🐇 🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇

All you knew was that you woke up in someone else’s blood. Your tongue burned with the bitter metallic taste. You were thankful that you could never remember your episodes. The faces stayed featureless and unnamed. The screams and choking sounds of them gurgling on their own blood were muffled, leaving nothing but the call of a mourning dove in their wake. You couldn’t remember your own hunger, your own sick, depraved desperation. When you waited too long to feed, everything blurred, which was good for your conscience but not good for your ability to be in control. With your parents gone, you were alone. You had to fend for yourself. 

This was the second feed since your parents had left. The first time, you followed their protocol as if they were still there, keeping you in check, but then the Afterward came, and you had to clean up by yourself and see the mess you created. You resolved to keep the hunger down for as long as you could after that. But this was what happened when you waited.

You weren’t sure how long you'd been out. An episode like this always knocked you out for a while—another reason to keep your hunger in check. There was no way to flee the scene in case some unlucky person came by to investigate the strange noises. 

It was a young man, you think, lying next to you. His body was horribly desecrated, unrecognizable. You likely tried to seduce him, whispered sweet nothings into his ear, told him to follow you into the woods, promising pleasure. It was a trick that always worked, becoming a habit. Of course you’d be able to reenact the motions even in the foggy haze of hunger. 

In your state of delirium, you had made a mess of your clothes and your face. You took whatever clean fabric was left on the man to try to wipe away the crimson stains on your skin. You pinched your nose at the bitter, spoiled smell of the man. Flesh gone bad. It was the smell of an unhealthy man, a man who tainted his body with one too many drugs in his system for a long period of time, whose liver no longer worked at full capacity, toxifying his blood. Normally, people smelled bitter, but not in this way, where it stung the back of your throat. They smelled fuller, smoother, mineral-like. It wasn’t a particularly good smell, but it would make your mouth water if you were in the right mood.

Once clean, you cleared the area around the body, robotic, emotionless, surrounding him with all the rocks you could find. It took several tries to start the fire, but when the amber of ember danced in front of your eyes, you peeled your bloodied shirt off and watched the flames consume it. 

It wasn’t safe to stay at home anymore, so as soon as you stalked up the gravel driveway to your house and swung the door open, you packed a backpack within a few minutes, stuffing wads of cash in between the soles of your shoes and more into various pockets. It’s muted brown corduroy sagging under the weight of several changes of clothes, unperishables, and the few toiletries you scavenged from your bathroom. You didn’t feel sentimental about this house, having moved so many times due to unfortunate incident after unfortunate incident. Usually, your parents would take charge. They’d shove a bag into your hands and say, “Pack everything you can, we need to be out of here in ten minutes.” It wasn’t always your fault, at least. Sometimes your mother or father tried to extend the time they needed to feed. Push their luck. You’d watch their eyes darken to black as they sat across from you at the dinner table. It was hard to eat those nights. All food tasted like dirt when you knew you could be the next meal if you didn’t find a substitute quickly enough. 

This day was a long time coming if you were being honest with yourself. Running away was inevitable. You were fated to either live a life flying across state borders, avoiding the feds, or being locked away, imprisoned by aluminum bars and thick, padded gloves. There was a third option. You tried to shake the thought, shuddering as if you could slip it off your shoulders and never carry the weight of it again. Was it worth it to live like this? 

You walked out the front door with eyes glazed, your face expressionless, aside from lines of tears that streamed down your cheeks. You couldn’t feel them anymore.

Disconnected from everything and everyone, you decided to set off on foot for Nowhere, USA, utterly aimless with nothing but a few pairs of underwear and a toothbrush to your name. Maybe you’d finally find something worth living for on the way.

—

After walking for several miles, finally managing to make it out of your rural purgatory, you found yourself standing right off the highway, face to face with a large, flickering neon sign reading Bailey’s Diner, Open 24/7. Your stomach let out an obnoxiously loud growl as the scent of syrup and bacon grease wafted through the air. 

The booth groaned when you slid across the vinyl padding, pressing your body up against the window. It was late. Exceptionally late. Everyone there was either miserably tired at a rest stop from their road trip, or a truck driver on their midnight break. 

You were lost in your own thoughts of self-pity and torment until a big, beefy man threw the diner doors open, shaking the walls as he walked inside. He stalked up to the counter, incessantly ringing the bell to get the waitress’s attention.

“Would you shut the fuck up? She’s clearly talking to someone right now,” a boy shouted over the bell chimes. He had floppy black curly hair and wore what looked like a woman’s blouse—a loose button-up with pink floral patterns. When you focused on him, the first thing you noticed was his smell. It was prominent, not like anyone else’s you’d met. It was sweet, like vanilla.

The gruff, older man was about to shout a retort back had the waitress not interrupted. 

“What can I get for you?” Her voice was loud. Confident. She’s dealt with these types of men before.

“Coffee. Black,” the man grunted. 

She nodded, heading to turn away to prepare his order when his hand reached forward across the counter, grabbing her wrist. She spun her head around, eyes widening with panic for a split second before regaining her composure.

“Would you let go?” She commanded quietly. But his grip stayed firm. He mumbled something to her that you couldn’t hear.

“Hey, let the girl go,” the boy with the curly hair had hopped off his stool, heading over. The waitress raised her hand, silently telling him to stop there, not wanting to create any more of a commotion. That would only make things worse, and people’s heads were already turning. 

“Fucking fairy,” The man snorted a laugh, his grasp staying firm on the waitress’s wrist.

“I’m serious,” the boy said, walking closer. Despite being smaller than the man, the boy’s voice was strong, and he held his head high. Even you were a bit intimidated.  

The older man stood up, letting go of the woman’s arm violently, throwing it aside as if it weren’t attached to anything. “You wanna fucking fight?” He slurred. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Not looking away, the boy fished into his pocket, picking out a few dollars—an exorbitant amount given that he was only sipping from a small coffee before—and tossed them on the counter for the waitress before sauntering out of the diner. You thought for a second that he might be running away, but he turned around to face the man, holding his arms out in a way that said come at me. 

The man gave a guttural growl as he stomped in the boy’s direction. When he got outside, the boy ran. There was a playful smile on his face, though, when he looked back to see if he was being followed. This was a game to him. The man charged after him, yelling all sorts of profanities that made everyone in the diner cringe. 

You were done with your food by that point, reaching into your shoe to fish out a few dollars and place them on the table.

You were good at hiding, at silently stalking in the dark. You followed the scent of the boy, sweet and woody. He intrigued you. 

—

You followed him to a small abandoned barn, in the opposite direction of the highway, and far off the property of the diner. There were no signs of life anywhere near, no blunt sounds of fists hitting jaws, no cries of defeat.

And then you saw him. Walking out of the barn doors, shirt in hand, face and neck covered in blood. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw you, eyes widening like a deer in headlights. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. Up close, you could see how young he truly was. About your age, maybe. Twenty, twenty-one.

