“Get yourself something to eat,” I tell her. “You’re too skinny.”
She’s got the look that girls on nose candy get. The way-too-thin look. That’s one downfall of the stuff. It’s good for drifting away into oblivion, but it’s hell on your appetite. If you don’t make yourself eat, you’ll waste away and start looking like shit.
This girl doesn’t look like shit. Yet. She’s not ugly. But she’s not pretty either. She mostly looks hardened. Mousy brown hair, pale blue eyes. Bland, stick-thin body. I can take her or leave her.
And I’m leaving her.
She glares at me as she wipes her mouth.
“My car is in town. Aren’t you at least going to take me back to it?”
I look at her and note how there are three of her that blur into one, then back into three, before I shake the blurriness from my head and try to focus again.
Nope. Still three of her.
“Can’t,” I tell her, dropping my head heavily against the headrest. “I’m too fucked up to drive. It’s not that far, anyway. It’s not my fault that you wore five-inch stripper shoes. Just take them off. It’ll make it easier to walk.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Pax Tate,” she spits angrily. “You know that?”
She grabs her purse from the floor and slams my car door as hard as she can. My car, Danger, shakes from her efforts.
Yes, I named my car. A 1968 Dodge Charger in pristine condition deserves a name.
And no, I don’t care that this coked up little bitch thinks I’m an asshole. I am an asshole. I’m not going to deny it.
As if to prove that point, I can’t even think of her name right now even though it only took me one second to recall the name of my car. I might remember the girl’s in the morning or I might not. That doesn’t matter to me at this point. She’ll come back. She always does.
I’ve got what she wants.
I strip off my jacket and lay it on the passenger seat, zipping my pants back up as I watch her stomp away. Then I open my own door, dangling one black boot over the doorsill, letting the cool breeze rustle over my flushed, overheated body.
The landscape up and down the coast is jagged and rolling and wild. It is so vast that it makes me feel small. The night is inky black and there are barely any stars. It’s the kind of night where a guy can just disappear into the dark. My kind of night.
I rest my head against the seat and allow the car to spin around me. It feels as though the seat is the anchor that is holding me to the ground. Without it, I might drift off into space and no one will ever see me again.
It’s not a bad notion.
But the car is spinning too fast. Even in this state, I know it’s too fast. I’m not going to worry about it, though. I simply pull out my vial and take something to slow things down. My vial is like a magician’s hat. It’s got a little bit of everything in it. Everything I need; fast or slow, white or blue, capsule, pill or rock. I’ve got it.
I wash the pill down with a gulp of whiskey. I don’t even feel the burn as it slides down my throat. I consider it for a minute, the speed that things are turning and blurring around me. I decide I should take another pill, maybe even two. I put them in my mouth and take another slog of Jack before I toss the bottle onto the passenger side floor. I realize that I don’t know if I put the cap back on or not.
Then I realize that I don’t care.
The drug-induced fog blurs my vision and all of the blacks and grays swirl together and I close my eyes against it. I still feel like I’m moving, like the car is spinning round and round.
The night swallows me and I am propelled into the darkness, far above the clouds and into the night sky, sailing through the stars, past the moon. Reaching out, I touch it with a finger.
I laugh.
Or I think I laugh.
It’s hard to say at this point. I don’t know what’s real or not real. And that’s just the way I like it.
Chapter Two
Mila
I love the night.
I love everything about it.
I love how the blackness hides things that I might not want to see, yet at the same time exposes things that I wouldn’t see in the light of day. I love the stars and the moon and the velvety wetness against my skin. I love how Lake Michigan turns black in the dark and shimmers like shattered onyx glass in the moonlight.
It always feels a little bit dangerous. Maybe that’s why I like it, too.
I grip my camera as I step over the soft, damp sand of the beach. The breeze is always cool here, but it’s just because the air is cold as it blows in from the lake. The water is always frigid, summer or winter, like God dumped a big glass of ice water into it. I wrap my sweater more tightly around me before I look through the lens again.