I let him hold me as tears soak his shirt and he kisses the top of my head, whispering apologies. For a fleeting moment, it’s not me and this warped version of Quinton in the car. It’s me and a different Quinton I wish I could meet, the one from before the accident. I’m not really sure what he’s like, but I’ve gotten enough glimpses of him that I can picture a loving, genuinely good guy. And he’s the one holding me right now, rather than the one who made me cry.
Eventually I suck the tears back and return to reality. I start to retreat, but he keeps his arms around me, pressing on my back, and I notice his arms are trembling.
“I’m so sorry,” he says and he’s shaking like he’s scared. “I should have never said that.”
“It’s fine.” I move back enough to look him in the eyes. “You’re probably just tired, right?” I offer him an excuse, hoping he’ll take it and we can let this go.
“Yeah…tired,” he says warily because we both know that’s not the case.
I lift my hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks, but he grabs my hand. Then he moves forward and I instantly tense as he brushes his lips across my cheeks where the tears stain my skin.
“Tired or not,” he says between kisses. “I should never make you cry. Ever. I’m a horrible person who you should just stay away from,” he whispers through another kiss. “God, I don’t deserve to be here with you. You should just take me back home.”
“No, you do deserve to be with me.” My eyes shut as his warm breath touches my cheeks and his chest brushes against mine with every breath he takes. Emotions surface…how much I care for him…how much I wish he could be in my future…my life…healed. I’m painfully reminded of why I came here. Why I needed to help him. And it’s painful because I know how hard it is, how hopeless it’s becoming, but how worth it it is because of the glimpses like these.
“What can I do to make it better?” he whispers against my cheek. “I’ll do anything that you tell me to.”
I know I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t help it. “Stop doing drugs.” I stiffen, waiting for him to shout at me, but all he does is lean back, keeping his hand on my hip.
“I can’t do that,” he says softly, almost sounding disappointed, but maybe that’s me just reaching for hope.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
I want to press him more, but he’s shutting down, the life dying in his eyes. I know that once it’s gone, he’ll ask me to take him home, so I let him go and search for a way to keep him here beside me.
“Hey, know what we should do?” I say as he sits back in his seat.
He drums his fingers on his knee as he stares at the gas station. “What should we do, Nova like the car?” he asks, giving me a sideways half-smile. It’s been a while since he’s used my nickname and memories of last summer flow through me so powerfully it makes me light-headed.
“We should play twenty questions again,” I tell him. “Like we did last summer.”
“That’s what you really want to do?” he questions with a crook of his brow.
I yawn as my fingers wrap around the door handle. “Just as soon as I go get a soda.”
He studies me, looking torn, but then gives in. “All right, go get your soda and we’ll play twenty questions for a little bit.”
I get out of the car, not feeling happy, but at the same time not feeling like I’m drowning in hopelessness. Although I do worry that by the time I make it back to the car, he’ll be gone. So I rush to buy a soda and when I step back outside, relief washes over me when I see him lying on the hood of my car, smoking a cigarette, staring up at the stars in the midnight sky. The street is fairly quiet and there are no other cars parked nearby. The only noise is coming from the gas station radio speakers and it’s set on the oldies station, playing soft tunes. It’s almost like we have the quiet he was talking about on the roof. It’d be a perfect moment if I didn’t know what’s going to happen when I take him back to the apartment. Still, I climb up on the hood with him and take a swallow of soda as the scent of cigarette smoke encircles me.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask him, looking up at the night sky, feeling calm inside as I stare at the constellations.
He puts the cigarette up to his lips and inhales. “Thinking about my first question,” he says, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
“Oh yeah?” I say, twisting the cap back on my soda. “Who said you get to go first?”
He slants his head to the side. “You’re not going to let me go first?” He’s almost playful.
I smile. “I’m kidding. You can go first.”
He thinks about it for a moment while sticking his arm to the side and ashing his cigarette onto the ground. “If you could be one place in the world, where would you be?”
“Honestly,” I say, and he nods. “I think I’d be all over the world, videotaping everything.”
“Everything?”
I nod. “Everything. There’s just so much to see, you know, and sometimes it feels like I’m just sitting around, missing everything.”
He turns to his side and props himself up on his elbow, cigarette smoke circling around us. “Then why don’t you just go?”
“For a lot of reasons,” I reply, rotating the soda bottle in my hand. “One being that I need to graduate first…it’s important for my future.”
“Yeah, I can see that…needing a degree if you have a future,” he says with a frown, and it stabs at my heart.
“You could have a future, you know,” I say, hoping I don’t set him off again.
“No, I can’t.” He lies back down on his back and fixes his eyes on the stars, growing quiet.
“Okay, my turn.” I pivot onto my hip, rest my head on my arm, and set the soda bottle against the windshield. “What were you like before you started doing drugs?” It’s a brave question, but I want tonight’s game to actually have a point. I want to get to know him more. Understand him, so I can maybe understand what will help him.
He winces like I’ve slapped him and lets out a sharp cough. “I’m not going to answer that question.”
“That’s not fair. I always answer yours, even the one about my dad’s death, which is hard to talk about.”
“When did I ask you about your dad?”
“Last summer,” I remind him. “When we were in the tent and we…and we kissed a lot.”
More memories swarm around us as I remember and I can tell he remembers, too, because he touches his lips and gets this really strange look on his face. Then he swallows hard and flicks his cigarette onto the ground. “I was normal,” he finally answers my question. “Just a normal guy who thought about college and who liked to draw and wanted to be an artist. Who hardly got into trouble, and who had only been in love with one girl…a normal boring guy.” He sounds so conflicted, like he misses that guy, but at the same time he doesn’t want to.