“You’re an eater?” It was a question, but it came out more like a statement as it left your mouth.

He nodded rigidly. You stared at each other for a few beats until you were able to pull together a full sentence. 

“Are you, um,” you bit your lip, suddenly feeling extremely nervous. You could see him loosen up out of the corner of your eye, observing how apprehensive you were. “Are you doing anything right now?” You had to look at everything but him, choosing to redirect your gaze to the nails that you were absentmindedly picking at. 

He let out a small, breathy laugh, and you looked back up at him in surprise. It wasn’t cruel—his laugh; it was tinged with relief. “Yeah, actually,” the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, “I was thinking of cleaning myself up a bit.” He motioned to his scarlet chin. Blood dripped down his neck. There was a gold chain just below his collarbone that glinted in the moonlight. “Unless you think I’d blend in enough walking back into town?”

He was trying to make you laugh, but you only shifted the weight on your unsteady feet. “So, you know?”

He raised an eyebrow at you. “Know what?”

“That I’m one too.” No one was around; it was just the two of you for a whole quarter-mile radius, but you whispered anyway.

“Of course,” he said without hesitation, frowning slightly as if the question was so nonsensical to ask. “Smelled it on you. In the diner.” He brought his hand up to scratch the back of his head sheepishly. “I thought you would’ve noticed, I was staring at you for, like, twenty minutes straight.”

You laughed awkwardly, and he smiled somewhat guiltily. “I’m Matty, by the way.” He reached his arm forward, inviting you to shake his hand.

You took it, breathing in deeply, mustering up all the courage in your body, and told him your name. “Can I come with you?” You asked quickly, the words pouring out of you like a broken fountain. 

“To…clean up?”

You nodded shyly, and he pouted at you compassionately. You must’ve looked like a stray puppy to him. You kind of were. No parents. No home. But Matty didn’t take pity on you. Out of everyone, he’d be the one able to empathize with you the most. 

“C’mon, let’s go see what car this guy drives.” Matty motioned for you to come along, and you all but skipped after him.

On the walk back, he wiped himself up as best he could with the clean part of the man’s shirt that he had ripped off. Clean was an overstatement. As soon as Matty brought the rag to his face, he stifled a gag at the rancid stench of sweat and alcohol. He quickly gave up and put his own shirt back on, buttoning it to the top to hide as much evidence as possible.

“I’m gonna be so pissed if I got blood on this,” he mumbled as he fiddled with his buttons. “It’s my favorite shirt.” He looked pointedly at you like it was very important that you knew that. You pursed your lips at him, amused. 

He rifled through his deep pockets, picking out car keys and a wallet. “Jameson M. Fischer,” Matty announced, opening up the wallet and reading the man’s I.D. “Well, James, you’re a real fucking asshole. Wait, holy shit.” He pulled out a massive wad of cash. Matty looked like he had struck gold, only to flip through the bills to find they were all ones and fives. “Fuck,” he groaned. “He was probably coming from Gossip. That’s why he was so wasted.” His voice trailed off at the end, talking to himself.

“Gossip?” You looked curiously at him. 

“The strip club ‘cross the highway.” He pocketed the cash, determining that the rest of the wallet was useless, and tossed it in the dumpster next to the diner. 

You didn’t even know Matty, yet you couldn’t help but feel a small pang of jealousy ring in the back of your head. “Should I be concerned that you know the strip club by its full legal name? You a regular there?” 

If Matty didn’t know any better, he’d assume you were flirting with him—the girl, who appeared to be scared of her own skin, suddenly was brave enough to tease him. “I pay frequent visits, yeah. When I’m back in town. It’s a reliable place to eat, y’know?” 

The way he said it was so dry, so blasé. You looked at him, horrified.

“No, no, I don’t mean the girls,” Matty said, quickly, realizing how that could have been disastrously misinterpreted. “Some real gross guys go there. Cheating on their wives or girlfriends. Groping the girls when they’re told they’re not allowed. I’ve just given ‘em what they deserved.” He sounded like he was trying to justify it more to himself than to you. 

“I’m not one to judge.” You thought about all the men you’d met in bars, classes, walking back home at night, who’d follow you too closely, grope you too roughly. You didn’t feel as bad robbing the world of their presence. 

He tilted his head at you, a very small, appreciative smile on his lips, before redirecting his attention to the parking lot, sparingly filled with cars and trucks, whose owners were all sipping coffee and snacking on midnight fries inside the glowing diner. All but one. “Alright, well, now we just gotta figure out which one’s his. He didn’t have a trucker’s license, so at least that narrows it down.” 

You had taken it upon yourself to test each car, padding across the poorly paved parking lot while Matty crouched in the bushes. You scurried from car to car, placing the key in each lock, jiggling it to see if anything would happen, careful not to look too suspicious to anyone who could see you through the large windows. 

“You don’t have to check that one,” Matty whisper-yelled behind you from his position concealed in the darkness. “It’s mine.” You squinted at him, frowning. Why were you playing grand theft auto for him if he had his own car?

Eventually, you heard the beautiful click of an unlocked car, and you both sighed in relief. Matty scurried to his own, gathering his measly belongings, and crept behind two trucks to the soon-to-be-stolen car. He tossed his things inside and came up to the driver’s side where you were standing.

“You wanna drive?” He looked at you disbelievingly.

“Why are we taking this guy’s car if you’ve got your own?” You asked, crossing your arms.

“Engine’s busted,” Matty explained, shrugging. He took the keys out of your hand wordlessly and hopped into the front seat, motioning you to go to the other side. 

When you slammed the door shut, you promptly felt the extreme suffocating closeness to this stranger, and wondered if it was at all a good idea to get into a car with him and drive God knows where. But you had nowhere else to go, except for where fate decided to take you. “So you’re alright with me coming with you?” You asked, tentatively from the passenger’s seat as Matty put the car in drive. 

“You got anywhere to go?” Matty asked, avoiding your question. You shook your head, and he shrugged. “Well, I’m not really on any mission either. I was thinking of going out west, to California, but I wouldn’t have been able to with my useless car. And look at that,” he grinned, pointing to the gas gauge on the dashboard as the car pulled out onto the road. “We’ve got a full tank now.” He paused for a few beats, getting serious again, to finally answer your question. “Roadtrips are no fun alone.” He paused again, finding the right words to say. “And you seem like a sweet girl.” He tossed you a glance from the driver's seat, trying not to let too much emotion show on his face, but secretly profusely thanking every god that might exist for your company.

You nodded, trying not to smile too broadly. 

—

Throughout the next few hours, you worked as Matty’s navigator with a map splayed out in your lap. There wasn’t much work to do, only needing to change exits once every forty minutes or so. The two of you fought over control of the radio. You tolerated Kiss for him, pretending not to be amused while Matty danced animatedly from his seat, and he watched as you leaned against the window dreamily, mouthing along to Kate Bush. 

