Page 74 of Such Sharp Teeth

“Love you, too.”

I hold her. I’ve wanted her to leave ever since she got here, but now that she’s leaving, I want her to stay. I don’t understand it. Our relationship is a hydra. It has too many heads.

“I’ll be back soon,” she says, kissing my cheek.

Scarlett walks around to the driver’s side. She’s got a funny gait, and she wears a sour face. She doesn’t acknowledge me.

They’re in the car, and then they’re gone again. I’m alone. The most alone.

My phone vibrates, and for a second I allow myself to want it to be Ian. Sure, I haven’t responded to him all week, but maybe he can sense it’s because I’m really going through it, and he’ll tell me not to worry, everything’s cool, and maybe also reveal he has a fur kink. I don’t know. Something, anything, to absolve me of doubt so I can continue to pursue this relationship. Because I wish he were here right now. I miss him. I really fucking miss him.

But it isn’t Ian.

It’s Mia. I pick up.

“You want to get into some trouble?”

—

“Stop apologizing,” she says.

I sit on the passenger side of her van. It’s one of those glam travel vans. She decked out the inside with a bed and a kitchenette, colorful wallpaper, excessive succulents. A Pinterest wet dream. It smells strongly of gardenia, an obscenely powerful floral scent that burns my nostrils.

“You know I don’t give a shit.”

“Yeah, but still,” I say.

I didn’t have it in me to get changed, to put on real clothes. I threw on my camel coat over my sweats and Zeppelin tee, rolled on some perfume, brushed my hair, but there’s no disguising that I’m a mess.

“I doubt this is what you had in mind.”

She blows a raspberry. “Please. It’s not like there are any hot clubs we could hit up. I’m good doing what we used to do. Driving around and making our own mischief.”

“Remember the senior prank?”

“Our best, I think.”

I watch her as she drives. There’s something different about her. More subdued. Maybe it’s her makeup? The lack of false lashes and contour? It somehow makes her look both younger and older. Innocent and exhausted. She wears a pair of painted-on jeans and a fuzzy sweater.

She takes us to our old spot, a decommissioned train station at the edge of town. It’s not a romantic place. A squat utilitarian building chained up to prevent break-ins, and behind it a platform, neglected, left to the slow creep of nature. Mia and I used to come out here and smoke cigarettes and drink beer and smash our bottles on the tracks, a small act of defiance, of destruction, a slice of heaven for two teenage girls who found power in rebellion.

“I’ve got a pack of cigarettes and a pack of beer,” she says. “We’re about to time travel.”

We wade through weeds to get around the building and out to the platform, which is pretty much as we left it. Mia takes out two beers, opens them, then hands me one.

“To us,” she says.

“Cheers.”

We clink our bottles.

“Now,” she says, “tell me everything about your life.”

I laugh.

“For real! I want to know. All of it.”

I give her the CliffsNotes of the last decade. College. MBA. Life in the city. My friends. My job. I give her the highlight reel of all my hookups. I don’t tell her about the werewolf stuff, obviously. And for some reason I don’t tell her about Ian.