Abel answered his phone on the first ring. A love language.

Chevelle didn't bother sugarcoating her situation. She told him that she needed to get away from her house as soon as possible—that she wanted to see him. He didn't waste time asking any questions; he could hear in her voice that she wasn't okay.

Abel pulled up to Chevelle's house twenty minutes later and she slipped out the front door, unsure if anyone saw her but not bothering to look around and find out. She saw Abel's blue car sitting by the curb and jogged over to it, already feeling her spirits lift with each step she took away from that house.

"Good morning," she chirped, smiling when she caught sight of Abel's bedhead that was in full effect. It was clear that she'd woken him up with her phone call, but he looked so happy to see her that she couldn't even bring herself to feel guilty about it.

"Morning," Abel said, smiling back at her. "How'd you sleep?"

She hadn't slept very well last night, but it was no fault of Abel's. It was her own fault. He had asked her to spend the night with him last night, but she had refused.

Chevelle was weird about sleeping over at boys' houses (or having them sleep over at hers). The only guys she had ever spent the night with before were Jared and Wilson, and even then, it hadn't happened immediately. Spending the night with someone felt like a really intimate thing to Chevelle—maybe even more intimate than the sex itself. To fall asleep in someone's arms and hold each other as you dream...to wake up beside each other, as crusty and unkempt as you'll ever be... For her, it took a certain level of trust. But the weird thing about it was that she did trust Abel.

When he'd dropped her off last night, she hadn't wanted to get out of the car. She hadn't wanted to leave him, but she did. Not because it was what she felt moved to do in the moment, but because it was what she had always done. Leaving was one of the things Chevelle was best at, and she felt stupid for wanting to change her mind at the very last moment.

She couldn't extend herself the same grace that, deep down, she knew Abel would have given her.

This was uncharted territory for Chevelle. Even with the few men she had dated unseriously, she had never spent the night with any of them. And usually, she didn't want to spend the night with people, so it wasn't much of a problem. It was an easy decision to make. Yesterday though, it had been painful to leave. It felt like she was tearing herself away—forcing herself to leave him for reasons that she couldn't even remember anymore. And now that they were meeting up so early in the morning anyway, it felt quite pointless.

Last night, all Chevelle could think about as she laid awake in her bed was how peaceful it had been inside Abel's embrace. How she would sleep like a baby every night if only she could feel his skin on her skin. His heartbeat by her heartbeat.

"Uhm...I slept okay, I guess," she finally said, not sure how to explain the truth in a way that didn't sound crazy. "You?"

Abel shrugged. "I slept alright," he said. "Would've been better if you were there, but hey."

Chevelle smiled. "Yeah," she agreed. "I'm glad you're here now though. Thanks for coming to get me."

"Anytime. Although, I didn't have much of a choice," he said, chuckling softly. "On the phone, you sounded...not okay."

Chevelle rolled her eyes. "Yeah...rough morning," she muttered.

"What happened?"

"Honestly nothing," she said, shaking her head. "Sorry, I don't really want to talk about it."

She was still getting to know Abel, and she didn't want to scare him away by admitting that she sometimes had raging violent impulses such as the one she'd had that morning. Granted, most of the time they happened, it was in response to Jared and his fuckery, but still. She would keep this information on a need-to-know basis.

Abel nodded, not pressing the matter any further as he shifted the car into drive. It felt like every five minutes he had to keep reminding himself that he had only met this girl a week ago. That there was still so much he didn't know about her, and that getting her to open up to him about those things would take time. Time that they didn't necessarily have since she would be leaving his city in only a few days.

It had been on his mind ever since she'd agreed to extend her stay.

She could extend it for a week, but what happened after that? After they'd spent that week getting to know each other even better. After they'd grown even closer. Eventually, she would still have to leave, and he couldn't go with her. He had a job here—a life here. And ten days wasn't enough time to warrant them keeping in touch once she was gone, was it?

The things Abel had begun to feel for her ran deep. So deep that it scared him. But he had no idea how she felt about him past the physical stuff. He knew that she liked him, that she enjoyed being around him, but how much? Was it enough to keep him on her mind even when they were apart? Because looking as scrumptious as she did—being as funny and as interesting as she was—it was only a matter of time before she met someone else. And he couldn't in good conscience ask her to deny herself of something good just because he wasn't sure if he could get over her. Just because, even after having his heart broken so many times, he was still a hopeless romantic. Still believing in a true love that he had yet to find.

They drove back to Abel's house where he washed up and emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later looking like he had fallen straight from the cover of GQ. It really wasn't fair how gorgeous he was. Looking at him was like a spiritual experience for Chevelle.

Abel caught her staring as he opened up the curtains and he smiled to himself, enjoying the feeling of her eyes on him. The way they gave away exactly what she was thinking. Exactly how much she wanted him. And it felt good to be wanted, especially by her. By someone that felt so elusive to him—like a mystery most days. It felt good to be sure of how she felt about him, even if just for that fleeting moment.

"Have you eaten yet?" Abel asked.

Chevelle shook her head. "No," she said, before quickly adding, "Well, I started to...but no."

Abel smiled. "Good," he said. "I want to take you somewhere."

"Where?"

"It's a surprise."

And so Abel finished dressing up, and when he was done, he led Chevelle back to his car and drove them into the city, to his favorite bakery—an old Chinese place that had been in the city longer than most of the current residents had been alive. Chevelle was a little skeptical at first since she had never heard of this place, and from the outside, it didn't look like much, but when she bit into her mooncake, she had an out-of-body experience.

She was moaning so loud that she got some weird looks from the other patrons, but she couldn't help it. And Abel just watched her with a smug, knowing smile on his lips. He'd been there.

