Page 86 of The Girl with No Name

You began to run

What you’d do that for?

She immediately smiles and joins in:

We don’t need Tennessee whiskey

And we don’t need California wine

All I need is you in my arms to get high, high, high, high

We’ll dance in the living room till four a.m.

I know you can be my lover, baby

Can you be my best friend?

We twirl and dance and laugh at how soaked through our clothes are. It’s comical trying to stay dry in a rainstorm like this. A part of me is trying to pull away from her, but the joy I feel is overwhelming.

Our lips are like magnets, and our heads move closer, almost imperceptibly. Finally I can’t take it anymore.

I press her body into the weeping willow tree, grab hold of her thigh so she’s standing on one leg, and kiss her in the rain.

It’s a deep, wet, hot kiss.

One hand is on her leg and another roams her hair against me, and I let my hand fall to her hip as our kiss lingers.

When we break, I cock my head slightly and look into her eyes. I don’t even know her name. We kiss again, and it’s hot, rain-soaked, and desperate. We’re like two lovers starved for each other. We pull back and make eye contact before she takes off running.

“Come on, Reed. We have to make it home before sunrise!”

I chase after her, and the thought of what I’ll make of all this tomorrow kicks in.

But I push it away as quickly as I can. Until the sun comes up, she’s still Cinderella at the ball, and well, I feel something like that, too.

19

REED

“LET YOU DOWN” – ZACH BRYAN

The next morning—just a few hours later—I stir in our hotel room. It seems I passed out on the couch. Luna’s black hair is draped over my chest, and my arm is wrapped around her. My heart starts to pound furiously, and all I can think about is Samantha.

When she and I were seniors in college, I was attending DePauw, and she was at Purdue. One day she drove to see me on a Tuesday, which was random, and confessed to me that she’d kissed someone the night before. “A peck,” she’d said.

“Okay,” I’d answered. “Were there feelings involved?”

“No,” she’d said. “I was drunk.”

I forgave her, we’d moved on, and neither of us had mentioned the incident again.

The way I see it, either you forgive someone fully or you don’t, and I didn’t intend to hold that against her. After all, she’d confessed.

But as Luna sleeps softly on top of me, I wonder about that incident. Was it really just a peck Samantha had that night? Or maybe I’m just projecting. Because what I did with Luna last night was definitely not just a peck.

The guilt sets in, and my mind wanders to self-loathing. My inner voice tells me how badly I’ve fucked up. Whether it was the drugs, the booze, or the general high coming off yesterday’s unreal performances, that’s no excuse.

Luna makes a noise and flutters her eyes open.

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