As the streetlights blurred outside your window, the cataclysm of this morning felt like another lifetime ago, like you skipped through several chapters of a book. Everything was going to be different now. You asked Matty what he expected to find in California, and he simply said: Love. He was going to find love out there.  

“Are you sure we deserve something like love?” You mumbled into the window, your palm cradling the side of your face.

“You can’t think like that.” He shook his head. “We do what we need to do to survive.” He punctuated every other word by patting his palm to the top of the steering wheel. Again, he spoke like he was convincing himself more than you, like he was reciting a script he’d already told so many times. “I mean, you saw that guy in there,” he said, referencing the man he’d just mutilated. “If we take out the bad people, we’re doing the world a favor, aren’t we?”

You sighed, unconvinced. Matty persisted.

“There’s a way to do this kind of thing right…Or, at least, as right as it can get.” He turned to look at you questioningly. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Few hours ago.” He had confessed to watching you in the diner, hadn’t he?

“No, I mean, when was the last time you ate?” 

“Oh.” You should’ve realized that’s what he was talking about. You coughed. “This morning.” You weren’t sure why you were embarrassed to admit it—he was still coated in another man’s blood. 

“Good. That’s good,” Matty assured. You appreciated his optimism, but it did nothing to fill the emptiness in your chest. “Listen, I’m tired. There’s a motel at the next exit. How about we call it for the night?”

You hummed in agreement, nodding. You knew you’d have to start being pleasant, more cheerful. You needed him to want to keep you around. 

—

“Alright, here’s forty,” Matty handed you the bulky roll of ones he had stolen from the man’s wallet. “That should be way more than enough for one night.”

You moved to give the cash back to him. You had been alone for the past month since your parents left, and you finally found someone to sit next to you. Feeling the loss of him suddenly felt so great and so intolerable. “Why aren’t you coming in?”

“I’m covered in blood, babe. Go on, you’ll be fine.” He shooed you out of the car with an encouraging yet slightly patronizing smile on his face. You sighed through your nose, heart beating faster, at both his absence, which made you feel increasingly more vulnerable, and the pet name.

The fluorescent lights were offensively bright in the dingy motel lobby. The receptionist sat, leaning back in her chair, chain-smoking with her legs crossed over the desk. She didn’t look that old. Maybe thirty. Her eyelids were painted with baby blue eyeshadow. You cleared your throat to get her attention. She turned her head to face you, frowning, a bored look on her face.

“I’d, um, I’d like a room, please,” you squeaked. 

“Just you?” She breathed out a plume of smoke.

You pursed your lips, nodding. 

“It’s twenty a night.”

You flipped through the wad of cash, picking out twenty ones and handing them to her. She glared at you as she counted them herself, double-checking while you stared at the ceiling, avoiding eye contact. Once she was satisfied with the amount, she turned away from you, picking a room key off the wall of hooks. The key she handed you was rusted with a small card attached reading Room 93. You swung open the squeaky door and walked back to Matty, holding the key out in front of you so he’d see. He beamed at you from behind the windshield, and you couldn’t help but return the smile with a pink tint on your cheeks.

—

You admired yourself in the foggy bathroom mirror. Under the water droplets that dripped down your face and body from the shower, your skin glowed. You always looked best after a feed. You felt a newfound confidence walking out of the bathroom after putting your pajamas on and sliding into bed next to Matty. You were both curled to face each other. His hair was still damp from his shower before yours. All the blood was washed off, swirling in crimson rivers down the shower drain. You hadn’t noticed his tattoos before, given the pitch darkness in the field you found him in, but you could see them clearly now in the lamp’s orange light. You couldn’t bring yourself to be uncomfortable lying in a bed next to a man you had just met that night, and you told him as such. He smiled warmly at you before brushing your arm comfortingly with his hand.

“It’s ‘cause we’re the same,” Matty mumbled into the pillow. His eyelids were heavy with exhaustion, fighting to keep them open just to look at you a little longer. 

“I didn’t think I was going to last very long on my own,” you admitted in a whisper. 

“Thank God you found me then.”

—

With both of you having fed the same day, neither of you would have to feed for a while. Matty, for longer, given his meal was not only bigger, but far healthier too. You’d likely be on borrowed time after a week and a half.

Anyone sitting at an opposite booth from you at one of the many diners that’d come to see your faces at least once or twice would assume you and Matty had known each other for years. You teased and played like children whose parents weren’t looking, throwing crumpled-up straw wrappers into makeshift finger goals from opposite ends of the table, and making up stories for people in the rooms right next to yours.

You sat by the motel pool together in chlorine-soaked underwear, tucked next to each other on the same feeble pool chair, talking in excitedly hushed tones to avoid anyone hearing.

“Ok, so, that’s Cindy,” you pointed to the older woman with big blond hair and sun-damaged skin sitting on the edge of the pool, her legs swaying in the water warmed by the beating sun, “and that’s David,” you pointed to the man in square glasses behind her, reading a newspaper under the shade of the umbrella. “Cindy made them go on a spontaneous vacation to heal their marriage when she caught him having an affair with the twenty-year-old boy who mowed their lawns, but they both know they’re getting a divorce when they get back. I mean, look at her eyes. They’re so tired and sullen.”

“Ugh, that’s so basic,” Matty scoffed, and you swatted his shoulder. His eyes zeroed in on the couple again. “I think, stay with me here, they’re brother and sister and—”

“Wait, but we just saw him grab her ass.”

“Exactly. They’re running away from their family’s judgment, hoping to start a new life across the country where no one knows they’re related. And they use the excuse that they’re married to explain why they have the same last name, but if one of their new neighbors on their perfectly magazine-manicured cul-de-sac ever looked a little too closely, they’d see that they have the same beady little almond eyes and pointy nose.” He dropped his hands down, prideful at his ludicrous assessment.

“So, you’re just fucking disgusting.”

“That’s what they say about all the best storytellers.”

“Is it though?” You tilted your head to the side, squinting at him.

“Mhm, it is.” Oblivious to your scrutiny, Matty nodded calmly, rubbing the tip of his nose against yours. 

He closed his eyes, and the arm that was wrapped around you pressed you closer into him until your foreheads touched. When your breath hitched at the proximity, he pulled you away, just far enough to look at you, his gaze bouncing between your eyes and your lips. You propped yourself up with your elbow so that you leaned over him, in full control of how slowly you bent down. Matty grew impatient, though, and lifted his head just enough to latch his lips onto yours, pulling you back down to him. The tension that had been getting tighter and tighter with each passing day and each night curled up next to each other, finally snapped. Heat scorched through your veins as he held your face in his hands, fingers combing through your wet, knotted hair. He tasted sweet, and saliva pooled in your mouth, intensifying the wet sounds your mouths made. 

