Instead, I went along with my lie. “Not everyone from Michigan has the Michigan accent, you know.”

“You’re right, that was a blatant generalisation.” His eyes meandered from mine to Emily who was pretending to be distracted by her phone. His gaze lingered on her longer than I’d have liked. All hopes of that kiss suddenly halted during the few seconds of watching his curiosity peak.

Damn, he’s interested in her.

A wave of anger shot through me. It was usually the way. Some men liked blondes. Some men liked brunettes. And while that was disappointing, I wouldn’t let it derail me. I was up for a challenge.

Plus, I didn’t want to kiss anyone else on this pitiful train.

“Are you a tourist?” he asked, all his attention drawn back to me.

“Yeah.”

“How long are you in the wonderful land of Oz for?”

“A few more days.”

“Hmm.” He looked down at my clothes and then my purse and smirked, like he suddenly realized something. I wondered what.

“How about you?” I asked. “You’ve got your own accent brimming out of you. Not the Australian one, either.”

“You mean, am I a Pommie?”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Some people found that term for British settlers in Australia offensive.

He chuckled at my reaction. “I’m not a tourist, no. Among other places, I live here. Have lived here for many, many years.”

“How come?” I was surprised at how genuinely curious I was.

“Family relocation,” he answered with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “They decided this isolated desert city was the perfect oasis for a…brand new life.” You’d have been deaf not to notice the bitterness dripping out of his tone.

“Do you like it here?”

“I do. It took a while at first, but that happens when you’ve settled into a new place. You compare your old life with the new until the old becomes a distant memory.”

I nodded in complete understanding. Who said shit like that?

“How about you?” he asked absorbedly. No longer caring about Emily, he roamed my face with those grey eyes as if he was uncovering some kind of mystery. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“I love it here,” I answered honestly. “It’s the perfect place.”

“What makes it perfect?”

Forgetting. “Everything. The laid back culture, for one.”

He watched me for a moment with a wistful smile. I don’t know how I knew, but I was sure he was aware of my lie. His stare only intensified as he looked into my eyes. For the first time in a very long time I squirmed under such blatant scrutiny. My confidence, which was usually soaring high in company of the stars, was weaning to a shyness I wasn’t used to – one that sat low and hidden in the shadows.

Never had someone stared at me with such fascination. After all, I was an object, not a person. I was the short fleeting moment of ecstasy before I was forgotten. Yet this man seemed to look at me not as an object, but as a person worthy of getting to know and understand. And for the first time since I could remember, I cared about what he saw in me.

Could he see my secrets? Could he see the liar that I was? Could he see my sins looking for holes to break out of me? Or was I so fucked up, I was yearning from within for attention, and this was all a desperate mind trying to conjure up something that didn’t exist? Most likely.

“How old are you?” he asked in a low, demanding tone.

I licked my lips as I stared down at his. “Twenty.” Just barely.

“Very young,” he remarked. For a moment, his eyes dimmed and he looked away, shaking a thought that stiffened his body for a second. Then he turned back to me and broke the serious spell he was responsible for creating. “So what made you want to travel to Oz?”

I didn’t care that the strange moment was over. I just liked hearing his voice directed at me. So desperate for attention, aren’t you, Claire? Pathetic.

“Crocodiles, beaches, palm trees and kangaroos,” I answered with a smile.

He laughed lightly, his humour returning. “How touristy!”

“But nobody ever told me about the spiders!”

He looked at my mouth and then skimmed over inch of my face – it was like being fucked by those eyes. “Yes. Nobody mentioned those to me, either. Big as my palm.” He stretched his long hand out, and I absentmindedly noticed scars around his knuckles.

“And the snakes!” I added with more excitement than I should have.

He nodded. “No, we mustn’t forget those. King browns and–”

“Anacondas!”

Pause. “No, little lady, I’m afraid Anacondas aren’t native here.”

Little lady.

Little lady.

I’d never been called little lady before.

I blushed and looked away. “Of course they’re not. I was just testing you!”

Amused, he said, “Of course you were.”

I ran my hand through my hair. Then I ran it again and again. What the hell was wrong with me? I never raked my hand through my hair, but I couldn’t help it. I was sweltering under his gaze. I hadn’t felt like this since I was ten and had the biggest crush on my creepy fifth grade teacher, Mr Crates. That freak collected snails by the bucket loads. Creepy Crates has nothing on this man!

“So tell me,” he said, breaking the awkward moment of silence, “what will you be doing at the Showgrounds today?”

“I don’t know exactly. What would you recommend?” Liar. I knew exactly what I was going to do: eat a shit load of cinnamon donuts, go on a shit load of rides, and chat every hot man up until my pocket was exploding with more numbers than Emily. Competing with each other was a pastime that dulled the boredom. It was also a way to feel more important than we were.

“Definitely the rides,” he answered. “One in particular called ‘Hurricane.’ Ninety miles an hour, the bastard flings you around like you’re made of air.”

“Really? I like being flung around.” Claire, you slut. I eyed him as I said the words with a small, flirty smile on my face. Fuck you, shyness. I was not going to succumb to your horrifying embrace. I was going to be me, Claire Landon, the confident little slut I’ve always been. I wanted this man. I would have gladly fucked him right there on the creaky old seat in front of the middle-aged, decrepitly old, and obnoxiously young.

He was that hot.

“Is that right?” His voice turned pensively quiet as he regarded me with a thoughtfulness that was far, far from lustful.

I instantly felt stupid.

Here was a guy who was conversing cheerfully with me. There had never been an underlying meaning in any of his questions, no hinting that he wanted my number or even my goddamn name! If anything, he appeared suddenly reserved.

