Still, after a minute or an hour or a century, he found himself in front of her house, more by luck than any real sense of reckoning. The journey around back to her bedroom felt different this time, like mounting the gallows instead of ascending to paradise.
Sure enough, her window offered no light, no movement. He pressed his face to the glass. The bed was neatly made. And empty.
He didn’t remember leaving. But somehow, he was on the road again, or maybe in the road, and what time was it, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, and where was he going, no, who the fuck cared about that, either.
Damn, he needed another drink.
A car pulled up beside him. Nick kept plodding forward, the only direction available to him.
A window whirred. “Hey. New kid.”
He glanced down, faintly surprised that someone had acknowledged him. And that the someone looked vaguely familiar. Why had this girl parked here? No, wait, he was moving. Did that mean she was driving?
“You know you’re walking on the yellow line, right?”
“Who’re you?” he said thickly, then startled. That wasn’t his voice.
The girl laughed. “Wow, you are absolutely shitfaced. I’m Tansy. You don’t remember?”
He sped up. No, he didn’t remember, and he didn’t care.
“I saw you kissing Aubrey MacLean outside the basketball game, over the winter.”
Aubrey.The name exploded in his gut like dynamite. “She left me,” he mumbled.
The girl made a sound he didn’t know how to interpret. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
She said nothing for a moment. Her car crept along, keeping pace. Lights zoomed out of the darkness, brightening in his face.
A hand closed around his arm and yanked. Nick fell sideways, his body thunking across the sash of Tansy’s window. Theoncoming car swerved and rushed off into the night, horn blaring.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” she said.
He hissed and pawed his way free of her grip. Then realized she had a point. The double-yellow line glittered beneath his shoes.
“Get in,” Tansy said.
He did, even though doing so assaulted him with memories of what had happened thelasttime a girl had convinced him to get in her car. Another dagger joined the array of weaponry already bristling from his guts.
Tansy watched as he puddled bonelessly into the passenger seat. “Put your seat belt on.”
“Why? Where’re we going?”
“Where do you want to go?”
His head flopped toward her. He left it there. She was... pretty, maybe. Sort of. Blond hair, blue eyes, unassuming features that all agreed, like repeated examples of the wordpleasant.
“You’re nice,” he said.
She laughed, with an edge. “Not really.”
“Oh.”
“You want me to take you home?”
“No.” He rushed the word out. Was the car moving? Something was. The world, maybe. His soul, sinking to the depths of the ocean.
