“It’s better that way.” I adjust the handle of the bag over my shoulder and we walk toward a single-wide trailer. The siding is falling off, one of the windows is covered with a piece of plywood, and the lawn is nonexistent; instead there’s a layer of gravel, then a fence, followed by more gravel. It’s a total crack house, but that’s okay. This is the kind of place where I belong, in a place no one wants to admit exists, just like they don’t want to admit I exist.

“You know there’s no bus here, right?” He steps onto the stairway, and it wobbles underneath his feet. “It’s a freaking small-ass town.”

“That’s okay.” I follow him with my thumb hitched under the handle of my bag. “I’ll just walk everywhere.”

He laughs, shifting the box to one arm so he can open the screen door. “Okay, if you say so.” He steps inside the house, and I catch the screen door with my foot, grab the handle, and hold the door open as I maneuver my way inside.

The first thing I notice is the smell; smoky but with a seasoned kick to it that burns the back of my throat. It’s familiar, and suddenly I feel right at home. My eyes sweep the room and I spot the joint burning in the ashtray on a cracked coffee table.

Tristan drops the box on the floor, steps over it and strides up to the ashtray. “You good with this?” He picks up the joint and pinches it in between his fingers. “I can’t remember if you’re cool or not.”

It’s not really a question. It’s more of a warning that I have to be cool with it if I’m going to live here. I let the handle of the bag slide down my arm and it falls to the floor. “I used to not be.” I used to care about things—I used to think that doing the right thing would make me a good person. “But now I’m good.”

His eyebrows knit at my vague answer and I reach for the joint. As soon as it’s in my hand and the poisonous yet intoxicating smoke starts to snake up to my face, I instantly feel at ease again. The calm only amplifies as I put it to my lips and take a deep drag. I trap it in my chest, allowing the smoke to burn at the back of my throat, saturate my lungs, and singe my heart away. It’s what I want—what I need—because I don’t deserve anything more. I part my lips and release the smoke into the already tainted air, feeling lighter than I have since I got on that god damn plane.

“Holy fucking shit, look what the dog drug in.” Dylan, Tristan’s roommate, walks out from behind a curtain at the back of the room, laughing, and a blonde girl trails at his heels. I’ve only met him a couple of times during the few visits my dad and I made to Maple Grove to visit Tristan’s parents. He looks different—rougher—a shaved head, multiple tattoos on his arms, and he used to be a lot stockier, but I’m guessing the weight loss is from the drugs.

“Hi, Quinton.” The blonde waves her hand, then winds around Dylan and moves toward me. She keeps her arms tight to her side, pressing them against her chest, so her tits nearly pop out of her top. She seems to know me, yet I have no fucking clue who she is. “It’s been a long time.”

I’m racking my brain for some sort of memory that has her in it, but the weed has totally put a haze in my head, putting me right where I want to be—numb and obliviously stupid.

When she reaches me, she glides her palm up my chest and leans in, pressing her tits against me. “The last time I saw you, you were a scrawny twelve year-old with braces and glasses, but good God you’ve changed.” She traces a path from my chest to my stomach. “You’re totally smoking hot now.”

“Oh, it’s Nikki, right?” I’m remembering something about her… a time when we were kids and the whole neighborhood decided to play baseball. But it’s nothing more than a distant memory I’d rather forget. It reminds me too much of what was and what will never be again. “You’ve…” I scroll up her body, which I can pretty much see all of. “Changed.”

She takes it as a compliment, even though I didn’t mean it that way. “Thanks.” She smiles and shimmies her hips. “I always try to look my best.”

I still have the joint in my hand and I take another hit, trapping it in until my lungs feel like they’re going to explode, then I free the smoke from my mouth and ash the joint on the already singed brown carpet. I hand it to Tristan, allowing the numbness to leach into my body. “Where should I put my stuff?” I ask him.

Dylan hitches a finger over at the hallway. “There’s a room at the back of the hall. It’s a little small, but it’s got a bed and shit.”

I collect my bag and move around Nikki, heading for the hall. “I’ll take whatever’s easiest on everyone.”

Dylan nods his head at the hallway and then says to Nikki, “Nikki, why don’t you show Quinton where the room is?”

“Absolutely.” She flashes an exaggerated smile at me and snatches the joint from Tristan’s hand. She wraps her lips around the end, inhales, and then lets it out. She hands it back to him and then saunters in front of me so I can watch her ass as she struts down the hallway.

“Are you two dating?” I ask glancing back and forth between Nikki and Dylan.

Nikki rolls her eyes. “Um, no.”

Dylan departs for the small, cluttered kitchen in the corner of the house. “I don’t really date,” he points out with a nonchalant shrug as he stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Besides, I have an old girlfriend of mine coming over tonight.”