They took their pastries and their boba outside with them as they walked along the city streets that were strangely sparse for this time of year. It was brisk outside, but thanks to global warming—a.k.a. capitalism—it was bearable. And as they walked around, just talking and enjoying the cool weather, they lost track of time. Before long, they realized that they had walked almost four miles and were just a few minutes away from Le Château Moelleux, so they decided to head there and pick up Chevelle's car.

It wasn't until they were standing beside Chevelle's Saturn in the restaurant parking lot that she realized her keys weren't in her pockets. She'd left them in her bag. Which was all the way back in Abel's car.

And it was at exactly that moment that they felt the first drops of rain begin to fall from the sky.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Chevelle demanded, smacking the hood of her car and then wincing from the pain.

"Hey, it's okay," Abel said, taking her hand in his, worried she would hurt herself if he didn't. "Let's just go back to my car."

"It's already drizzling," Chevelle said. "Even if we ran—which I'm not doing—we'd be soaked by the time we got there."

Abel sighed, knowing she was right. He looked around. "Why don't we wait out the rain in the restaurant?" he suggested.

Chevelle looked from the restaurant doors back to her car, thinking for a moment. And then she had an idea. "Do you have a paper clip on you?" she asked.

"A paper clip?"

She nodded, extending her hand and motioning for him to hurry it up.

"I..." Abel frowned, feeling around in his pockets. He pulled out his wallet, which was perpetually a mess—full of way more cards and scraps of paper than he would ever need. And it was just his luck that within that mess of papers was a rusted paper clip. He handed it to Chevelle.

"Thanks," she said, taking it from him and walking over to the trunk of her car. She straightened it out and then bent the tip into a hook, and before Abel realized what she was doing, she was already working away at the lock, a hyper-focused expression on her face.

After about twenty seconds of messing around with it, there was a loud click, and the trunk popped open. Chevelle let out a deep breath and placed her hands on her hips, a satisfied smile on her face as she admired her job well done.

Abel looked completely taken aback as he stared at her with a dropped jaw. "Why do you know how to do that?" he asked.

Chevelle shrugged. "Practice," she said. And when she looked up and saw the astonished expression on Abel's face, she burst into laughter. "Don't worry, my car's the only one I know how to do this with," she assured him. "The locks are shitty, hence why it gets broken into all the time."

Abel nodded slowly, but he still looked a bit disconcerted as he watched Chevelle squeeze into her trunk and shimmy her way up to the front seat. She opened the passenger door for him and he climbed in, grateful for the refuge from the rain.

He blew warm air into his palms and then rubbed them together. "So why not just break in through the front door?" he asked.

"The alarm is weird," Chevelle said as she reached over to rummage through the glove compartment. "I didn't want to risk it going off and have someone call the police on us."

"True, but how do you plan to dr—"

Chevelle pulled out a screwdriver, a pair of gloves, and some wire-cutters from the cubby, and just as Abel had regained his composure from watching her pick the lock in the trunk, his jaw dropped again. He wasn't sure exactly what Chevelle was going to do with all those tools, but from all the action movies he'd seen throughout his life, he could take a pretty good guess.

Chevelle began to unscrew the bolts in the dashboard, and Abel watched silently, not saying anything partly because he didn't want to break her focus, but also because he too had been sucked in by the intense concentration. Once the screws were all out, Chevelle used the screwdriver to pry open the dashboard around the ignition, and then she gently eased off the entire steering column.

She placed it atop the dashboard, and Abel looked from the plastic panel to the exposed wires around the ignition, stunned.

Chevelle glanced over at him amusedly. "This is a very old car," she said, answering his unasked question. "It's died on me before, so I've had to do this many times."

"Oh," was all Abel could say as he watched Chevelle put on her gloves and begin to snip away at the wires. He wanted to say more, but the only thing he could think of in that moment was how strangely sexy he found it that she knew how to hotwire a car—even if the car was 'old and shitty' like she insisted.

It was just refreshing to meet someone that constantly had new surprises for him. Abel never really knew what to expect when it came to Chevelle, and he liked that. He liked that she was different from all the other people in his life. The way she kept him on his toes. And it was oddly comforting to see how resourceful she was—to know that if he ever got lost with her, though unlikely, they would surely be okay.

Chevelle took a deep breath. "Okay, moment of truth," she said.

Carefully, she brought together the exposed ends of two of the wires, and as soon as they touched each other, the car revved to life. A smile lit up her face, and Abel was transfixed.

Chevelle reached into the center console and pulled out an almost-finished roll of tape. She cut off two small pieces and used the tape to cover the exposed ends of the wires. When she was done, she turned on the seat warmers and looked over at Abel with a smile, chuckling when she saw his dumbfounded, yet impressed expression.

"Ta-da," she said, doing some jazz hands for dramatic effect.

Abel began a slow clap. "Wow," he said. "That was very impressive."

Chevelle laughed, tipping her imaginary hat to him. "Thank you," she said. "This was my first time with an audience."

With a chuckle, Abel asked, "So what happens now?"

Chevelle shrugged. "We can drive somewhere pretty? Wait out the rain there?"

"What about your car though? Won't you have to get it fixed after this?"

Waving a dismissive hand, Chevelle said, "Yeah, but I have a friend back home who's a mechanic. He can replace the ignition for me. It should be able to run like this for at least a few days."

And so, they decided to take her car up to the park. Chevelle went there often, but it was the prettiest place in the whole city, and thus, the only option when one was looking for an escape around these parts.

Since it was raining quite heavily, the park was empty, and so they went on the driving trail and parked the car somewhere at the highest point of the road. The water was rushing down the windows and the entirety of the outside world was a blur, but it was a beautiful blur. Like a Monet. Where you could see the colors and the shapes just enough to spark that emotion inside of you. To make you feel.

"So..." Chevelle held out the aux cord. "Would you like to do the honors?"