breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs (sprinkled with green peppers and cubes of ham), toast, bacon, and orange juice.

two plates. gabe ate quickly.

the girl was asleep in his bed. they had sex for the second time last night before his meeting with sexboy, but now she had to go. (there existed a layer of MIND crammed between gabe’s internal monologue and his subconscious desires. it was a place where TRUTH often mulled, trying every so often to break the barrier into consciousness. it was inside this limbo that gabe knew the reason he let jules worm her way into his final days. it wasn’t because he wanted to live; even at the deepest levels of heart and mind, he truly wanted to die. he kept her around to feed the creature. the last twelve months was spent disemboweling sentiment and mauling sympathy, but the little man was still alive; panting, shrinking, suckling every condolence or affirmation—however insignificant—offered by the girl.)

he walked across the room with the tray on his palm, then opened the door and set it on the hallway carpet. mom would get it later.

back at his bed, he prodded jules in the side with his finger. “get up,” he said. “it’s time for you to go.”

she replied without a stir, “if you want me to leave, you’ll have to kill me too.”

*  *  *

sarah would get the candy. gabe would get the bread.

jules couldn’t switch off OBNOXIOUS for thirty seconds. “michigan has the worst economy out of all fifty states,” she said. “but the grand harbor bread company is hiring?” she pointed to the help-wanted sign in the window.

the chimes jangled violently, signaling a whale behind the counter. “what a cute couple!” she said, her tomatoey jowls wobbling with every word. “our apple-cinnamon bread just came out of the oven. would ya’ll like a sample?”

before gabe could order, jules piped up. “the sign says you’re hiring?”

“yes, ma’am, we certainly are!”

gabe ignored the peripheral conversation. “i’ll have a loaf of blueberry bread.”

“it’s a great place to work,” said the whale (ignoring his simple fucking request.) “friendly atmosphere, flexible hours... and it always smells like home!”

jules rolled her eyes. “serving bread isn’t exactly his thing. gabe’s an artist. a GOOD artist. you should see his work.”

“an artist?” said the whale as she turned to gabe. “can you draw and paint?”

“i’d really just like a loaf of blueberry,” he said again.

“what a miracle! i’ve been trying to design a new brochure for months, but i don’t have the time or talent to do it right. and this place needs a new logo; something we can stamp on the bags. also, our window paintings are a little dreary, don’t you think? i’m usually the one who gets to stencil the bread and butter and nativity at christmas time, but i would ADORE professional input from a real artist! i’d pay more, too.”

“nice!” jules said, nudging him in the side. “you could totally do that. think it’s something you’d be interested in?”

“i’m interested in blueberry bread.”

the whale looked at jules, then back at him. “i’m sorry, hon,” she said softly. “we’re out of blueberry.”

gabe pounded his fist on the glass counter. “you always have it on—”

“i can put it on the menu for tomorrow. just for you. if you come back...”

gabe spun around, blew past jules, and barreled through the door with another rattle of those fucking chimes.

*  *  *

the dune’s hair-flapping breeze and approaching black clouds disgraced sarah’s memory nearly as much as the lack of blueberry bread.

jules leaned against the platform’s rail and gazed across the overcast town.

“you think you’re better than me,” gabe said.

“what?”

“you’re all TOGETHER. you’re always cheerful and sweet; making friends with my dad, trying to boost my self-esteem, calling meaningless sex ‘making love’... you come into my life—you know NOTHING about me—and you try to force me to change. you think it’ll make you feel good to AT LEAST say you tried. then you can move on to the next depressed stranger and beg them to live the same perfect life that you have.”

“i hurt people,” she said, brushing a blonde streak from her eye. “in the worst-possible ways.”

“how?”

“...i can’t tell you.”

“fascinating story, jules. oh, and one other note about tonight; if anybody finds out about this... my parents, the cops, my shrink... i’m taking you down with me. understand?”

*  *  *

(when his eyes were closed and his reality became the sound of crashing waves and laughing children, gabe could see her again, laughing too, splashing a thousand crystalline beads of water to pay him back for the flecks of tossed mud that dotted her arm.)

*  *  *

gabe ordered the bleu-cheese burger and a cherry coke. “and she’ll have the caesar salad with light dressing, no chicken, and extra croutons.”

outside the restaurant’s window, a rusty ford pickup plowed through the puddles and gabe wondered if sexboy decided to stick around for the day.

he made sure the dinner conversation was kept to a minimum by hushing jules whenever she opened her yap. in the sporadic moments that his mind broke from its series of digressions like a family of russian nesting dolls, he found himself eyeing the girl like he eyed every girl before that night. her freckles were pretty, bridging the top of her nose and rounding the rise and fall of adorable cheekbones. her eyes were brown. sarah’s eyes had been brown too. an over-dressed pimple nestled in the corner of her mouth; another imperfection that separated GIRLS LIKE THIS from the girl he loved.

a woman at the bar caught gabe’s attention as he sipped his coke. some pressing detail in her appearance hounded him as she overtook the counter (and nearby patrons) with her ample melons and tangerine dress cropped six inches above the knee. in the background, he heard the girl whining, asking if he was okay. but gabe couldn’t remove his eyes from the hair-strangled LOBE OF EAR mounted on the head of this forty-something MILF.

the stud, he thought and pushed back his chair. gabe ignored jules’ revolting concern and moseyed to an open stool on the woman’s right. “i’ll pay fifty bucks for your earring,” he said. 

she (an obvious cougar trapped in a town that didn’t know the term) widened one eye at gabe’s audacity, then unhooked the jewel-like stud from her ear, balled it in the safety of her fist, and laid her hand in gabe’s open palm. “keep your money,” she purred. “it’s a gift.” she unclasped her fingers to complete the transaction and gabe pursed his lips—so subtlety that a lesser woman may have missed it—in appreciation. 

“what was that?” jules asked when he returned to his seat. she didn’t flinch when gabe raised his hand to her face, but scrunched her eyes and crinkled her nose as if she was preparing to be raped.

his fingers scuffed the powdered surface of her nose and held the stud in place. to his surprise, she already had a piercing in her left nostril. he pinched the silver clasp from the back of the earring and dropped it to the floor.

jules winced as he pressed the point inside.

“open your eyes,” he said and withdrew his hand.

the bud of a single tear emerged from the crease of her left eye.

“jules,” he said again, “open your eyes.”

she obeyed.

gabe’s attention flicked between her irises (so like HERS) and the jewel in her nose.

“what is it?” sarah whispered.

“nothing,” he said.

her arm spanned the table and touched his wrist. “tell me...”

gabe mixed the cherry flavor from the bottom of his drink to the upper layer of coke and ice. “have you ever reached for your soda but grabbed a water instead?”

“i guess so,” she said. “why?”

“there’s nothing wrong with water, but when you’re expecting soda, it’s disgusting.”

gabe’s insult was punctuated by the night’s first bolt of lightning. the patrons “oo”ed at the flash and flinched at the corresponding cackle of thunder while others ducked inside to escape the vicious downpour.