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“What’s up?” he asked as soon as she answered. He was worried. She had never used their code before.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s late and we’re not supposed to—”

“It’s okay. Melanie is with her mom. Are you okay?”

Lily sat down on the long-abandoned play set’s swing, startled by the way the chains groaned. She looked up and didn’t see any movement in the windows. She could always say she snuck out for one of her five cigarettes a year. She reached behind the plastic tunnel and grabbed her hidden pack, just in case.

“I don’t know. I’m kind of freaking out about this trip, Gav,” she said. She pulled out a cigarette and the lighter before she remembered she was pretending.

“I know,” he said. She could hear him sit down. She imagined he was in his living room. She imagined what it might look like, what colors made up his life away from her.

“I just found out that Silas invited a friend of Mickey’s to come with us, for the whole time.”

“Seriously? Who?”

“What do you mean, who? What does it matter? A teenage girl, that’s who,” Lily answered. “And he’s acting like I’m the crazy one.”

Gavin sighed.

“What am I doing,” Lily asked, but it wasn’t a question.

“You’re taking care of your children,” Gavin said. Lily nodded and inhaled from the cigarette she didn’t mean to light.

“I don’t know if I can do it this year, honestly. I mean, what is he thinking? Inviting a stranger? A girl? He has to know what that will bring up.”

“Since when has that mattered?” Gavin asked. It was the truth. Lily took another deep inhale and felt the combination of nicotine and Gavin’s voice flood her veins and slow her down.

“I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you too.”

There was nothing for a minute but night song: a violin bow against the wings of countless crickets, the quiet sizzle of her cigarette’s tip.

“What if I can’t do it? What if I just can’t do it?”

“You always do it,” Gavin said. “You always do it.”

Lily took another drag of her cigarette and held it as long as she could, until her vision swam with blacks and grays. She didn’t want to say good night. She didn’t want to take any steps forward, not even one breath.

Until eventually, as always, she didn’t have a choice.





PEYOTE





“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU made such a big deal out of the beer at Jack’s,” I said, cracking open another Miller Lite and tossing the cap onto the kitchenette counter. Cal smirked and shrugged, going so far as to hold her palms up. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Also, I had already had three whole beers, which was more than I had had in a row in centuries. I was euphoric.

“I hope you can forgive me.”

“I’m going to drink all of this,” I said, pointing to the fridge with a full six-pack still inside. “You owe me that much.”

“Fair enough,” Cal said. “You really were a work of art in there.”

I smiled and fell back against Cal’s couch. I hadn’t been in another person’s Fifth-Floor apartment in a long time, but it was exactly the same as mine.

“It was a pleasure,” I said, and I meant it. Watching Trey’s face fall—I took so much pleasure in it, there was no denying I belonged here.

“Can we talk about KQ and her fucking feet?” Cal asked, sitting down next to me.

I snorted. “She’s a nightmare.”

“And with the skirt today? Did her vagina take a power-pose workshop or something?”

I laughed again, so hard I almost slapped my knee. Almost. I took a sip of beer.

Cal stood up suddenly and reached her hands up until the tips of her fingers pressed against the popcorn ceiling. Her T-shirt rode up with her hands, and I could see her stomach, her belly button. I hadn’t seen another person’s belly button since I’d worked on Second. I’m not proud of it, but I stared. If you go too long without seeing parts of yourself in others, you start to think you’re made wrong.

“What do you want from this life, Pey?” Cal asked, holding her arms out to her whole apartment, the whole of the Fifth Floor, the whole of everything.

“This isn’t life,” I said. “This is what comes after.”

“Quit dodging the question,” she said, waltzing to the stereo and clicking up the volume. The music in the living room got louder. We have only a couple of stations in Hell, but unlike our booze, our music is personalized against our tastes. For example, in my apartment, my only musical choices are Jock Jams and K-pop. Yours would be your own worst cacophony. Cal’s was deep and throaty.

“Dave Matthews?” I asked.

“Creed,” she answered. “I think they might be growing on me.”

I smiled, remembering the words to some Korean song I’d memorized but couldn’t understand.

“I want to keep going exactly like I have been,” I said. “Except I would like less Trey.”

That was, of course, a lie. Not the Trey part, but the rest of it. I had big plans, bigger than she could imagine. But they were all mine.