| CHAPTER FOUR |

Your car is a convertible, disgusting in its fuel inefficiency. A CD churning out Chopin's nocturne's lives within the radio, suffocatingly mellow as you drive at over double the speed limit. The streets are deserted and I count each freckle that dots your face. There is a cluster at the cut of your cheek, broken only by a singular yellowing bruise. I reach out and touch it before I can stop myself and you laugh.

"You fight much?"

I shake my head, then remember you can't see me. "No."

"Fucking missing out then." You click your tongue, yank your shirt free of the border of your jeans. Flesh is exposed to my eyes, a side covered in thick bruising and healing scraps. "Nothing like pounding the shit out of another guy on a Friday night. I'm not a fan of blood and guts on the silver screen, but something but the sight on my bare hands brings a little more meaning to the slog of everyday living."

"You've been in town for less than a week and you're already causing trouble?" I arch a brow, shifting my eyes back to the windscreen.

The street-lamps are dim, dotted every other few feet. Houses are stooped low, as though waiting for a flood to just rip them from their foundations and from their own misery. I lick the backs of my knuckles then roll them against the knot in my neck. Too many nights spent awake, thinking about these very moments. The chills come back and for a moment I think I am going to hurl. Then your hand lands on my thigh, squeezing and kneading at the muscle a little too high up for public viewing and I relax. You live fourteen blocks from downtown.

I can make it.