Omkar dueled with the branches of the trees and bushes in order to get back to a main road without being seen. Instead of immediately calling a cab, he sat down on a curb, letting the hum of the cars pass by him. He had assumed that Aria had stolen the pack of tampons because of some habitual pattern of defiant rule-breaking. He had expected to follow her to some suburban home which belonged to two parents, much like his own, whose rules were strung too tight for her to breathe. So tight that she had to break rules somehow, even if they never knew that she had broken them. But that was not what was happening at all. It was clear to him that she had stolen the tampons because she literally had to.

Omkar didn’t know what to do. He loved her even more now. He was conscious of loving her when the thought of loving her more now crossed his mind. He was in love with this girl, who he knew almost nothing about, a girl he had never officially met. He wanted to go back and rescue her, but take her where? And what if she didn’t like him? What if the way she looked at him was just a strategy to be able to steal what she needed to live?

When Omkar finally did call a cab to go home, he did his best to memorize the route between the car lot and his family’s store. It felt so wrong to leave her there that as he was driving away, every cell in his body revolted. One day the minutes of his boring life had been ticking away and now, he could not fall back in line with those minutes. His mind was possessed with the image of her and all the unanswered questions he had about her.

Totally unaware of her new admirer, Aria smoked a cigarette, hoping that it would alleviate the pain of her cramps. She cracked the door open so as to not submerge them both in smoke and leaned against it.

“You shouldn’t be doin’ that,” Taylor said from the front passenger seat.

At first Aria thought he was referring to the cigarette she was smoking. “Dude, I’m fucked right now, could you just get off my back?” she said.

“No. Fuck it!” Taylor yelled, turning around with tears in his eyes. “She’s not good company and you don’t need her fucking up your life too. You don’t need to go doin’ things with her like that.”

It took Aria a second to realize that he was referring to Ciarra and her one-time attempt at hooking.