“From the moment I walked in and saw you, I knew you were a flight risk.”

She gives him a little shove. He inhales her rosy breath, the tequila in her cup.

“That’s my drink,” he says.

“What?”

“Stop what. The Happy Couple.”

“Without the fizzy whatever, yeah.”

“How did you—”

“I poured myself some before I—”

“And carried one cup of it here to sit on a log for hours? You did fucking not.”

“Look,” Padgett says. “I’m sure we can find things to agree on.”

He reaches to his neck, and for a blurry moment Padgett thinks he’s going to strangle himself, but he just loosens his tie. She finishes her cup. The liquor is warm, the rose flavor a little curdly. But the world keeps spinning, the only way she can stand it.

“What happened to you?” he has asked her.

“I told you,” she tells him. “I quit. I split. They paid me already.”

“But what’s your story that you’re here like this?”

“Maybe I just hate this goddamn intersection.”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah well, maybe I do. I had a friend who drove me home.”

She expects him to say “What are you talking about?” but he just says, “Home?” Barmen are used to talking to drunks.

“Home. Most nights in high school. You know? When we all, a movie, or just someone’s house.”

“OK, I get it.”

“Nobody did. You probably don’t. He was the responsible, driver’s license, seat belt, always sober.”

“I’ve met that type.”

“Yeah, that was the problem. Because, you won’t guess, I wasn’t, always. Sober.”

“It’s too dark for you to see my astonished face.”

Padgett’s arm rises, as if to shove him, before knocking back into place. “Every Saturday at least, most Fridays or whatever. And every time he would pull over two blocks from my house.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah. And try to kiss me, and he would unzip his pants and put my hand on it.”

“The fucker,” Martin says.

“So ugly, the stuff he said. And I would grab, I always remember, the door handle, with the other hand, and I would run out, and down the two blocks thinking he would chase me. He never did. And I would sit on my front yard breathing hard and chewing gum.”

“Gum?”

“For my breath. I was in high school. And then Monday it would be normal, and the week, and the weekend seeing my friends and it would happen all over again.”

It is his cue, Padgett dreads, to say “Why didn’t you tell someone?” or “Couldn’t you get another ride home?” or “I guess he had a crush on you, it’s sort of sad, really.”

But Martin just, staring down at his own knees invisible in the woods, says to Padgett, “Well, that’s awful.”