“I am?”

He nods slowly. “So… you’re drunk at nine a.m.… not once, but twice now, and you seem to be tired during the day, which means you don’t sleep at night, and whatever has you drinking is something you’re more than likely ashamed of…” He points down my body, past the oversized shirt I’m wearing, pausing for a moment on my bare legs, and then he looks away. “So you work nights, sleep days, and you’re ridiculously drunk in the morning, which I guess is your night… and I don’t think you’re a hooker, so—”

“What the fuck?” I spit.

“And you have a mouth on you, which yeah… I gotta admit… kind of hot.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I’m not a hooker and you can get out now!”

He raises his hands in surrender, then winces and rubs his right shoulder. “Hooker wasn’t my first guess, anyway.”

“I’m scared to ask.”

Cringing slightly, he says, “Stripper?”

“Seriously. Get out.” I point to the door, but he just chuckles, releasing another set of butterflies inside me. Yeah. I definitely hate the way he makes me feel.

He crosses his legs at his ankles and makes himself comfortable on my bed. “I think I’ll stay.”

I pick up a cushion off the floor and throw it at him. He blocks it quickly but then grunts, his hand on his shoulder again.

“Get out!”

“Riley,” he says, all amusement gone. “I was kidding.”

“No you weren’t!”

“You’re right. I wasn’t. But it’s good to know you’re neither of those classy professions.”

I leave him in my room and grab the wine from the fridge, ignoring the judgment in his eyes when I walk in, unscrewing the cap and taking the first sip. He lies down on top of the covers while I half close the blinds, hoping he takes it as a message to shut the hell up and go to sleep. I like him better when he’s not talking. I like to just look at him. And Hello, Guilt.

“So yesterday…” he says.

I sit down on the cushions and grab the pen and paper.

“I was kind of an asshole and I apologize…”

He’s ending his sentences with an open invitation for me to finish them for him but I can’t. And I won’t. He wants to talk, I’ll listen. Apart from that, he’s on his own. In fact, I don’t even want to listen.

After a sigh, he adds, “But I kind of bared my soul to you a little bit. You don’t think you owe me anything in return?”

And now he’s just annoying me. “I’m giving you my bed. I don’t think I owe you shit, Banks.” I throw the paper and pen down and focus on the bottle in my hand. And by focus, I mean focus on emptying it.

“You know my last name?”

I roll my eyes. “We went to the same high school.”

“I know that, Riley, don’t patronize me. It’s fucking annoying.”

I ignore his anger… or welcome it… I’m not sure. “Of course I know your name,” I tell him, my voice softer. “You’re the Dylan Banks. Mr. Popular. Half of the ‘It’ couple.”

“The ‘It’ couple?”

“Yeah… you and Heidi, right? I assume you aren’t together anymore…”

“What makes you say that?” he asks, his voice so low it’s almost a whisper.

“Because if I were your girlfriend, I would’ve been waiting for you at home, counting down the seconds until you showed up. I wouldn’t be letting you sleep in the back of your truck and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting you sleep in another girl’s bed.”

He’s silent for a long time. So am I. But I know he’s awake because I can see and hear his breathing get faster, heavier… and then stop. “Good night, Hudson.”

“You know my name?”

“Of course I know your name, Riley. You’re the girl next door…”

Five

Dylan

I could come up with a hundred different excuses as to why I’m lying in a random girl’s bed while she sits on the floor watching me, not bothering to hide that she knows I’m watching her, too.

I could say I was tired because I didn’t get to sleep last night, or that I wanted to get out of the garage, or the house—where Eric was once again entertaining the same girl. I could say that I was bored, or lonely even, and that I just wanted to be around someone. Even if it meant being in the same darkened room not speaking or even acknowledging each other. But like I said, they’d just be excuses because the truth? The truth is that I’d waited up all night, almost on the edge of impatience, anxious for the loud music to sound so I had a reason to knock on the door. See, I had it all planned. Music would play, I’d get mad, then come marching over here hoping for the same outcome as yesterday. I’d yell, she’d offer me her bed, and the rest didn’t really matter.

When the music started, I smiled… then I panicked. Because I had no idea why I was smiling.

I listened as the song ended, then started again, all while I stood in the garage fucking around with the engine and trying to convince myself that whatever curiosity I had about her… that’s all it was: curiosity. And by the third replay that curiosity was enough to have me dropping my tools and walking over to her house. I was nervous, to be honest, because unlike yesterday, I wasn’t running on exhaustion or annoyance. Though, I wouldn’t tell her that.

She opened the door, looking worse than she did the day before, but that’s not what caught me by surprise. It was the fact that she wasn’t surprised.

I span some bullshit about not being able to sleep but before I could finish, she’d already offered me her bed. I told her I thought she was a hooker, and then a stripper… which got the reaction any sane person would expect. What can I say? It’d been a long time since I’d had a one-on-one conversation with an attractive girl. Not that I was trying to impress her, but I wasn’t trying to unimpress her either. That’s not even a word. Heidi—she would’ve called me out on that in the most patronizing way. Riley, though—she’d probably laugh at me, call me an idiot, but do it in a way that had me laughing with her. Maybe. Or maybe she’d throw something at me. Either way, I’d take it.

And now I was comparing them like it somehow mattered. It didn’t. But it mattered that Riley liked me, at least enough to tolerate me, because as strange as it seems, I enjoy the semi-darkness and the silence we share. But most of all, I enjoy the unspoken understanding between us, the one that says “Hey, we’re fucked up. One gets drunk. One gets mad. And we don’t even care why or how we got to be like that but it doesn’t matter. We don’t want to know. Let’s just be fucked up together but apart.”

So.

Maybe I’ve thought about her way too much.

Maybe I haven’t stopped thinking about her since I wrote her that stupid note.

And, maybe, going by the way she keeps looking at me from whatever she’s scribbling in her notebook, she’s thought about me, too.

* * *

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here watching her. An hour, maybe two.