He cracks the High Life open and motherfuck champagne—cold beer is exquisite and everything. An electric fizz rinses his insides. That first gulp gets him feeling so mighty that he could shoulder press this dumpster and hurl it over the car wash stall, just because. He is capable of insolent and supernatural feats, like walking on water or bringing back the dead. Maybe he already has. He adjusts his stance, compressing the inches between them down to a switchblade tension. A nervous chuckle escapes her.

She lifts the joint. “Want a hit?”

He’s always been a sucker for uppers, so weed isn’t really his thing. However, feeling this immense and powerful and owed a celebration, he accepts.

The hit he takes is overzealous, greedy, and the exact opposite of the beer. A volcanic skunk blast scalds the branches and capillaries of his lungs then sputters through the rest of him. Holding his breath, he is a clogged exhaust pipe. The trapped fumes syphon into a blinding pang, before clawing out of his throat and nostrils in a fit of smoky snorts and coughs. When his knees buckle, he’s brought eye level to this pretty little devil.

She drags then swallows a hit elegantly. Her voice sounds submerged when she asks if he’s all right.

“Never better,” he gasps.

“Fooled me.”

By the time the ember reaches the card stock filter, their eyelids sag ruddy. The gas station, vehicles, streets, power lines, plains, and people waiting beyond their shady corner all cease to exist. The world entire is here and her and him.

Yet their talk is itsy-bitsy. Their laughter is bashful, their chemistry pure. Cozy and cool in the shadows, they now inhale and sigh in perfect unison, and it’s fucking hilarious. They rattle with delirious mirth. But when she plugs her cackles with gnawed cuticles, a chilling recognition fires barbs down Henry’s spine. Right before him, a ghost takes flesh—Michelle.

His senses backfire with a resplendent boom. His skull reels as the world beyond their enclave yanks back into being, everything deafening and suffocating so tight against him yet just out of reach.

How Henry’s missed Michelle. Grieved her. Her shadow teeth and grindstone voice. Her citrus scent clinging to their bedsheets. The gentle stab of her shoulder blades into his chest. All their secrets and stories and jokes. Their home, their refuge of warmth and plenty. Plenty enough they’d gathered and shared to keep their family safe, fed, and warm, and so plenty more than he’d ever deserved.