I kneel behind her, inching close to her, then hesitantly place my hand on her shoulder. “Shut your eyes.”

She leans away, like I’m scaring her. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to prove what’s so awesome about my idea.” I wait for her to do what I ask and she stubbornly drags it on for longer than necessary, then finally surrenders and turns around.

“Fine.” Her voice softens a little. “Show me what’s so great about a backseat.”

“There’s a lot of great things about a backseat,” I joke in a low voice, and then dip my lips toward her ear and whisper, “Now shut your eyes.”

I expect her to argue, but she very willingly obeys, shutting her eyes the second I utter the words. I shut mine, too, but only because being so close to her, breathing in her scent, feeling the warmth emitting from her body is driving my body into a frenzy.

“Now picture nothing but mountains,” I say softly, picturing it myself. “No city. No noise. No crazy-ass parents who act like children and treat their children like shit. No nothing. Just the quiet.”

“It seems like an awfully lonely place, if you ask me,” she tells me. “Just me and the dirt and the quiet. Although I wouldn’t mind the being without the parents part.”

“You wouldn’t be completely alone.” I sweep her head to the side and rest my chin on her shoulder. “You’d be with me.”

She pauses for an eternity and her breathing is ragged. Or maybe it’s mine. “What would we do at this mountain place together?” she says.

“Anything we wanted.”

“Hike?” There’s disdain in her voice.

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe we’d just sit and enjoy each other’s company in the quiet.”

She shifts her weight and situates her hands underneath her legs, leaning back against my chest. “That kind of sounds nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

As strange as it is, and as much of a pain in the ass as Lila can be, I can actually picture us sitting together up on the mountains in the noiselessness, living in my truck, driving anywhere and everywhere. Together. And the comfort in the idea is kind of frightening because it means I’m thinking about our future. Together. Shit.

I think about moving away from her, putting a little space between us because obviously I’m heading down a road I shouldn’t be headed down. The dream of living on the road has always been one I’d planned to live out alone and now suddenly I’m telling Lila she should come with me. God knows what would happen between us if we lived in a truck with one another. We’d either grow really close or end up hating each other. Or maybe both. But I can’t bring myself to move and break the peaceful moment. So instead I sit down and wrap my legs and arms around her and we just sit there in the sun, enjoying each other in the quiet.

Chapter Four

Lila

It’s amazing how one moment in life can be beautiful, and then you return home—to reality—and remember that beauty isn’t everything and that the ugly painful part will always exist in the form of unpaid bills, bad choices, and tiny white pills.

At what point do you finally admit that your life is falling apart, not to just yourself but to the outside world? When should I finally tell someone what’s really going on? That I’m penniless pretty much, soon to be homeless, carless, jobless, everythingless. That my mother was right. I was nothing without their help.

I thought about telling Ella once, a couple of months before she left for California, about some of my money and even my pill issues, but then I remembered what I’d been taught and decided it was best to keep my mouth shut. Besides, now she’s got her own life with Micha. And I’m here, wondering what I should do with my life because I want to do something—anything. I wonder how long I can keep going like this, blacking out, having unmemorable sex, like I did the other night with some random guy I met at a club. It was after Ethan suggested our road trip together, even though I’m still not certain if he was being serious. Afterward he had to drop me off at my apartment because he had stuff to do and the emptiness and silence wore me down and I went looking for someone to fix it, after I’d taken a few pills. I’ve even considered telling Ethan about my problems a few times because I know he’s done drugs in the past and might understand what I’m going through, maybe just a little. Although, it’s not really the same. I mean he did weed and stuff and I just do pills.

“Earth to Lila.” Ethan waves his hand in front of my face. I blink and then direct my focus to him. He shakes his head in disbelief as he shoves up the sleeves of his black-and-red plaid shirt that has a torn front pocket. “You totally just spaced out for, like, five minutes straight,” he says, resting his heavily inked arms on the table.

“Well, maybe it’s because you’re so boring,” I tease with a grin, stirring my Long Island iced tea with my straw. We’re in a quiet bar with dim lighting and small lanterns on each table. Music plays from a jukebox in the corner near the restrooms and we have a platter of mozzarella sticks, jalapeno poppers, and hot wings in front of us. It’s not usually my kind of scene—I like more glitz and glamour with a more sparkling atmosphere, classy music, fancier food, and top-shelf drinks. But I’m enjoying it for some bizarre reason, maybe because I feel heavily subdued. Or maybe it’s because of Ethan. “You’ve barely said two words to me.”

“Actually, I think it was five,” he says indifferently, but the corners of his lips quirk. He picks up his glass of ice water and takes a sip.

“Since when do you drink water?” I remark and wrap my lips around the straw, taking a swallow of my drink.

“I think I need a break from drinking.” He ogles some blonde wearing a tacky leather skirt and a bright pink tube top at the bar and I have to resist the urge to slap him against the back of the head. “It’s getting exhausting.”

“I hear you,” I say and he crooks an eyebrow, staring at the drink in front of me. “No, not about drinking. About other stuff.”

“Like what?” He picks up a mozzarella stick and dips it into the cup of marina sauce.

“Like stuff,” I respond vaguely, and then reach for a jalapeno popper. It took me a while to actually try one, because the idea of eating something that had the word “popper” in it seemed repulsive. But they are really good. Way better than the appetizers at the restaurants I grew up eating at.

“Care to share the stuff?” He has a string of cheese on his chin from the mozzarella stick.

