LOGAN

I was high. I realized this while I was looking at the girl next to me. Laying on her back, blonde hair spilled out behind her, her eyes open and staring at the sky. I smiled. She was pretty, pretty like those girls in the magazines Elijah hid under his bed, the magazines I found when I was nine, and introduced myself to jacking off. I thanked him for that anyway. She opened her eyes, and pushed herself to her hands.

"What's your name?" She asked me.

"Logan Miller." I told her. I saw her raise an eyebrow. 

"You play hockey." She remarked. I did not play Hockey, I was the captain of the hockey team, years and years of effort, and work that had made me more than a hockey player. But I decided to set aside my normally douchebag attitude and remember the girl had just lost her parents. I bit my tongue.

"Yeah."

"I'm Aurora." She said, sitting all the way up. She ran a hand through her hair. Now, seeing her face illuminated in the city lights, mixed with moonlight I thought of how pretty she really was. Suddenly, recognition flickered into my stoned brain.

"I know your brother, Grayson. He used to play, before he graduated." I told her. Grayson Taylor, had been a star hockey player. He'd been captain before me, and when he graduated I spent most time being captain, trying to measure up to the sheer sickness that he was. I smiled remembering him.

"He's in the hospital." She said. I sucked in air. I thought the loss of my brother was hard on me, but I felt a pang of empathy for her. Which I didn't feel, for most people anyway. I blamed the weed. 

"Jesus Fuck, what haven't you been through?" I griped. She laughed a little. 

"Have you ever lost the thing that meant the most to you in your life?" She asked. I was mildly surprised at the question. As if we weren't strangers, who knew of each other vaguely. But I nodded, grinding out the last bit of my joint.

"Yeah. My brother died yesterday. He was 20." I told her. I wasn't particularly sure why I decided to tell my life story to a girl I barely knew, no matter how pretty I thought she was. The loss, was probably the only thing we shared. That, and I used to know her brother. I shook my head, trying to clear the high from my head. 

"Fuck, how?" She asked. She took another drink from her flask. I inwardly grinned, to me, she didn't seem like a drinker, or a smoker. But I didn't know much about her, scratch that. I didn't know anything about her. 

"Drug overdose. But he's been like that since fifteen. Five years of my parents paying for rehab, wilderness therapy, private schools, they tried everything." I explained. She offered me the flask. I took it gratefully, when I took a drink it was straight tequila and it burned my throat. I handed it back to her. She looked like she was going to say something but then I spoke:

"He didn't die yesterday, he died years ago. To me anyway, the second he stopped being my brother, stopped being my parents son. So to me, he's been dead. I did the grieving." I added. She nodded.

"Does it ever stop, hurting? You know, does time really heal?" She asked. I wish I could tell her that, for me I became a heartless motherfucker for no good reason, and the only things I loved were hockey and bitches, but that was bullshit and even I knew that. I did care, and I still did and I hated myself for it.

"No, but you numb the pain with vices. Weed, Alcohol..." I made a gesture to her flask and she grinned.

"And sex." I added. I saw color appearing in her cheeks and felt an inward sort of pleasure, why I wasn't particularly sure.

"To be honest, this is my first time really drinking, or smoking. I don't do it, but I thought it would make me feel better." She said. I knew that feeling. 

"Experimenting?" I asked her, although I already knew the answer. 

"Yeah, things other kids do. I guess, I never was really like that. I mean, never drank, smoked, had sex." She said. 

"You like it? Now that you've tried it?" I asked. She nodded, laughing.

"It's making me happy so, I guess so." She remarked. I looked at her again, registering the rest of her body. She was wearing a black crop top, and jeans. She was thin, and when I looked back up at her face she had a look of curiosity on it. Like she was going to say something she didn't want to.

"I guess all that's left for me to try is sex." 

"Hey no stress, got the rest of your life to practice self destructive coping mechanisms." I said, although I wanted to say something along the lines of: "I wanna fuck the shit out of you." But I bit my tongue for the second time that night. After all, now was probably not the time to hit on a girl I barely knew. 

She handed me the flask, and our fingers touched, I didn't pull away. Her eyes drifted to mine. Like we had the same fucked up idea in our heads.