Page 114 of Antihero

She said, “I understand.”

He walked out.

44Impossible Balance

Overcooked asparagus and rubber chicken roiled in Evan’s gut. He moved into the parking lot, cut behind the row of stores and restaurants to the west, and barfed in front of a dumpster.

Hand in front of his mouth like an idiot, spewing everywhere, like he’d never cleared bad food from his system before. Splattering his shirt, his arm, his stupid fancy boots, everything a mess. It was thundering in his ears, sensation and knowing—how profoundly he didn’t fit here, anywhere, how lacking he was to encounter the world on its actual terms. He’d been designed wrong, sharpened and tempered like a sword, sent into the worst of humanity as a thing of destruction, and there was no coming back from that, no reentry into the embrace of community.

Ripping his shirt off, he wiped himself down, blew acidic chunks from his nose, cleared his throat, and spit and spit again. Despite the night chill, he was hot, steam rising off his bare shoulders, his mind a roaring furnace of his countless shortcomings. Melodramatic urges surged up in him—punch the side of the dumpster, throw a rock through the back window of the gelato shop, scream and rip his hair out from the roots.

Instead he blew his nose again into his shirt, tossed it into the dumpster, and started walking for home. It was almost precisely the distance of a marathon, an easy walk if the cold didn’t catch up to him, and worst case he could summon an Uber if the driver would stop for a shirtless guy who smelled like puke.

He started off along the weedy shoulder of a frontage road. Behind a ridge of scraggly bushes and a guardrail to his left, the 101 raced by, red and white streaks of high beams and brake lights.

He sensed the crackle of car tires behind him and prayed it was a crew of assholes looking to rough someone up. Blading his body, profile glance over his shoulder.

An Acura.

Fuck.

Mia crept level with him. He kept walking, didn’t look over.

The frontage road was dark and empty, just the two of them crawling along.

“Evan.”

He ignored her. The cold bit at him now, skin pulling taut across his ribs. He tried not to shudder. Lost in the weakness of emotion, he felt like he was thirteen years old.

“Evan. Get in.”

He kept walking. Shame burned his face. He had no skills for this, no contingency plan, no idea what to say.

“You’re shirtless behind a Denny’s,” Mia said. “Get in. Don’t be a snowflake.”

He could not concede any of the stated facts. He was in fact shirtless behind a Denny’s. And the fact that the babe- just-get-in-the-car situation had gender-flipped wasn’t lost on him.

The Acura matched his pace.

“Evan,” she said again.

“I got you,” she said. “I got you, okay?”

“Get in,” she said.

“Evan,” she said.

“Evan,” she said.

“Nowhere Man.”

He halted.

At first he wasn’t certain he’d heard her right. A trick of the wind, a whisper from his subconscious, a murmur escaping the bewilderment swirling inside him. It was impossible that she knew this, that she knew him.

All of a sudden everything was crisp. The whine of passing vehicles, the bob of the pollution-coated branches, the shine of diffuse light off the hood of her car.

“What did you say?”