About fifteen minutes later, Nova walks out of their room wearing shorts and a clean tank top, her hair down and running down her back in waves. “Okay, so Avery should be here any second.”

“Who the hell is Avery?” I ask as Quinton says, “Sounds good.”

Nova shuts the door, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Oh, she’s the girl whose house we’re building. She actually stopped by today and we got talking and I said how we were going out to celebrate. She mentioned she knew some good places with good music and offered to take us out as a thank-you.” She plops down on the curb between Quinton and me. “She’s really nice. I think you’ll like her.”

I rake my fingers through my hair. Great. One more person I’m going to have to escape tonight. “What exactly did you say we’re celebrating?”

“Life,” Nova says simply. I press back a smile. Only her.

A moment later a horn beeps and Nova glances around the parking lot and then waves at this old red Jeep with the top off parked just a ways off. “There she is.” She gets up and heads over and Quinton and I follow her.

“You okay with this?” Quinton asks quietly cross the parking lot.

“With what?” I ask, patting my pocket to make sure I have my cigarettes and lighter on me.

“With going out with a stranger on your night?”

“My night?” I say in a sarcastic tone. “You make it sound like I’m a sixteen-year-old girl going to prom.”

He snorts a laugh. “You know what I mean.”

I shrug. “Yeah, I’m fine with whoever goes. It’s all the same.”

He nods and then slows down as we reach the Jeep. He opens the door to get in and the girl… Avery or whatever says hi to him as he flips the seat back and climbs in. I follow, letting Nova take the front. As I’m getting situated in the backseat, I get a good look at this Avery girl. When Nova said that there was a girl coming with us and that it was the one we were building the house for, I expected someone older. Avery has long brown hair with a streak of purple going down it, hazel eyes surrounded by black eyeliner, and full lips with a piercing just above the top one. She’s got to be around twenty, give or take a few years, which has me confused why we’re building her a house. She looks like she should be in college. Usually when we build houses, they’re for families.

“I’m Avery,” she says as she turns in her seat and extends her hand to me. I notice she has a cross tattooed on her forearm with the word Survivor below it. I wonder what she’s survived.

“Tristan,” I say, taking her hand and shaking it. There’s this weird moment between the two of us where I sense that she’s checking me out just as much as I’m checking her out. She’s not bad on the eyes at all. Totally fuckable. She looks like she’s been through some stuff, rough around the edges, eyes that carry secrets. I wonder what those secrets are—I wonder if they’re as fucked up as mine.

“Nice to meet you, Tristan,” she says, giving me a once-over, in this slow, lasting way.

She takes one last look then turns to Quinton, smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “And good to see you again, Quinton.”

“Likewise,” Quinton says as Nova hops into the front seat and closes the door. “So where are you taking us?”

Avery grabs the shifter as she turns on the headlights. “I was thinking about going to the The Vibe. They’ve got some really good food and music and it’s not as rowdy as some of the other shit around here.” She drives onto the road, the wind sweeping through the roofless vehicle. “You guys are all twenty-one, right?” She specifically glances at me from over her shoulder and I almost laugh. That’s a first. Usually people think I’m older.

“I’m twenty-three,” I tell her, then just because, I decided to throw it back at her. “You don’t look old enough, though.”

“Twenty-two.” She winks. “But I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I meant it as a compliment.” And now I’m flirting.

Quinton glances at me, arching a brow, like Really, you’re going to go there? Avery seems to enjoy it, still smiling as she turns around in her seat.

“What?” I ask him, playing dumb.

“Nothing.” He shakes his head, then leans toward me. “Be careful, man. Remember, she’s the person we’re building a house for and it’s not going to go over well if you hook up with her and bail out the next morning.”

I glance up front to see if Nova and Avery are paying attention, but they’re chatting about bands. Nova plays the drums and Avery plays the guitar and they both seem excited about this.

“Who said I’m planning on hooking up and bailing on her?” I ask quietly.

“You have that look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

He gives me an accusing look. “The one you get right before you hook up and then leave the girl two seconds later. I know the drill man. I used to do it too, remember.”

“Hey, maybe I’m planning on hooking up with her and sticking around for a while,” I say.

“In the four years we’ve been around each other,” he says. “I’ve never seen you ever once stick around.”

I want to tell him that’s not true. That I stuck around for Nova, even when we didn’t hook up. I almost do too, mainly so he’ll get pissed and I can go get high without worrying about him keeping an eye on me. But Nova and Avery are in the car and I don’t know Avery and Nova’s seen enough of the ugly in me for a while. So I keep my lips shut and I kind of zone out for the rest of the drive, thinking about Ryder. I feel bad for not going home, but not because of my mother. Ryder was a good sister. Things were easier when she was there. When I was younger, she saw me when I was invisible to everyone else in my family. I should have gone home, if nothing else, for her.

Guilt creeps up inside me and I want nothing more than to quiet it the one way I know how. I put my hand into my pocket and feel the plastic in the palm of my hand. God, what I’d give to pull it out now.

The sky gets darker as we merge into the heart of the small town, the buildings lining the sides of the roads lighting up the night with their signs and flashing lights. I start flicking my lighter restlessly, needing to light up, but I’m not about to do it somebody else’s car. So I wait until we’re parked, then I hop out and quickly light up, feeling my heart and thoughts still. Quinton lights up too, and then Avery surprises me when she asks to borrow my lighter so she can light up as well.

“Wow, I feel like I’m about to get cancer,” Nova jokes as we walk toward the front door with a cloud of smoke around us.

“Oh, do you want me to put is out?” Avery asks, bending down like she’s going to put it out on the ground. She’s got a nice body, leggy, a tight ass. She’s wearing a tight black dress with boots, the back of her dress low and revealing a tattoo of a tree, half dead, half flourishing. The flourishing half has leaves blowing away from it and below it the words: Carry me away, to where I can breathe, to where my soul can thrive again, to where I can be free to where I can live again. There’s more too it than that, but it goes below the dress. I’m curious what the rest of it says. I have my own tattoos with their own meanings and that kind of a tattoo has to have a meaning. Maybe it’s her life story. It makes me wonder if I can get under the dress to see if she was able to live again and why she thought she was dying.

“So do you have any of your own?”

I jerk from my thoughts and realize that Avery is standing to the side of me and Nova and Quinton have migrated to the front. “Any of my own what?” I ask distracted by how intense Avery’s eyes are up close—this girl has definitely been through some stuff.

She reaches around and touches her back. “Tats.” Her hand falls to her side. “I saw you staring at mine.”

“Oh.” I take a drag from my cigarette, thinking of what Quinton said about staying away from her and how I want to do the opposite at the moment. “A few here and there.”