Page 35 of One Night

"We're done. I don't want to do this anymore."

She huffs. "Are you drunk?"

"I've had some beers, but no, I'm not drunk. I'm just not interested."

"Every guy's interested in this." She opens her trench coat, showing off her black push-up bra and matching panties. I admit, she's hot, but even so, she doesn't excite me the way Amber does. No girl has ever excited me that much.

"What are THEY doing here?" Allison asks, closing her coat as she notices Austin and Kira behind me.

"We were just hanging out," I say. "Now could you leave? I have things to do."

She huffs again. "Fine. I was cheating on you anyway."

"Yeah, I figured you were. Have a good life, Allison." I shut the door, not feeling even the tiniest shred of regret or sadness or guilt over breaking up with her.

"Well, we're going to head out," Kira says, walking up to me.

"Don't tell her it's coming," I say, referring to the letter I'm going to write.

"I won't." She hugs me, then turns back to Austin. "You ready?"

"Yeah." He seems confused by what happened tonight. I'll explain it to him later. He gives me a wave. "Talk tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll call ya."

As they leave out the front door, I go in the kitchen and find my keys and wallet and hurry out to my car. As I'm backing out of the driveway, I'm forced to stop, blocked by Austin's pickup.

I beep at him and he rolls down the window and yells, "Where you going?"

"To the store. I gotta get paper."

"It's after midnight. Nothing's open."

"The drugstore's open twenty-four hours. Now get your big-ass truck out of the way."

He backs up onto the street and I continue out of the driveway and speed down to the drugstore. I hope they have what I need.

Thank God Van's out of town. If he saw me right now, racing to find paper and a pen to write a letter, he'd give me shit about it from now until the end of time.

At the drugstore, I find the office supply section but the only type of paper they have is printer paper. Does anyone even sell paper to write on anymore? Maybe they don't. Nobody writes letters so there's nobody to buy that stuff.

"Need some help?" a girl asks as she sees me frantically searching the shelves.

I move some folders aside. "Um, no, I don't think you have what I'm looking for."

"Dylan?" The girl steps closer to me as I continue to search the shelves. "It's Macy."

I was crouched down, searching the bottom shelf, but I stand up and turn to face her. "Macy. How's it going?"

Macy and I dated for a month my junior year. It was nothing serious but she took the break-up hard. After I ended things, she stalked me on campus for two months until I started dating someone else.

"I'm good." She leans her shoulder against the shelf in front of me and I notice she's wearing a navy shirt with the store logo on it. I didn't know she worked here. Then again, I don't come here that often. "I went to your concert last week. I love that song you wrote. One Night? It's like my favorite song ever."

"Thanks. A lot of people seem to like it." I glance to the right and jingle my keys in my hand, hoping she'll get that I'm in a hurry.

"Who was it about?" she asks.

Girls ask me this all the time and I always give them the same answer. "It wasn't about anyone. It was just a song."

---