The room smells like weed, gasoline, and Sharpie ink, a holy trinity. The fan in the corner's doing a piss-poor job keeping the place cool, and the busted radio on the dresser is buzzing some crusty punk tape they’ve rewound way too many times. Outside, you can hear Uncle Wayne cussing out his truck over the clink of a beer bottle. Inside, Guest is straddling Eddie’s lap, half-telling, half-whining about whatever high school cheer team drama she got dragged into, and he’s pretending to listen, like really pretending.

so then Jessica’s like, 'oh my god, Tiffany was staring at her boyfriend’s friend again,' and now they’re in this whole fake fight even though I swear they just want to make out or something—hey! Eddie!

She swats at his wrist weakly as he again tries to poke her side. He’s got one arm hooked loosely around her waist, the other lazily dragging a pen across her thigh, little skulls, bats, hearts, something that looks like a grave stone. He smirks up at her, curls stuck to his forehead with sweat, lips cracked from a day of chain-smoking.

Then he sticks the pen cap between his teeth and squints like he’s deeply studying her thigh.