You heard a groan of disgust from across the pool. The man stood up to pull his wife out of the water. “Come on, Barbara, let's go back to the room.”

“Why? Is it reminding you of what you did with the pool-boy?” she spat.

You broke away from Matty, eyes wide, pushing his chest. He did the same, listening just as closely as you had.

“Holy shit, you were right.” He looked at you, dumbfounded, jaw dropped. 

“Should’ve bet on it.” You clicked your tongue on the roof of your mouth. 

“Well, you didn’t say poolboy, to be fair,” he raised a finger in front of your face, “so actually, you should get nothing.” Matty moved to cradle your face in his hand as a condescending comfort, but you swatted it away.

“Shut up.” You both giggled as he pulled you back into him, feeling the loss of each other for far too long. 

Matty’s hand slid down your bare back as his tongue traced your jaw. He tilted his head to the side, exposing his neck for you, and tugged on your hair, pulling your lips down to his chin. As you licked up his neck vein, sucking on the pressure point, he looked over your shoulder to watch the man and woman leave through the pool gate. They were taking turns tossing looks of repulsion your way. Matty flipped them off before returning his hand to your waist, slipping teasing fingers under the waistband of your underwear. You pulled away, turning your head to check that the pool was empty. When you confirmed that it was, you swung your leg over Matty’s lap to straddle him.

“You’re so fucking beautiful. Thought that the second I saw you.” Matty hummed into your mouth, taking his tongue and lapping up the spit that pooled at the bottom. You preened at his words, wrapping your arms around his neck, entangling your fingers in his long curly hair. You took your tongue and licked the roof of his mouth, feeling him shake and shiver under you, his nails digging into your skin. You could feel his hard bulge between your legs, and you ground once on him. The fingers that gripped your thighs pressed impossibly harder. You were bound to have black-and-blue spots decorating your body in the morning. 

“Room. Bed,” Matty muttered lowly in between pressing sloppy kisses to your swollen lips. You nodded, swinging your leg off him. Your lips stayed latched to each other as you both got up, stumbling backwards off the chair. He gripped your wrist, pulling you in the direction of the room, stopping halfway there to grab your face and kiss you again. 

Once you got inside the room and locked the door carefully, Matty wasted no time unhooking your bra and throwing it on the floor, his mouth never failing to leave yours.

This was the first time you’d ever truly felt this kind of hunger. Not just a need to be satiated—a need to open yourself up and be filled by him. You crouched down in front of Matty, looking up at him through doe eyes. You traced the tattoo on his waist as he combed his fingers through your hair and brought his hand down to open your mouth. You stuck your tongue out playfully for him, and he slipped his thumb inside. You bobbed your head around it, sucking, showing him what you could do. 

“You look so pretty like this,” Matty whispered, taking his thumb out of your mouth and cradling your face, staring at you through the dark curls that had fallen in front of his hungry eyes. He didn’t bother to brush them away, not wanting to take his hands off you for a second. 

You leaned into his touch and pulled his boxers down, letting his cock spring out, pink and glistening at the tip. Tasting the precum on your tongue, you couldn’t help but envelop as much of him as you could in your mouth, coating him in slippery saliva, stroking what you couldn’t fit with a twisting wrist. Matty moaned above you, trying to mask it with a lower-pitched groan, but you saw through him, smirking around his length.

Noticing the sense of achievement in your watering eyes for getting him to slip up momentarily, he tried regaining control, grasping your head in both hands, holding you still so that he could control the pace, thrusting slowly into your mouth, watching his cock slide across your tongue. 

You clenched your legs at him taking control of you, holding you firm but gentle. Your core squeezed around nothing, never having felt such a painful emptiness inside you before. Matty pulled out of your mouth to bounce his tip on your tongue. The heavy weight hitting your tongue only made you hungrier. You pushed his hand off himself and pushed him deeper into your throat. You gagged around his shaft, and he pulled out of you abruptly, face tinted in concern and fear. You didn’t give him a chance to ask if you were ok, though, the question on the tip of his tongue. You pushed him into your mouth again, for what you suspected would be the last time. His legs were shaking under you, and his breathing grew irregular.  

“Baby, baby, you gotta stop,” Matty choked out. “I’m gonna– fuck.” He sucked in a sharp breath as he pulled your head off him just in time. You looked up at him, confused, and he pulled you onto your feet, kissing your forehead on the way up. Strong hands gripped your waist as he pushed you gently backwards onto the bed, lying down on top of you. You kissed slowly and passionately while he ground against your cunt. Each thrust pressed the cool wetness of your underwear against you. Matty kicked his boxers all the way off while you shimmied your underwear down your legs. What started slow and passionate grew more insatiable with each article of clothing removed. Matty pressed his fingers to your dripping core, and you trembled at the sudden direct pressure. He looked down at you, eyes wide, mesmerized, as he pushed his middle finger inside you, watching it gradually disappear between your legs. He pumped his digit inside you, feeling your slippery walls envelope him.

“Matty…” You tugged at the chain that hung off his neck, pulling him down closer to you. “Need more…” Your voice came out as a desperate whine, and he pouted. Pitying you. Nonetheless, he pulled his finger out and lined himself up, pressing his tip to your entrance before pushing in and splitting you open. He watched you gasp at the stretch, searching for any sign of discomfort on your face. You felt the familiar initial sting, but it was fleeting. Matty fit inside you perfectly, deliciously. He took the finger that was coated in your slick and rubbed small, delicate circles onto your clit, causing you to arch your back into his touch, eyebrows knitting in pleasure. 

He quickly found a pattern, rubbing your clit up and down in tandem with his thrusts. You could feel a tightening across your entire body. Matty pressed soft kisses to your parted lips, to your cheeks, to your forehead. You could feel the way his soft lips closed against your skin, feeling coated in him. You held him tight against you, trying not to think about the future love he’d find once you ran out of road. It had only been a week, but you had never been so scared to lose someone. 

All the boys you’d let crawl inside you, treating fucking like an act of invasion and ownership, pretending they were the predator claiming you, only for you to sink your teeth into them right before they reached their peak and then bathe in a maroon shower of dripping blood. Matty held you in his arms as you’d never been before, not even by your own mother. Tears pricked at your eyes, but you blinked them away as soon as you felt them threaten to fall. Moments like these always ended the same for you—you were never able to handle the proximity. But Matty smelled sweet in the way that made warmth spread across your body, not bitter in the way that awakened your taste buds. You could trust yourself enough to let go this time. 

You gave Matty no warning, pulsing around him, your legs shaking uncontrollably. He moaned, feeling your muscles contract. He squeezed his eyes shut, hastily pulling out, stroking himself rapidly, releasing long ropes of cum that landed across your tits. He collapsed by your side, both of you breathing heavily. Your mind went blank, not perceiving anything with your eyes closed, while your energy drained out of you with each exhale. For the first time, you felt entirely safe to feel nothing. 

