot.
Nothing that looks like trouble.
Just an old man fueling a mower can. Just a teen in a rusted Civic blasting music too loud with the windows down. Just the faint buzz of the lights over pump three and the ticking click of the readout.
I let myself breathe and start pumping gas.
Then I hear a voice behind me.
“Brittany?”
It ain’t a biker voice. It ain’t gravel and smoke and threat. It’s warm. Familiar in a way that makes my shoulders loosen before my brain can stop them.
I turn.
Elijah stands there in a clean gray tee and jeans that look like they’ve never seen a bar fight. His hair’s neatly trimmed. His face is sun-browned like he works outside. His posture is polite, but his eyes are two different colors like Becki’s and sharp, taking in more than he should.
Pearly Gates has that effect on people. They learn to watch everything.
“Elijah,” I say, surprise and something softer tangling together. “Hey.”
He smiles like he’s glad to see me, like I’m normal and safe and not a girl with a target painted on her back. “I thought that was your car.”
My cheeks heat and I don’t know why. It ain’t like he’s saying anything dirty. It’s just that he’s so familiar. My age. Safe. He feels like a life that makes sense, the kind of life I used to think I’d have if I just worked hard enough and stayed out of the wrong places.
We went to school together, technically. Not in the same circles, but the same small-town bubble where everybody knows what church you go to and what your mama did before she ran and whether you’re the kind of girl who gets in trouble or the kind of girl trouble finds.
Elijah always looked at me like I’m the second kind.
“How’ve you been?” he asks, stepping closer but not too close. He keeps his hands visible like he’s trying not to scare me.
I watch him do it and something in my chest tugs. I’ve been around so much male energy lately that feels built for taking. Elijah’s feels built for staying on the right side of a line.
“I’m fine,” I say, and the lie comes easier than it should.
His eyes flick down to my hand on the pump, the keys between my fingers, then back up to my face. His jaw tightens just a little, like he doesn’t like what he sees.
“You don’t look fine.”
The wind shifts, bringing the smell of rain and asphalt. The station lights flicker once like they’re tired too.
“It’s been a week,” I admit.
“A week since what?” he asks.
I hesitate. Because if I say it out loud it becomes real. Because if I say it out loud I admit I did something that half this town thinks makes me dirty.
