“Shut the fuck up,” Javi says.
I shrug. “S-sometimes.”
“You, buy this girl a drink,” Noah tells Javi, and then to me, “You, get this boy laid.”
Javi’s face is a shade of red I didn’t think could exist in the natural world.
“You’re such an asshole,” he mutters.
Noah gives Javi the biggest, assholiest grin. “Hey, if you’re not gonna buy her a drink, you can at least buy me one.”
“We just went up there!”
Noah turns his bottle upside down. “And I’m out.”
“I’ll g-go with you,” I tell Javi, and that’s all it takes.
“I’m sorry,” Javi says after we climb out of the booth. He half-turns to give me the full force of his sincerity and ends up tripping over his own feet. “He’s really—”
“It’s f-fine.”
When we reach the bar, the bartender sets us up with a line of shots but instead of walking them back, Javi knocks one down and texts Noah, flashing the screen at me before he hits send: You want em come and get em. Javi picks up another shot and nudges one my way.
“To your sister,” he tells me.
I find myself blinking back tears at the unexpectedness of it, his kindness stealing some part of me away. I grab the shot with a shaking hand. I say, “T-to her,” and I barely manage to swallow the fiery alcohol down. I cough into my palm. “W-what was that?”
“J?ger,” he says and I know I’ll never be able to drink J?ger again. It will remind me of this moment, of her, of choking on my own grief in front of a boy whose name I knew before he knew mine.
“You’re, uh.” He pauses. “When I saw you dancing, I was like, wow.”
The liquor has loosened his tongue.
“Y-you act like a g-girl’s a brand new thing.”
“I’m just telling you you’re interesting,” he mumbles.
I notice Noah crossing the room toward us and I want … space. I want to take this moment alone with Javi and I want it to last longer. Something about that makes me ashamed. This isn’t what I’m here for. And maybe I’m a little wasted, thinking that it could be.
“You w-wanna get s-some air?”
“Yeah.” Javi nods eagerly. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Leaving the bar is a truly wonderful feeling; I didn’t realize how stale the air was in Cooper’s until I take a deep, clean breath.
“N-Noah gives you a lot of sh-shit, doesn’t he?”
“That obvious, huh?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“W-what’d he call you? B-benchwarmer?”
Javi blushes. “Yeah … I’ve just never been that guy, you know? I mean, it’s not easy for me to…” He fumbles for the words but can’t seem to find them. “It’s kind of why I fell in with Noah and Kendall. They at least try to make things happen. But that’s the big joke—because I just sit on the sidelines and pretend to be part of it.”
“D-didn’t see them d-dancing with me.”
He smiles such a small, earnest smile. I can’t think of the last time I made someone so pleased with themselves. It makes me want to cry.
“I guess not,” he agrees quietly, like it means something.
“I’m g-glad you did.”
“I’ll be hanging at Noah and Kendall’s place tomorrow,” he says. “You should come.”
“Th-think she’d like that?”
“Kendall needs a shake-up.” He shrugs. “I see the way she looks at you. She knows she needs one. I told you, Montgomery’s a … it’s one of those cities that feels like a town. That’s why we end up here every week, just to get away from it.”
“W-will their parents b-be home?”
“Yeah, they might be around.”
“W-where do th-they live?”
“Two-twelve Young Street.”
A soft click inside me. A piece locked into place. This will lead me to Silas, who will lead me to Keith and in the meantime …
Maybe I could let myself have whatever this turns out to be.
“S-sounds like it could be fun.”
“Great,” he says.
We walk the edges of the parking lot. I stare at the stars dotting the ink-black sky. The farther we get from the bar, the more stars there are to see and it’s beautiful and its beauty makes me ache. I didn’t tell Mattie enough about this kind of thing, I don’t think. About small miracles, like the stars at night and how much brighter they seem in wintertime. The sun rising and setting and rising again. I decide to share the thought with Javi, just to release myself from it and he gives a small smile and says, “Small miracles. I like that.”
I think he’d like anything I said.
That’s new to me.
I point. We’re in front of my car.
“Th-that’s where I l-live.”
“What?”
“K-kidding. But it’s m-mine.”
I unlock the door and open it before I really know what I’m doing.
He climbs into the back and says, “Cozy,” and I follow in after him and stare at his profile and he shifts uncomfortably under my gaze. I imagine pressing my palm against his chest, pressing my body against his. I imagine feeling his heartbeat under my palm. I imagine kissing him and his mouth is as soft and tender as the rest of him. I would let his gentleness take me somewhere else, let myself pretend what it might be like to belong to someone. I would let myself push his hair out of his eyes so I could see them seeing me and this is not a love story … but in this small space, the sound of our breathing between us, I wonder what it would take to make it one.
I swallow hard, lick my lips, the ghost taste of the shot still on them.
To your sister.
I lean forward and reach across the front seat, open the glove box and grab a marker. I hand it to him and he stares at me, confused.
“I l-left my cell at h-home,” I tell him. I roll up my sleeve and stretch my arm out. “R-write your number and I’ll c-call you f-first th-thing.”
Javi opens the marker and worries the cap between his teeth. He scrawls his number up my wrist and the light, careful graze of his touch makes me believe being with him would have been exactly how I imagined it. He asks me if he can have my number and because he can’t, and because I don’t know what else to do, and because maybe I want to do it, I kiss him on the cheek. I don’t think I’m very good at it, the clumsy meeting of my mouth against his lightly stubbled chin, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Y-you c-can have that,” I say. “I h-have to go n-now.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, b-but I’ll c-call you t-tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he says. He gives me a shy smile, and gets out of my car. Then, after a second, he turns back to lean in and say, “It was really, really good meeting you,” and I promise I’ll call him again because I don’t know how else to respond. I watch him walk back to the bar and then I stare at his number on my arm and repeat it softly to myself, until it’s stuck in my head, like how any other girl might do.
Then I climb into the front seat, put the key in the ignition and head to the city.
THE GIRLS
S1E2
WEST McCRAY:
May Beth lets me look through the personal possessions left behind in Sadie’s car. I’m hoping to glean a greater understanding of where she’s been, where she was headed and if she ever got there. And—if we’re lucky—where she still might be.
There were clothes, nothing trendy. Everything seems geared toward comfort, functionality and compactness. T-shirts and Jeggings, leggings, sweaters, underwear, a couple of bras. There’s a green canvas backpack, something Sadie was rarely seen without in Cold Creek, and inside it, her wallet—empty, a half-eaten protein bar, a crushed, empty bottle of water and a takeout menu for a place called Ray’s Diner, located at a truck stop just outside a town called Wagner. This is the only thing I have to go on. I ask Detective Gutierrez if the Farfield PD looked into it.
DETECTIVE SHEILA GUTIERREZ [PHONE]: A cursory investigation into Ray’s yielded no new information. It was a long shot; it’s a truck-stop diner, people are constantly coming and going. Add to the fact Ray’s distributes its menus to surrounding areas, it was only ever going to be a long shot. Our time and resources were more effectively spent concentrated on the area the car was found.
[SOUND OF ENGINE BRAKING]