Once his breath grew shallower, after several minutes of lying together in a mess of sticky limbs, he got up wordlessly, slipping his boxers back on, and walked over to the bathroom. You heard the faucet running for a long time before the familiar footsteps made their way back over to you. Matty knelt over your body, pressing a warm washcloth in between your thighs and then across your chest, cleaning you up. 

“All clean?” He asked, interrupting the silence. Too tired to say anything, you ran your fingers along your stomach, feeling no leftover stickiness, and nodded at him. Your head turned to its side against the blanket, your eyes remaining closed. He chuckled at your exhaustion, picking up your limp body to place you under the covers. It was only the middle of the day, but he crawled into bed next to you, head tucked into the crook of your neck, and a leg draped over yours. You were relieved that there was no pressure to talk, grateful for all the unsaid agreements between the two of you. 

—

You wanted to stay at the motel for an extra night, just to spend the day in bed with Matty, maybe occasionally dipping into the pool when it felt too swampy in the room. But Matty didn’t want to waste the finite money both of you had, and instead, elected to be all packed up by the afternoon. He didn’t know about all your secret cash stashes, though, just looked at you curiously when you paid for each night at the motels. Your parents had left you with everything, and maybe you should have been more worried about your bills thinning out, but you weren’t. You wanted to spend everything you had on this trip, not knowing what came after—not wanting to know. Matty had been a saving grace, an oasis, but it was only a matter of time before the water would dry up in the California sun and you’d have to acknowledge who you really were again. 

You didn’t want to kill anyone else. You wouldn’t. 

It had been eleven days since you saw Matty’s bloodied body come out of the old, run-down barn, and you were almost at the coast. Just one more day of driving. You had both whooped and hollered seeing the Welcome to California sign, decorated with its golden flowers, but your shouts of delight only masked the growing dread inside you. You weren’t sure what would happen when you made it to the coast. Would Matty toss you away like the foam soda cups on the side of the highway on his mission to find his true love? Were you simply a rest stop in his journey? 

You had decided to stop a little ways past the border, seeing a billboard for a visiting fair in a small Californian town. Matty and you both had an affinity for rides and carnival food and were jittery with excitement as he pulled into the make-shift parking lot in a wide field, next to possibly hundreds of other cars. 

Families with young children ran past you, squealing, oversized stuffed monkeys and pigs clutched in their arms as you and Matty weaved your way through the sea of cars. He held your hand protectively as you walked, fingers interlocking, and you couldn’t help the smile that stayed plastered on your face. 

You passed by each carnival booth, determining which had the best prizes. You were fixated on one stuffed dog the size of a small child at the ring toss. Matty handed you a dollar to play.

“You’re not winning it for me?” You teased, playfully kicking his foot.

“Just play.” He had a cunning look on his face, and you looked at him questioningly as he walked away, but his tone was commanding enough that you did as you were told, waiting in line. 

Eventually, you made it to the front and handed the money to the carny. He was maybe about sixty, and jewelry littered his face. He yelled at the passerby to come and play the game—offensive things, targeting the men with girlfriends on their arms, trying to convince them to shell out a few dollars to win their woman something, to show they were a man. It made you uncomfortable to stand not three feet away from him, especially not with Matty’s protective presence behind you. 

You tossed one ring after another, trying to fit them over the lip of the milk jug, but they all failed and dropped pathetically onto the ground. You frowned, turning around to look for Matty, but you couldn’t find him anywhere. Your heart rate quickened, feeling the beat in your eardrums. Was this the plan all along? Was this the place he chose to leave you in? Swarming with people, so you wouldn’t be able to pick him out in a crowd? 

“Matty?” You called, your voice cracking. You walked past groups of people, every passing step making you sicker to your stomach. With tears running down your cheeks, you called his name again. 

Everything you had was in that car. You had nothing with you except for maybe a few bills in your pocket—

“Hey!” A hand touched the small of your back, and you swiveled around, your hands already raised in defense. Matty almost laughed at your over-the-top defensive reaction until he noticed your tear-stained face. “What the fuck? What’s wrong?” He put his hand on your shoulder, reaching to the back of your neck, pulling you into him. “Did something happen?”

“I couldn’t find you,” you said weakly, your voice muffled in his shirt. 

He let out a small, incredulous bark of a laugh and shook his head. “Sorry, love, I should’ve told you.” He pulled away from you, pushing the stuffed dog into your hands. “Knicked it off the hook while the guy was distracted. I had to hide.” He cringed, shrugging guiltily. 

You wiped away the tears with the back of your hand, feeling your rampant heart rate slow. The nausea always lagged a bit more when leaving your system, though. 

Matty waited for you to calm down, unsure how to comfort you, and rubbed an awkward hand up and down your shoulder before he decided you needed to be distracted. “How about we go put this in the car before that guy notices and beats me up,” Matty said slowly, tapping your nose with the paw of the stuffed animal, “and then we can go try out the Ferris wheel?” 

You smiled weakly in response, taking the dog back and hugging it tight to your chest. He looked at you with somber, bashful eyes and hugged you again before you started your walk back. 

His grip was stronger on your hand as you walked through the parking lot.

—

You pulled the bar over both of your laps, the metal carriage creaking distressingly with each small movement. Matty shifted his hips next to you, causing the carriage to sway in ways it most definitely was not designed to. 

You slammed your hand onto his thigh in reflex. “Don’t. Do. That,” you gritted through your teeth.

“What? You afraid of heights?” He leaned into you, brushing his nose against your cheek teasingly.

You shook your head at him, looking the other way. “I’m afraid of stupid boys who get themselves killed just for the adrenaline rush.” 

“I’m a man, thank you very much,” he scoffed, pulling away from you. 

You smiled, triumphant at antagonizing him, and swung your leg to hit his own, missing the absence of his touch. 

The Ferris wheel moved slowly, the people progressively shrinking as you rose each foot higher. The carriage swayed in the wind, the cool breeze interrupting the persistent summer heat. You rested your head on Matty’s shoulder, and he pushed you closer to him with the arm that was wrapped around you. 

When you got to the top, time seemed to slow down. The tall trees moved in slow motion while the gray clouds drifted softly in the darkening sky. There was a heavy weight sinking deep in your stomach—a feeling you knew all too well.

“Matty…” you whispered. He hummed in response, telling you he was listening, and turning his head down to look at you. Your head remained glued to his shoulder, afraid to move. “I’m hungry.”

—

“Bad luck, kid,” the booth attendant said monotonously. “A dollar to play again.”

“It was fifty cents last time?” The boy asked, affronted. The attendant shrugged, and the kid forked over a dollar bill. 