“Delilah?” Tristan asks as he flops down on the couch, and Dylan nods. “Is Nova back, too? Is she coming over with her?”

“Nova?” I question. “Is that like her car?”

Tristan shakes his head and laughs. “No, it’s a girl, you dipshit.”

“Interesting name,” I say, curious what a girl who’s named after my favorite car would be like, but it doesn’t really matter. None of it does. I’ll never date again, never feel for anyone.

“Would you get over her?” Dylan scoops up a plastic cup that’s by the kitchen sink and throws it at Tristan, who ducks as it zips above his head. “You made out with her one time, and she was fucking trashed.”

“So what?” Tristan retorts as he leans over the arm of the chair to pick up the cup. When he sits up, he throws the cup back at Dylan, but it lands on the floor a few inches away from him. “You’re still hung up on Delilah after eight months of her being gone, and I can still have a thing for Nova if I want to. And it’s not really even a thing, so much as I’m curious about what she’s like now after a year.”

“You’re such a fucking liar.” Dylan kicks the cup across the floor and jerks the fridge door open. “And besides, Nova’s got more baggage than you can handle.”

“You don’t know how much I can handle,” he mutters, staring down at the brownish orange carpet. He rubs his hand across his face and then blows out a breath, his gaze flicking up to me. There’s a hint of anger transpiring in his eyes, directed toward me and what I represent, but beneath the anger there’s also pain. Lots and lots of pain masked over by weed.

It’s my cue to leave. I put some of Tristan’s baggage there, since I’m the one solely responsible for the death of his sister. I follow Nikki down the hallway, feeling like shit again as my past catches up with me. But I focus on the few steps ahead of me, knowing what’s going to happen when I reach the room. It’s obvious what Nikki wants, and honestly, I need the distraction. Today’s been a rough day, especially after my father dropped me off at the airport. I could tell he didn’t want to be there, but I think he felt obligated because I’m his son.

“See you later,” was all he said, and then he left me at the entrance doors.

I shouldn’t have cared that he didn’t give me a hug or anything, but I haven’t been hugged in a year and sometimes I miss it, the connection, the contact, knowing that someone loves you.

“So the bed’s supersoft.” Nikki plops down on the twin bed and gives a little bounce, crossing her legs.

I drop the bag on the floor of the closet-sized room and stand in front of her, staring down at the filthy mattress. “Oh yeah?”

She seductively grins at me. “Definitely.” Then she reaches up and snatches the front of my shirt, tugging me down to her mouth.

Her lips are dry and taste like weed, but I close my eyes and kiss her back, shutting myself down as I lean over her and we collapse against the bed. I know it’s wrong. Neither of us really gives a shit about the other. There’s no meaning to it. It’s as pointless as existing and equally as insignificant. But that’s exactly what I deserve, and the moment that I do feel meaning—the moment I feel the slightest bit of contentment and happiness with another woman—is the moment I break my promise to Lexi.

Chapter 3

Nova

There’s a strange kind of serenity that comes with silence, but maybe that’s because it’s nearly impossible to achieve. Not only do I have to shut out the outside noise, but I also have to tune out the noise within me, the thoughts that want to whisper who I am, what I should or shouldn’t be feeling, what I did or didn’t do—what went wrong. Sometimes, when I’m awake late at night, I try to achieve the blissful serenity of silence, but it’s always the part that I didn’t do that ruins it for me, the constant whispering in my head. You should have saved him. I wonder if Landon ever achieved that silence and if that’s why he did it. Maybe he heard nothing at all, and he took that as a sign that it was time to end things.

“How do I look?” Delilah fixes her lipstick in the rearview mirror of the old pickup she used to drive around before we left for college. She blots her lips and then looks at me with a dazzling smile.

“You look perfect.” I, on the other hand, didn’t even bother to brush my hair, because I’m not here to impress. I’m here because she wants me to be here. Nothing more. Nothing less.

She reaches down the front of her low-cut crimson top and rearranges her boobs so she shows more cleavage. It gets a small smile out of me, but the momentary spark of life is quickly buried as I start to count the stairs leading up to the single-wide trailer home in front of us, and the amount of tires piled on the front lawn. Four and eight.

Her gaze slowly skims across my short floral dress and my feather earrings. “You look nice,” she says with accusation. “Are you sure you’re not wanting to hook up with a certain someone again?”

I shake my head and aim my finger at her. “I already told you that hooking up with Tristan was a onetime thing.”

Delilah raises her brows in doubt. “Whatever you say.”

I sigh and start to climb out of the truck, but she captures my arm, preventing me from going further. “Wait. You should add this to your little movie thing.”

I glance around at the trailer park, the dogs barking behind the neighbor’s fence, and the car next door that’s rusted, tireless, and balanced on cinder blocks. “This place?”