Page 3 of New Year

That gets a small laugh, and my chest fills up with sparkling bubbles as the quiet sound fills the car, rushing over my skin like a warm bath.

He thinks I’m funny.

If only for a moment, I lifted the spirits of a boy who lost his mother less than a year ago, from whatever dark place they were sinking into.

A minute later, the pavement ends, and we continue onto a bumpy dirt road. Finally Chase slows and turns into a giant gravel parking lot that looks out over… Nothing. The headlights slice into the dark night punctuated only by a few whisps of mist and the occasional raindrop the falls from the dense cloud cover leftover after last night’s storm.

Was that only last night?

I’ve already forgotten the name of the college guy, forgotten the weight of his body against mine and the warmth of the metal ball in his tongue. It’s a dream, fading so quickly I know that soon I’ll only remember the words as I recount the story to my friends, not the visceral immediacy of metal and tongue and hard ridges of muscle.

“What are you thinking about?” Chase asks, and shame floods into me.

I push the memory further away and glance around at the abandoned parking spot in the middle of nowhere, on the top of a bluff. “Is this your make-out spot?”

He grins and lowers the volume on the radio, flips off the headlights and turns on the overhead light. The night outside becomes a black nothingness, leaving us in a cocoon of warmth and light, the only world that exists. “It could be,” he says. “Wanna make out?”

I look away, wishing he hadn’t turned the light on. Now he can see just how red my face gets when he flirts with me.

“You’re crazy,” I mumble, hardly breathing.

What if I said yes? What if, just once, I gave in like I did last night? He wouldn’t stop me. He’d take what I gave and worry about the consequences later.

He may have been joking when he said he was dangerous, but it’s not so funny anymore.

“So how come you like nineties music so much?” he asks, changing the playlist to something modern and unfamiliar.

I’m so relieved I could kiss him if I were bolder. “Music now is all about me me me,” I say, wincing as I hear the echo of my father’s voice in my words. “It’s all about feeling good and dancing and being selfish. Nineties musicmeanssomething. It’s like the culmination of all the great music before it. The nineties was the zenith of music. It’s all downhill from there.”

“The zenith, huh?” he asks, a teasing spark in his eye. “The decade that brought us Ace of Base and the Spice Girls?”

“That’s not the genre I listen to,” I protest.

“There’s no music now that means anything?” he challenges. “In any genre?”

“I haven’t heard much of it,” I admit, biting my lip to keep from smiling. “But I’m sticking to my theory.”

He grins. “I think you’re full of shit, and you know it. That’s why you’re laughing. Your theory sucks. Even you know it’s bullshit.”

“Alright, fine. Tell me one album that’s come out in our lifetime that means something.”

“Noah Kahan. Boygenius. Hozier.”

“That’s not fair. I’ve never even heard of those.”

“Totally fair. They’re well known to people of discriminating musical taste.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. I’ll download some of their stuff.”

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m just expanding your horizons. It’s for your own good. Besides, what’s wrong with music making you feel good? Isn’t that the point?”

I scoff. “I prefer music that makes me think.”

He tips his seat back and rolls his head toward me, a sad smile ghosting over his lips. “That’s depressing, Sky.”

“Thinking is depressing?” I tease. “Explains a lot about you.”

This time, he doesn’t even crack a smile. “Yeah, probably,” he says, turning to stare up at the ceiling. “If I wanted to be depressed, I’d turn off the music and listen to my thoughts. Maybe that’s better than being a shallow fuck-up.”

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