Matty had instructed you to stay hidden between two booths, but you watched him from behind the thin curtain. He had already told you the plan. Asked if it was ok. You weren’t sure why; it’s not like he owed you any commitment. You agreed, feigning hesitance and uncertainty, but secretly eager to see it all play out.  

When he tossed the ball into the hoop, it danced around the rim before sliding off. He tossed the second—the same thing happened. And the third. He glared at the carny, pissed off for not winning anything before stomping away. 

Matty stepped forward, replacing the boy’s position, and leaning over the counter. You could barely see him now. “So, what’s the trick?” He asked the attendant, who was a man around your age, with a dangly earring on his right lobe. 

The man leaned forward, getting on Matty’s level, as if testing him. “There is no trick.” They stared intently at each other. 

“Must be. Each one of these games is rigged.” Matty vaguely gestured to the other carnival booths. 

“That’s just what a sore loser says.” They spoke in hushed tones to each other, their voices getting quieter with each passing sentence, as if they were exchanging secrets. “You wanna play?”

“Spent all my cash already.” Matty pushed himself off the counter with his elbows and stood up, almost towering over the man. “Got another way I can pay?”

The worker coughed nervously, standing back up, looking past Matty at the people walking by. “My shift ends at eleven.”

Matty nodded resolutely, and the carny handed him three balls. Matty missed the first two, the balls bouncing off the rim and onto the ground. He almost missed the third one, too, had the attendant not caught it mid-air, placing it strategically in the center of the hoop so that it fell in perfectly. 

“Winner, winner,” the carny said dryly, a smug look on his face.

“Am I not getting a prize,” Matty looked down at the man’s name tag, “...Henry?”

“Meet me back here at eleven and you will.” He gave Matty a knowing smirk before he bent down to pick up the fallen balls. 

—

You and Matty had sat in his car for almost two hours, waiting for Henry to finish his shift. The heat subsided greatly at night, thankfully, with the only light coming from the waning crescent moon, but the windows were pulled all the way down to try and let some semblance of a breeze into the hot car. You went back and forth between smoking and making out uncomfortably in the backseat. 

You were on your third shared cigarette by the time Matty had stubbed it out on the outside of the car door. 

“You sure you’re ok with me doing this?” Matty asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shrugged self-consciously, not looking at you. “I don’t know. I just…I like you, that’s all.” His voice was small and trailed off slightly at the end. You felt a fluttering in your stomach at his words, but you weren’t able to find your own words to say the same. Instead, you grabbed his face, pulling him in for a long, tender kiss. It was far less rough and animalistic compared to what you had been doing earlier in the car—it was careful and unhurried. Deep and passionate. Matty wanted to pull you onto his lap, but if he didn’t go now, he’d be late, and he couldn’t have Henry go home thinking Matty stood him up. He couldn’t do that to you. 

“You can stay here.” Matty paused, thinking for a moment, “or you can follow, if you want. Just stay outta earshot.”

So, you got out of the car with Matty, and he looked at you questioningly, wondering why you’d want to see what he was about to do, but he didn’t ask. He kept walking, holding a hand up behind him, telling you to wait by the car for a little longer, and put more distance between the two of you.

Matty walked up to Henry, his hands in his pockets, a James Dean slouch to his shoulders. Henry had changed from the carny attire. Now, dressed in a loose, ripped band t-shirt and even more ripped jeans, he looked Matty up and down and guided the both of them past the perimeter of trees, into the woods. 

By this point in your life, you had mastered the art of going unnoticed, stepping strategically between twigs and leaves not to make a sound—even now, when your brain fogged with hunger. 

Once they were far enough into the woods, Matty grabbed Henry’s face, turning it to him, and kissed the carnival worker hungrily. 

Henry pushed Matty against one of the thick Douglas fir trees, almost violently, you thought, and you felt a surge of animosity towards this stranger. But, almost immediately, Matty spun them both around, pinning the other boy against the bark. They grasped at each other fiercely, harshly, fingers scraping skin as their lips crashed into each other's.  

You were unable to look away, your curious eyes staying glued to the two men, specifically Matty, whom you’d never seen touch so aggressively. It was clear they were both fighting for some form of dominance, but Matty won, or Henry let him win, flipping the other boy around, kissing and sucking his neck while running a hand down his stomach, towards his belt, which Matty undid with nimble, knowing fingers. Henry gripped Matty’s curls behind him and leaned into his body, placing his own weight on his heels, groaning as Matty unzipped his faded jeans and rubbed him through his boxers. 

You watched from the side, feeling heat pool in your stomach and a throbbing ache between your legs. You pressed yourself closer to the tree you were hiding behind to feel some pressure against you, but you slipped up. A branch snapped underneath your feet from the shift in weight, and Matty’s eyes shot to you. Thankfully, Henry was too distracted by Matty pulling his length out of his boxers and making long, generous strokes up his shaft, moaning and falling deeper into Matty’s arms. 

Matty’s gaze stayed locked on you, staring at you through heavy-lidded eyes. You recognized the look. It was the same one you saw as soon as you kissed him for the first time, the day before, on the sunny pool chair. Matty took his hand off of Henry, bringing it to his mouth, spitting in it, and returning it to the man’s cock, stroking it fast with a flicking wrist. He was trying to speed the process up, you could tell. Matty’s other hand inched closer and closer to his own front pocket, where the knife rested—the same one he used to kill the man from the diner. 

“Fuck, man,” Henry’s hips bucked into Matty’s hand, his legs shaking underneath him. “Feels so fucking good. You’re so good—”

That was Matty’s cue. He pulled his head away from Henry’s as he slid the knife across Henry’s neck, directly under his Adam's apple. Smooth and rehearsed. Matty had done this before. Terror flashed on Henry’s face as his hands shot up to his neck, feeling the blood gushing from the artery. It only took about ten seconds for him to fall unconscious. Even when he fell utterly limp in Mattty’s arms, you could still hear the sound of blood bubbling out of his neck. 

You didn’t feel scared, or sad, or disgusted. You didn’t feel anything other than hunger. Your legs moved before you had any time to think, kneeling down beside Matty, but he held you back before the full-on frenzy could take hold. 

“Take your clothes off,” Matty instructed. He did the same, slipping his t-shirt over his head, throwing it far enough away to not be stained with signs of the man’s defiling. 

You were, then, both crouched down in your underwear. Matty pulled the man’s pants further down, sinking his teeth into the meatiest part of the thigh. You did the same with the other leg. He wasn’t a large man. Quite lanky and thin, frankly, leaving most of the meat concentrated in the legs. The edges of your vision started to blur as you tore through the skin, feeling the ecstasy propelled in your veins with each bite. The air around you filled with the thick metallic scent. You bit down deeper. 

After finishing the right leg, you looked at Matty, who was a fast eater and had already moved on to the man’s pecs. Flesh stretched under his teeth, and you realized you’d never seen anything so beautiful. There was no feeling more raw than hunger. 