Biting my lip to restrain from smiling, I extend my arm across the table and pick it off, letting my fingertips graze the stubble on his chin, pretending it’s by accident, when really I just like touching him.

His brown eyes widen and his lips part as I lean back. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“You had cheese on your chin,” I explain, flicking it to the ground. He quickly wipes his chin with his hand and I laugh. “I just got it off. Duh.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was just making sure you got all of it.”

I dip a stick into a cup of ranch. “I got it all, so relax. I would never let you walk around with cheese hanging off your face,” I tease. “Although, it would be kind of fun to watch you go hit on the slut over at the bar with cheese on your face.”

The corners of his lips quirk as he watches me chew and he leans back in his chair. “I’m sure I could still get her to let me fuck her.”

I throw a mozzarella stick at him, but he ducks so it misses his head. “You are such an ass.”

“Why? Because I say the truth.”

“In the foulest ways.”

“What? Saying fuck is foul?” he asks. “Would you rather me say let me screw her? Bang her? Let her ride me? Give her the hottest, sweatiest, lip bitingest, best orgasm she’ll probably have?” His voice is getting louder and people are watching us, which seems only to amuse him while it embarrasses me.

“Ethan, please keep it down,” I hiss, glancing at the tables around us, embarrassed, but a giggle escapes my lips. “People are watching us.”

“Do the dirty nasty with me?” he continues, unbothered, his brown eyes darkening as he leans back in his chair, watching me with an arrogant grin on his face. “Fuck her brains out? Or should I just make the noises for you so you really get the picture?” He tips his head back, his black hair falling back out of his eyes, and he starts making little moans. Even though it’s embarrassing, it’s also turning me on. Especially how his lips hypnotically move and the way the light reflects in his eyes and makes them look lustrous.

Stop thinking about him like that. He made his rules for a reason. Shaking my head and the near-orgasmic feeling out of my body, I lean over the table and cover his moaning lips with my hand. “Okay, I get the picture. Will you stop now?”

His grin broadens against my hand and I withdraw, sitting back down in the chair. “I win,” he says and winks at me.

I shake my head, but smile brightly. “For the record, fucking her and fucking her brains out are pretty much one and the same.”

He covers his mouth with his hand, containing his laughter, because he always seems to think it’s funny when I say the F word. In fact, he blames it on his bad influence on me. “Oh, I completely disagree. A lot more effort goes into fucking someone’s brains out.”

I want to argue with him, but I stop myself, because even though I’ve had a lot of sex, I’ve had a lot of meaningless sex, which doesn’t make me an expert. I’ve often wondered what sex would feel like if I wasn’t high on alcohol and/or pills. Would it feel different? Would I feel different, less worthless, or would I feel more? Would it finally feel good for once? Hot, sweaty, and lip biting? I wonder what it would feel like with Ethan…

I dive into the wings, eating one after another, trying to contain my sex-driven thoughts. Ethan devours the jalapeno poppers and continues to check out the slut at the bar, who’s now noticed him, probably because of his moaning and groaning. She looks interested and he’ll probably go home with her, which is fine. I’ve seen him do it a ton of times.

Ethan finally tears his attention off her and it looks like he wants to say something but is wary about it. I figure he’s probably about to ask if he can go do his thing with her and I prepare myself for the stomach punch I always feel when he does this sort of thing.

He blows out a breath and wisps of his hair flutter to the side of his face. “Did you ever get your rent thing taken care of?” he asks, completely blindsiding me.

“Um… what… oh, yeah I did,” I lie, licking some barbecue sauce off my lip.

He cocks an eyebrow at me with skepticism on his face. “Lila.”

“Don’t Lila me.” I sound whiney and I clear my throat, reaching for a napkin. “Okay, so I haven’t yet, but I’m working on it. I just need to get a job, but they’re really hard to find.”

He hitches a finger over his shoulder, pointing at the bar, where a guy is wiping down glasses with a towel. “They’re hiring here.”

I eye the bar as I wipe the barbecue sauce off my fingers. “Yeah, for a waitress.”

“So?”

“So, I can’t be a waitress.”

“Why? You could end up being good at it.” He inclines forward, resting his arms on the table, and amusement dances in his eyes. “And think of all the tips you’d get if you wore a short, low-cut dress that showed off all your goods.”

I roll my eyes. “You know I don’t dress like that.”

“Well, you could always wear that towel of yours,” he says in a husky voice. “You looked good in that.”

It feels like I’m falling, air gets trapped in my lungs and my heart flutters at the hooded look he’s giving me. I’m about to ask him if he liked the towel, because I would seriously put it on for him right here, right now, when he sputters a laugh.

“Relax, I’m just messing with you.” He scoops up a wing and takes a large bite. “I’d rather you not dress like that out in public.”

I swallow hard, feeling like an idiot. Of course he’s just teasing. He always is. And that’s how it’s supposed to be between us. Just friends. But then what the hell was that hyperventilating, falling-off-the-cliff feeling then? “I knew you were,” I lie, sounding pathetically disappointed and feeling strangely conflicted inside.

His expression falls a little and he forces the bite of chicken down his throat. “Are you okay?”

“I’m perfectly okay.” I tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear as I lean forward in the chair and dunk a wing into the ranch, biting my tongue hard as I struggle to keep the tears back. Stop it. You don’t ever get upset over a guy like this. Get it together. “I’m just thinking that you’re right and I do need a job, but not here.” My heart is aching inside my chest and I don’t know why, but I feel furious. “And just because I like sex doesn’t mean I’m going to use my body for money.”