Page 149 of Electricity

“Yeah. This is your number, right?” he asked, flashing Lacey his phone. “I don’t have the address memorized—I’ll text it to you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I slowly deflated, despite my migraine, and smiled at Darius. “Thanks.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel like much. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

I leaned against the hood of his car. “Does pot help headaches? And, if so, do you have any left?”

Lacey and I hugged again, more carefully this time, while Darius rolled a joint. She gave me a look and I nodded, sending her off, and after she drove away he looked around. “We’re probably on some security cameras here.”

“I’m pretty sure the show I put on earlier wiped them out.”

“Let’s only get busted for trespassing, not trespassing plus drugs.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and got into his car.

Halfway down the street he rolled the windows down, set the joint into his mouth and lit it with one smooth hand. “Ever done this before?”

“No.”

“You breathe in, and keep the smoke in as long as you can before you exhale,” he said, passing it over.

I did as I was told, and started coughing immediately after, feeling dumb.

“Happens to everyone,” he said, as I tried to pass the joint back, and he shook his hand. “I’m your designated driver tonight. Try again.”

I did, and was slightly more successful, besides, concentrating on breathing gave me something useful to do.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You will. But it’s OK if you don’t. It’ll probably just make it easier for you to sleep tonight is all.”

I breathed in another long gasp, and the T. Rex in my head finally turned.

“So I thought you destroyed all this?” I said.

“I did. That’s the last of it.”

“Really?” I pulled the joint out of my mouth, where I’d been holding it like a piece of hay.

“Yeah. I was gonna save it. For a special occasion.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, his eyes flicking up to meet mine in the rearview, as he pulled into the park. I took one more long inhale before we reached my street and he parked in his traditional spot, safely down from my trailer. The second the car stopped, the sound of singing cicadas became omnipresent, and the humidity of the night swirled in.

He turned toward me, and I saw him through a haze.

“Sorry I got scared.”

“You want to go back to California. I get it.”

“No—it wasn’t that. It’s just, I’d spent so long here being the guy who doesn’t give a fuck, finding out that I did was a surprise. Also—how the hell was I supposed to know how much trouble you could get in in less than forty-eight hours?”

I turned more toward him. “Forty-eight? You should see me in less than twenty-four.” I regretted it the second I’d said it. “That sounded way cooler on the inside.”

He grinned. “Blame the drugs.”

I grinned back. “Done.”

---