When you first saw the painting Saturn Devouring His Children in a high school art class, you remembered suddenly feeling so violently ill as if you were seeing a picture of yourself taken at one of the worst moments of your life. If insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again, despite the same destructive and demoralizing outcome, then you suspected that the picture of Saturn with his deranged, insane eyes, messy hair, and grotesque body must be the mirror image of you as you devoured so recklessly time and time again. After each episode, you’d promised never to do it again, but then a month would go by, and you’d look in the mirror and see Saturn, the beast in the woods that had come out of hiding. Hungry, waiting to feed. You were powerless to the monster inside you. The only depictions of people like you in the books you read, the movies you watched, were all sadistic parasites, thirsting and feeding on the innocent. You were the picture of the devil personified.  

But then you looked at Matty in front of you, his eyes shut in pure euphoria, and his desperation looked angelic. Feeding no longer looked like a slip back into insanity, a relapse into the sickest addiction, but as a way to be whole again. A path to ascension.

Matty looked up at you, catching you watching him as he ate. He wiped the blood from his chin with the back of his hand, smearing it, staining his skin red. His eyes were still dark, despite having just fed.   

You stared at each other as you crawled over the body. Matty met you in the middle, catching your lips in his. There was blood everywhere. On your face, on your fingers, in your hair. You were no longer separate from him; the boundaries breaking between your bodies, becoming one, unsure where you ended and he began. He crawled forward more, pushing you onto your back, hands resting on the bottom of your thighs, spreading them. He wiped his hands on his own skin, trying to clean them as best he could so as not to let blood on your underwear when he slipped it off your legs. He bowed towards you, bringing you up to his face. He lapped at you like a man on the brink of dying of thirst, licking the last of the water poured into his hands. 

Matty went back and forth, licking up your folds and sucking around your clit while his tongue swirled carefully over your bundle of nerves, teasing you by switching up the pace. He drew slow circles with his tongue, switching to light kitten licks, making you cry out and slap a hand to your mouth to muffle the sounds that escaped you. He licked and sucked, but never bit. It wasn’t a hunger disguised as tenderness. He wasn’t eating; he was sucking the poison out. As you looked at him, his face slick with you, you finally saw consumption as the purest form of love. You saw yourself as not only the knife, but the wound too. The wound that Matty kissed and healed with his spit. 

He pulled away from you, and you whined at his absence, feeling the cool air on your dripping cunt. He turned to the corpse behind him, gathering the blood pooled around the neck that hadn’t coagulated yet, letting it coat his long fingers. Matty brought his hand to your core, sliding between your folds with his slippery fingers, lubricating you with the warm blood. He knelt down to kiss your neck, licking a pointed tongue along the artery there. You ran your hands along his back, nails scraping against his skin, and he hummed in appreciation, pressing himself further into you. His hand moved lower, rubbing your entrance with the thick blood, getting you ready, getting you needy, before he pushed inside you with two skilled fingers. 

Matty held you open for him, and you wanted to pull him completely inside you. Even with his fingers now buried deep, he could never be close enough. He moved back to his position between your legs, blowing cool air on the inside of your thigh, and then kissing it in apology, paying special attention to the pulse that quickened under his touch. You wondered why God placed the most significant arteries in the most erotic places. It was like a cruel joke, making sex something that could so quickly turn dangerous. How quickly two people could become a predator paralyzing its prey.

Leaves crushed under your writhing body as Matty licked through your folds, licking you clean in the process. Cleansing your soiled soul. You bucked your hips carelessly into his mouth, your back arching. It only made him suck stronger. You looked at him then, blood smeared across the entire lower half of his face, and, yes, maybe he did look a bit deranged, but somehow only he had the power to purify you. 

“Need you to cum for me, baby.” Matty’s voice was muffled against your cunt. “C’mon, yeah, that’s it.” He removed his mouth, opting to use his other hand to rub circles into your swollen clit. “You’re almost there, love. I’ve got you.” As the pad of his finger worked on you while the fingers inside you curled, massaging you inside, you felt your whole body turn rigid. “Just let go for me.” With his whispered permission, you came undone around his hands, muscles spasming all over your body. He worked you through your high, so that the withdrawal, the feeling of his absence inside you, wouldn’t be as bad when you came back down. He pulled out of you only when you stilled under his touch, lying limp on the ground, bone-deep exhausted.

“We should head back to the car,” Matty mumbled, getting up onto his knees. “You still have that water bottle? We can wash off with that.” You wondered how he could possibly have the energy to lift his body when moving any muscle felt like a war against gravity, but then you moved your eyes down to his tented boxers. He followed your gaze, cringing when he saw where it landed. “Yeah, don’t worry about that.” His hands grasped both your arms, grunting as he pulled your resistant body up to your feet. “Let’s find somewhere to sleep first.” 

You were still sticky between your thighs in a mixture of your own wetness and drying blood. You suddenly became painfully aware of everything that just occurred, bringing a self-conscious hand to your face to wipe away the blood. The familiar feeling returned, the numbness you felt in the wake of every feed. You moved robotically while you gathered your clothes, and Matty rifled through the man’s pockets. 

All of the carnival rides were still set up, looking like monuments, standing beautiful and resolute against the grey night sky, making you feel so minuscule in comparison, like the formidable hunger you habitually fell powerless to. Matty’s strong hold on your hand as you walked back to the car was the only thing saving you from crumbling to the ground.

—

When Matty walked out of the motel bathroom, fresh out of the shower, flicking off the light, he found you sitting up in bed, fidgeting with your fingers, deep in thought. He crawled over to you, sliding his hand around your thigh and giving it a comforting squeeze, as he dropped down by your side. “Everything ok, babe?”

“Am I bad?” You croaked, staring straight ahead with unblinking eyes. Your skin was freshly washed, but you still felt stained. 

He laughed at you, shaking his head, agape. “What?” 

You had to look away from him, unable to meet his eyes, as if your stare alone could taint him with your own misery. “Am I bad?” You repeated yourself, more sternly, emphasizing each word. 

“Of course not.” He had said it so quickly, so definitively, with no time to think. You shook your head, taking his certainty as a means of placating you and not as the truth. 

“I am bad.”

Matty brought his head to yours, kissing down the side of your face from your temple to your mouth. “You’re perfect.” 

“How can you say that?” You turned your head again before he could attach his lips to yours.

He pulled away from you, his hand freezing on your chin, thinking for a moment. 

“Do you think I’m bad for what we did?” Matty asked finally.

You frowned. “No.”

“Well, then why would you be?” He kissed your temple again, assuming the question alone would absolve all the guilt you felt festering in your throat. 

“We killed an innocent person, Matty.” Your voice was hoarse, cracking. Tears silently fell down your cheeks, dripping onto your hands. 

“You can’t think like that,” he said with certainty, repeating what he told you the first night you met. 