The song switches to one I know, even though I’m not into oldies. But it’s one my dad used to listen to, “Heaven” by Bryan Adams, and it makes me think of the good times in my life, when I used to dance around the living room with my dad, listening to music, and everything felt so easy. I wish I could capture some of that easiness now and spill it over Quinton and me.
“I like the sound of that boring guy,” I utter softly. “I hope one day I can meet him.”
“You won’t, so you should go find another one.” He sits up like he’s ready to go, but instead he stretches his arms above his head. “What do you see in me, Nova? What keeps you coming around? I mean, I’m not that nice to you, at least not always. I have a shitty life and do shitty stuff.”
“All of that’s because you’re hurting, though, something I get really, really well.” I sit up and bend forward to meet his eyes, which are wide and full of panic. “I see a lot of things in you, Quinton. I’m not going to lie. You sometimes remind me of Landon and that’s part of the reason why I think I’m so drawn to you,” I say, and when his expression falls, I quickly take his hands. “But that’s not the only reason…when I’m around you sometimes it seems like you and I are the only two people that exist and nothing else matters and for someone who over-thinks everything, that’s really hard to achieve.”
I can tell he sort of likes my answer because his pulse starts slamming against my fingers. “Is that all?” he asks and I shake my head, wondering how long it’s been since someone said nice things to him.
“No way. I’m just getting started.” I hold on to him tighter. “Last summer you made me feel things…things I thought I’d never feel again after Landon died. And it’s not because I was high. Trust me. I haven’t felt that way again, not until I came back here to see you.”
“I’m a junkie, Nova,” he mumbles. “I shouldn’t make you feel anything.”
“You’re not a junkie,” I argue, tightening my hold on his hands. “You’re just someone who’s really, really lost and hurting and won’t admit it and drugs take that all away for you.”
He’s starting to look scared, panicky, his eyes sweeping the area like he’s looking for a place to run, hide, and get high. So I clutch him tighter and move on.
“If you could do anything right now,” I say quickly. “What would you do?”
“Get high,” he replies, meeting my eyes, and his are so full of anguish it steals the breath out of me. “What about you? What would you do right now if you could?”
I think he thinks I’m going to say I would save him, and I want to, but I’m not going to say it because I need a break from the repetitiveness and so does he. We both know why I’m here and I’m not forgetting why I came. I’m just trying to work my way into his head the only way I can think of. By trying something that’s easy and uncomplicated. Because we need easy at the moment.
“I would dance,” I answer, then let go of his hand and slide off the hood of the car. I know I’m being goofy, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment, so I stick out my hand. “Will you dance with me, Quinton?”
He glances warily at the speakers on the trim of the gas station, at the vacant pumps, then over to the street. “That’s really what you want to do? Right here? Right now?”
I nod with my hand still out. “Yep, now will you grant me my request?”
He considers this and there’s hesitation in his eyes but he still gets down off the hood and takes my hand. The contact gives me a brief break from all the crappy stuff surrounding us. Easy. We’re going to do something that’s really, really easy. I know it won’t erase all the hard stuff. But sometimes taking a break from the complicated stuff is enough to get me through the next step and the next one. One step at a time. One breath at a time. One heartbeat at a time.
One life at a time.
I reach out to put my hand on his shoulder, but instead he pushes me back and spins me around. “You know you’re getting in over your head, right?” he says, jerking me to him and crashing me against his chest.
I’m breathless as I put my cheek up to his chest and feel his heart racing beneath it. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
“From my grandmother…she taught me right before I went to my first dance in middle school,” he says, breathing into my hair as he rests his chin on top of my head and we begin to sway to the music.
“Was it because she wanted to teach you?” I ask. “Or because you wanted to learn?”
“Sadly it was because I wanted to learn,” he says. “I thought knowing how to dance would make my crush want to dance with me.”
I press my cheek to his chest. “But she didn’t want to?”
“Nah, but I wasn’t the kind of guy girls wanted to dance with,” he says. “I was too shy at the time.”
I try not to smile, but it’s hard. “I was shy too at one time.”
“I can see that,” he says thoughtfully.
I pull away slightly and tip my chin up to look him in the eyes. “How? I’m not shy anymore.”
The corners of his lips quirk. “Yeah, but sometimes you get embarrassed over stuff you do and the shyness comes out,” he says, and when I frown he adds, “Don’t worry, it’s only happened a couple of times, back when we first started hanging out. And besides, I like it.”
I press my lips together and return my cheek to his chest and he puts his chin back on top of my head. “Well, I’m glad you do, because I don’t.”
“Well, I do.” He keeps dancing for a moment, leading me in a slow circle. Then I feel him swallow hard and he says, “I guess you learned another thing about the old me—that I used to know how to dance.”
I smile to myself because he didn’t used to know how to dance—he still does. And as we rock to the rhythm I stay silent, telling myself that if he can still dance then the old Quinton’s still burning somewhere inside him and now that I’ve seen a glimpse of it, I don’t want to ever let it go.
So I hold on to him tightly as we sway to the song. I shut my eyes and feel every aspect of the moment, the heat in the air, the warmth of his body, the way my body seems in tune with his. No regrets. This is one moment I will never regret. I don’t care that we’re in a shitty gas station parking lot and that we both smell like cigarette smoke. I want it. Want this. Want him. Right now. I know it’s not the right time at all, that there are so many things wrong, things hidden deep beneath the surface, but I just need to touch him a little bit more. So without opening my eyes, I kiss my way up his neck and across his scruffy jaw, and find his lips. I’m not sure what I expect him to do, but he opens his mouth and kisses me back deeply, with passion and heat. He manages to keep us moving and at the same time presses our bodies closer, until we’re almost one person. I can feel everything about him. His heat. His breath. The slight gasps he makes every time our lips barely part. And with my eyes shut I can pretend that I’m with the old Quinton, the one I’m trying to save.