Page 102 of No Saint
She swept her flashlight over the long grass while taking slow steps. “Checking for snakes.”
“Would you come on? They don’t come out at night.”
“Snakes are most active at night!”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pessimist?”
“I’m a realist. And a survivalist. No serial killers. No snakes.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you’d last more than five minutes in a zombie apocalypse.” Clutching the picture in one hand, I crouched in front of her. “Get on.”
“What?”
I motioned for my back. “Get on. No snake is getting you up here, and I don’t have all night to walk like we’re in a damn mine field.”
“Oh, really? You have somewhere more important to be than here with me?”
“Yeah, in my bed with you. Hurry up.”
That shut her up. On a huff, she hopped onto my back, wrapping her arms around my throat, her thighs around my waist.
I enjoyed the feel of her against me way too much. “Also, there’s no such thing as zombies. Yet.”
“But if there were…”
“You’d be one?”
“No.” She rested her chin on my shoulder. “Okay, you’re right, I’d be fucked. I’d just lie down and succumb to a life of eating people.”
I laughed. At least she was honest.
When we made it to the clearing by the pond I’d parked by, she asked if we could stay.
I turned my face toward hers still on my shoulder. “You want to stay by the serial killer’s snake-infested property?”
“It’s pretty. Kind of reminds me of the creek behind your trailer.”
Moonlight spilled over a lone pier jutting out into the middle of the water, surrounded by tall reeds. It was nothing like theratty creek behind the trailer park I’d grown up in, but I could see what she meant. It was peaceful. Like the shit of town hadn’t managed to reach it yet. “Yeah, I guess it kind of does.”
I dropped her to the ground. She walked ahead of me, cutting through the clearing, a lone shadow in the dark. The whole scene was reminiscent of one of those 1980s horror films I used to watch with Dad. “Survivalist,” I muttered under my breath, then followed her.
She took a seat on the edge of the pier, dangling her feet over the water. I stopped for a second to watch her. God, did she look perfect under those stars. Like something too pure for me. Something I would taint. That touch of innocence that seemed to cling to her was what had me falling for her back in high school. She was the only pure thing in that shithole town. The only pure thing in my life.
I rested the picture against one of the rotting posts, then sat beside her.
Water lapped against the pier, almost in rhythm with the croak of frogs. I had to admit, there was a sense of serenity about it. Familiarity. Growing up, all I’d wanted to do was get the hell out of Dayton, the hell out of the South, but moments like this made me appreciate it.
“When we first broke up, whenever I went home, I’d go to the creek and The Lookout. I don’t know if I was hoping you’d be there, too—hoping to see me.”
The first time I’d gone since we’d split up was when I took her last weekend. Those were our places, and as masochistic as I could be, I didn’t want to hurt myself that way. “I couldn’t bring myself to go without you.”
“Never?”
“Not until last weekend.”
Jade swung her feet over the water. “I think I kept going because I was chasing this feeling.”
“What feeling?”
