“It’s hot as hell and with this thing cooking inside me, I need to cool off. Stu said he’d bring a keg. Come on!” Dania wheedled. I hated it when she wheedled. It grated on my nerves.

“Fine whatever,” I mumbled, giving her the victory she had been looking for. I was such a hard ass in most situations but was somehow unable to stand up to my best friend.

It was a serious character flaw.

“So what happened with you and Reggie the other morning? Did you rip her hair out?” I asked, though I probably shouldn’t have bothered to ask. I had seen Reggie yesterday and she was sporting a split lip. Dania apparently hadn’t been very forgiving.

Dania rolled her eyes and hopped down from the counter. She rolled her tiny tank top up over her belly. “I can’t stay mad at Reggie. She’s too stupid to know what she’s doing half the time,” she dismissed.

I came out from behind the cash register and started straightening the cans of whipped cream in the cooler knocked over from a teenage whip it raid.

“Why do you care though? You and Stu haven’t hooked up in years,” I asked. I didn’t expect Dania to answer me. This was one of the topics she would shut down each and every time.

“So, you and Shane gonna get naked tonight?” Dania asked, doing just what I knew she’d do. Change the subject.

I made a gagging noise. “Yeah if I want syphilis,” I smirked. I had slept with him when I was young and stupid. When I had been trying to fill the void in my heart by spreading my legs. I had thought sex would help me feel connected to someone.

It hadn’t. It had hurt. A lot. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. We had been drunk in a field. Shane, not much caring where he got his rocks off, took me into the brush and didn’t even bother to remove my clothes. There was no kissing. No caressing. No whispered sweet nothings in my ear.

He had pushed down my jeans and screwed me right there. With a pinecone in my back and grass in my hair. He had been rough and sloppy, poking away before pulling out and telling me to jack him off with my hand.

I had been horrified by the sticky stuff on my skin and had tried to wipe my hands off on the ground.

Afterwards he hadn’t even bothered to help me up, returning to the party like nothing had happened.

I had wanted to cry. But I hadn’t. I never cried. Not since I was six years old.

I remembered the blood on my thighs and the sight of my crumpled underwear around my ankles and I had felt dirty. Even after all that I had been through at that point in my life, I had held onto the foolish idea that sex would be magic. It would be beautiful and all consuming.

I should probably have picked someone other than Shane Nolan to pop my cherry then.

Dania smacked my arm. “You’re so picky. I don’t know who the hell you’re waiting for? Prince fucking Charming? Because if that’s the case you’ll be waiting a long ass time. Princes don’t ride into Wellsburg, sweetheart,” she scoffed, giving me a loud and messy kiss on the cheek.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

“So, I’ll be at Woolly’s when you get off. Come and get me,” Dania said, not giving me time to argue.

The remainder of my shift passed uneventfully. There had been a whole ten customers. It really was a dead end store in a dead end town.

Melanie came in to start her shift around five. Her energetic smile was enough to make me scramble out the door.

The sun sat low in the sky and I knew our swimming trip would turn into an all-night kegger. The air smelled like a party. It was the only thing to do on sweltering summer nights in the middle of nowhere. Drinking and drugs and lots and lots of sex.

Woolly’s had the front door propped open, indicating that they too had a broken down air conditioner. Inside was oppressively hot and I hoped Dania was ready to leave. There was no way I could hang out inside and stay conscious.

Dania was perched up at the bar, Stu and Shane flanking her on either side. Stu looked bored. Shane was staring blatantly down Dania’s low cut tank. He didn’t seem to care about her pregnant belly jutting out from beneath her shirt.

My friend looked up and saw me, her face lighting up. She was already wasted. That was the only time she seemed genuinely happy to see me.

“There you are! You ready to go?” she squealed. Shane removed his eyes from Dania’s boobs and attached them to mine. My chest had always been a magnet for male attention, whether I wanted it or not. I hated my body. I hated the curves and definition to my hips. I hated that when I was younger, men had thought that because I had the body of a woman it was okay to treat me like one.

“I’m really glad you’re coming, Ells,” Shane grinned. I barely nodded, already tapping my foot impatiently.

“Can we get out of here? It smells like piss and arm pits,” I complained. I glared at Shane pointedly, only making him laugh.

“Yeah, babe, let’s go,” Shane said, grabbing my hand. I wrenched out of his grip.

“Look Shane, I’m not your babe. And if I see your eyes on my tits one more time, I’m going to rip your balls off and shove them up your nose. Got it?” I threatened, baring my teeth in an angry smile.

Shane laughed again, though a little nervously. His wariness was warranted. I had earned it over the years.

Dania leaned on Stu who steadied her. He barely looked at her, seeming bored by her endless chatter and attempts to touch him. I couldn’t understand my best friend’s obsession with him. He wasn’t even that good looking and his personality bordered on Jeffery Dahmer levels of creepy.

I didn’t wait for the rest of my less than savory posse to follow me outside. I could hear Dania laughing and Shane’s snickers. This would take a while.

And then I saw him.

God he was everywhere.

I couldn’t escape him.

Flynn, with his hands characteristically shoved into the pockets of his khakis, was standing outside of the crummy art gallery down the street.

Florence’s Portraits was a bit of a joke. Flo had moved to Wellsburg after her husband had retired three years ago and opened the gallery in an effort to try to inject some culture into the shoddy little town. It didn’t help that aside from the name, there absolutely no portraits sold in the dingy shop. Flo’s idea of art was second-rate knock offs of wildflowers and streams.

I had never seen a single person step foot inside.

But there was Flynn Hendrick, staring at the crappy pictures as if they were the most interesting things in the world. He had always been so focused like that. And I felt an uncomfortable twinge as I remembered how he’d pore over his notebooks, sketching in the corners.

I had never let on that I watched him. But I had.

A lot.

Dania finally came out of Woolly’s with Stu and Shane. Her heavy form crashed into my back and I stumbled forward. She giggled and apologized and I cringed at the smell of alcohol on her breath.

“Let’s walk this way,” I said, trying to steer my friends down the road in the opposite direction of Flynn. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want them to see him.

“I’m parked back there,” Stu mumbled, jerking his thumb toward the parking lot on the other side of Florence’s Portraits.

Well here we go.

I grit my teeth and kept my eyes trained forward as we moved closer to where Flynn was still standing by the storefront window.

Why did he have to be so weird? I thought angrily. Why did he have to stand there, staring at those stupid pictures and ruin my entire night?

Why couldn’t he, just for once, be normal?

Because Flynn Hendrick wasn’t normal.

“Oh my god, Ells, do you know who that is?” Dania asked in an excited whisper, pointing at Flynn who was completely oblivious to our approach.

I pulled her arm down and shushed her.

Shane squinted in Flynn’s direction. “He looks familiar. How do I know that guy?” he asked, his words slurring from the three shots of Jose Cuervo he had consumed earlier.