You cringed at his words. “How can you not think like that?” 

Matty sighed exasperatedly, sitting up, unable to face you. “You think this isn’t hard for me, too? Of course it is. But I told you: We do what we need to do to survive. I can’t cripple myself with an existential crisis every time I need to do something to keep me fucking breathing.” With each sentence, his voice rose, growing more frustrated. Your tears fell faster as your pulse quickened with his rising anger. “And I’ve done the whole ‘woe is me’ pity party bullshit already, ok? I can’t,” he started to choke up, pushing it back down with a cough, “I can’t have you pull me back down there.” 

You’d never seen him so upset; he was such a light person, though the two of you always kept things brief when mentioning your pasts. You realized there was so much more to him that you didn’t know, and you felt just as much of a stranger to him as you did the first night you met. Your throat felt like it was closing up, only managing to squeak an “I’m sorry” out of your almost non-existent voice. You couldn’t push Matty away. You didn’t know what you were supposed to do without him. 

He shook his head, sighing again, softer this time, calming himself down. “You just gotta find something bigger than yourself worth living for.”

The lamplight made him glow brightly, looking heaven-sent in the dingy motel room. Bright because he was a bright person. You couldn’t let your darkness leech onto him, infect him. You didn’t know what he went through, didn’t know what his darkness looked like. But he managed to make it out, and you couldn’t keep living like this. “What do you live for?” You ask. You needed to show him that you’d try. 

“Love.” His fingers played with the edge of the blanket, running his fingers along the seams. 

“The love you haven’t found yet?”

Matty froze at the question, frowning to himself, trying to find the right words to say. “Remember,” he began, then cut himself off quickly. He distracted himself with a new frayed edge of the blanket to twist between his fingers. “Remember that first night we met? You said that you didn’t know how long you’d make it…out on your own, and all?”

You could picture it perfectly, lying in bed, admiring his tattoos, his damp curly hair, his tired eyes. Feeling at home despite just running away from yours. Matty continued, “And I said, ‘Thank God you found me?’”

You nodded patiently, inviting him to keep talking, but he never looked up at you to see. 

“Well, I needed you too,” he admitted, shrugging, feigning indifference as he turned to put out the light next to the bed. He lay down, curled facing away from you, gripping a pillow in his arms. 

Your heart ached. Matty was not your savior. He was a lost kid like you, one who ran away from home and had nowhere else to go. He was not going to suck the poison out of your bloodstream or slay the beast in the woods. You could pretend he could absolve you of your sins, while you knelt before him. You could pretend he could mask your aching hunger when you opened yourself up for him. But that would be like playing house as a kid in your school’s playground. It was idealistic, not realistic. 

He could love you, though. Love you despite the poison, love the monster that you felt always lurking beyond your periphery. Love it because it was a part of you. That would be real. That would be enough. 

You inched closer to him, pressing your stomach against his curled back, and tucked your face into his neck, undeterred by his sleeping facade. “Needed?” You asked, emphasizing the past participle. He could hear the teasing smile in your voice, and the corners of his mouth twitched despite himself.

“Need you,” Matty clarified. He turned around to face you, and you beamed down on him. He looked up at you through heavy-lidded eyes, his soft smile turning them to brown crescents on his face. He brought a hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “I need you.”

—

You woke up before Matty the next morning, careful not to move a muscle, afraid to wake him. Today would be the last day of driving. It would only take about three hours to get to the coast, and you dreaded that moment viscerally. You didn’t want this to end. 

You traced the tattoos on Matty’s arm as he slept, his face molding around the pillow above your head. You were pressed into his chest. When he stirred, you tried grazing your fingertips over his skin, shushing him, telling him to go back to sleep. But once he knew you were awake, there was no keeping his eyes closed. 

“Morning, love.” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles, flipping onto his back, reaching his arms high above his head, groaning as he stretched. You took the opportunity to launch yourself onto his chest, lying on top of him, and by extension, holding him down. He chuckled and enclosed his arms around you. 

“Can we just stay here?” Your cheek was smushed against his collarbone, and he rubbed a comforting hand on your back. 

“We’re so close to the end, though.” There was excitement in his voice. Anticipation. You wished you could feel it too. 

You held onto him tighter. “I don’t want this to end.” You liked waking up at eleven, driving for hours, stopping at every roadside stand, and testing how well each of you could charm the sellers into giving you free things. You liked stargazing at night, lying on the flat car hood, trying to decipher the constellations, but you both didn’t know any of them, so you’d make up shapes in the sky and Greek myths to narrate in tandem. You liked that it was just the two of you. 

Matty was unfazed by your sorrowful voice. “I’m sure we can find some other shitty motel on the coast to fuck in.” 

“You promise?”

“I promise. I mean, who knows? Maybe we can get an apartment that doesn’t have mystery stains on the sheets.”

You winced, pulling yourself off him and staring at the bed beneath you with mild disgust, remembering the muted brown splotches on the throw pillows that you had thrown into the far corner of the room as soon as you got into bed last night. “God, don’t remind me.”

“Oh, look who’s getting up now.” He ruffled your hair, getting out of bed himself, finding the pants and shirt that had been haphazardly chucked onto the floor somewhere the night before. You watched him get dressed, quietly admiring. However, he quickly noticed your paralyzed state. In spite of your protests, he picked you up off the bed, promising greasy fast food for breakfast if you started packing. That wasn’t a novelty—you had that practically every morning, but when your stomach growled like thunder, it was enough motivation to grudgingly get dressed.

—

It was cruel how fast time passed in the car. Three hours turned to two, turned to one. You should’ve made the most of it. Instead, in the car, which was typically filled with blaring music and animated chatter, you sat in comfortable silence, memorizing each feature on Matty’s face until it burned into the backs of your eyelids and you saw his illuminated outline everywhere you looked. He’d turn to you occasionally, laughing; Why are you staring at me? And you’d look away, pursing your lips, blushing, clutching the stuffed carnival dog in your hands. 

Before you knew it, one hour turned to half, then to mere seconds as Matty pulled off the paved road onto a patch of sunburnt grass. He put the gear in park, and you felt the car jolt underneath you. 

You were frozen; Matty bounded out of the car, drumming on the hood as he came around the other side to open your door, his smile lighting up his face. He took your hand and raced you down to the shoreline, giggling with him the whole way, picking you up and spinning you above the sand.

You prayed that he wouldn't be your Garden of Eden, somewhere perfect you knew you’d soon be exiled from. But even if he was the cunning tempting serpent, you decided—as you watched him now, infecting you with his contagious smile—that you’d sink your teeth into anything, just to spend a minute longer with him. You would be the love he was searching for; you’d make sure of it.  

The mid-afternoon sun blared down upon you. You stood side by side, fingers ghosting each other, breathing deeply, watching the pearly waves crash on the shore. He turned to you, the ghost of a sad smile on his lips.