He looked away from me and at the random faces around us. Then he turned to me again and smiled the most disinterested smile I’d ever seen in my life. If the word rejection had a face, it belonged to this man.

Suddenly leaning into me, he whispered, “You don’t need to do that.”

I blinked at him in surprise. “Do what?”

“You know what.” His grey eyes, barely a foot away from mine, stared into my own, and it was as if he saw everything.

Who was this man?

“You’re incredibly beautiful,” he then added, quietly. Like this was some sort of secret between us. “The kind of beautiful that would pave an easy way for you in life.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Nobody had ever spoken to me like this before.

“And you know that, don’t you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with knowing you’re attractive,” I replied softly.

His lips twitched. “While confidence is sexy, arrogance isn’t.”

My jaw dropped. Excuse me? “I’m not arrogant.”

He smiled at me now, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I see you.”

My heart sped up in my chest. He saw me? What the hell did he mean by that?

“What do you see?” I challenged, half-expecting someone to jump out and tell me I’d been pranked. Because this guy was working my emotions like it was as easy as flipping a switch, and he looked at me as though he could see into every corner of my being.

“You’re broken, and you depend on those looks to give you something you’ve been without. It doesn’t work that way, little lady. And instead of purposely dropping those Skittles into my lap –”

“M&Ms, actually.”

“Next time a simple ‘hello’ would suffice.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I replied, “That’s not true.”

“Which part?”

Waiting for me to respond, he cocked his head to the side and settled his eyes on my lips. A part of me wondered if he’d cut the short distance and just kiss me, because lord knows he looked like he wanted to ravage every inch of me.

And dare or no dare, I needed that bloody kiss like a pauper needed money.

“Who are you?” I breathed out in wonder. I’d never dare ask a question like that before, but, damn, I was in a trance and wasn’t thinking straight.

He licked his lip slowly, and something dark passed through his eyes. “Someone that’s no good for you, beauty.”

I swallowed an even bigger lump. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it would do you no good to know.”

“Why?”

“Your world is too safe.”

I inched a little closer to his face. “What’s so unsafe about yours?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Maybe I do.”

He just stared back at me. I felt a tremor run down my spine. A tight feeling emerged in my chest, and my mind screamed to back away – that I was being drawn into a web I didn’t want to get stuck to.

He was dangerous. I didn’t know how I knew that, I just did. And my naivety made it all the more thrilling. I yearned for excitement in my life. Maybe I just landed on it.

Disrupting our bizarre moment, the train came screeching to another halt. Realization dawned in his eyes as he moved away from me and looked over at our stop.

Then he stood up!

It was like being torn from the bubble we’d allowed ourselves in. Suddenly I remembered we were in a crowded space, and now he was going.

Panic flooded me. NO! I didn’t want him to leave me.

“This is my stop,” he said, looking down at me as he buttoned up the top of his jacket. “It was very nice chatting with you, little lady.”

So that was it? No “what’s your number, little lady?” Seriously?

SERIOUSLY?

I didn’t respond to him, even though he waited briefly for one. When it was apparent my stunned ass had nothing to say, he shot me a nod and ambled off to the doors. I watched in despair as he stood within steps from leaving.

“You didn’t kiss him!” hissed Emily into my ear.

My eyes widened. Skank was right.

Without thinking, I stood up and took off after him, carelessly shoving aside the people in my way. He couldn’t walk out of my life. I wouldn’t let him. He stepped off the train just as I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. Startled, he looked back. His eyes widened when they met mine.

“I forgot something,” I breathlessly said, standing on the threshold of the train.

“What was that –” I cut him off with a kiss. My hand gripped his collar as I pressed my lips harshly against his. It was a quick – yet long somehow – meeting of the lips that made my heart race and my body tingle. This… this felt different somehow.

To my surprise, he kissed back, moving his soft lips over mine with a lot more delicacy than me. He tasted of mint and all male, and I would have done anything to slip my tongue into his mouth. Dammit, why didn’t I?

I pulled away and smiled.

Wow.

Un-fucking-believable.

“What’s your name?” he suddenly asked. The emotion on his face conveyed an urgency to know. It made my heart constrict and then explode.

“Claire,” I answered just as I stepped back and let the doors close between us.

He stood still, frozen to the concrete, and watched me in startled fascination. And then the train started again.

For the first time in my entire life I felt loss after an encounter with a stranger. My happiness dissipated the second he disappeared from view. Who was he?

I would soon be too distracted by pain to care.

Two

All my ugly

…One year later…

“Were you just fucking my guy, you stupid cunt? I’m gonna fuck you up, you trashy little slut.”

Trying to get away, I hurried down the alleyway. But hands grabbed my hair and pulled me back. I fell to the ground, air knocked out of me.

“You just fucked him, didn’t you? I’ll fuck you up!”

SMASH!

*****

I opened my eyes, barely able to breathe from the fear. I sat up, with a hand over my chest as I fumbled out of the sheets and jumped out of bed. My heart was racing, my skin was slick with sweat, and my mouth wide open. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. An acidic taste swept my throat, and I knew what was coming.

I raced out of my room and down the hallway, colliding into the door of the bathroom. Shaking, I opened it just in time as puke erupted from out of my mouth. Half of it spilled over the tile floor before I reached the toilet. My body shook violently as I unloaded last night’s small piece of lasagne. Pressure built in my throat and head. All I wanted to do was breathe.

After I expelled everything and then some, I collapsed, half drenched in the vomit on the floor. Not wanting to feel my face, I threw my shirt off and wiped it. I stunk.