“This is a bad idea,” Jordan said two nights later, standing at the edge of the empty fountain and squinting at the instructions on the back of a box of fireworks in the orange glow of the parking lot’s safety light. Micah had gone to visit his uncle in West Virginia over the holiday weekend and come back with a trunk full of them: snakes and poppers and parachutes, Black Cats and Lady Fingers and half a dozen roman candles that were probably going to take somebody’s thumbs off before the end of the night.
Colby leaned back against the hood of his car and tipped his head up at the sky thick with fireflies, a bottle of Bud Light sweating not-unpleasantly in his hand. He thought it was his third, or maybe his fourth? He’d been trying to take it easy for a while there, but now, two days after he’d gotten back from Philly, it didn’t seem like there was much of a point. He watched as Micah tossed a ground spinner into the fountain, the whistle and crack of it like tiny gunshots splitting the quiet night. This was worse than a bad idea, he thought idly; watch Keith show up and arrest them all, and Colby’d be right back where he started, sulking in a holding cell like the last two months hadn’t happened at all.
He’d known it wasn’t going to work with Meg from the very beginning, he reminded himself, repeating it like a mantra for the thousandth time: Even if this weekend hadn’t been a total fucking calamity, what kind of future did they have? Him lying to all his friends and driving up to visit her on her yuppie college campus on his days off from whatever grunt job he managed to find for himself? Casually avoiding talking about anything real with her and her Patagonia-wearing classmates, both of them irritated and resentful and biting their tongues all the time? Eventually breaking up anyway, because they were just too different? It was better this way.
Even if it didn’t feel like it.
He was thinking about digging another beer out of the cooler when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked down at the display screen, swearing softly under his breath even as his heart tripped over its shoelaces:
Meg.
Colby almost dropped the damn thing onto the concrete, thumbing frantically at the button to silence it and jamming it back into his pocket. He wasn’t going to answer. There was no fucking point.
“Shit,” he said, louder this time, and headed for the grassy shoulder at the very edge of the lot.
“Hey!” Micah called after him, a box of sparklers in one hand; he had a plan to make a video of himself drawing shiny dicks in the air and upload it onto YouTube. “Where you going?”
“I gotta take this,” Colby said, then kept going until he was far enough away that he was sure nobody could hear him. Both Jordan and Micah had made fun of him for an entire day after Meg had come to visit, then never asked about her again. He wasn’t in any hurry to reopen that particular can of worms. He took a deep breath and swallowed his nerves down, staring out at the empty road. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Meg replied, her voice clipped and distant. “How are you?”
“Uh. I’m good.” Colby cleared his throat, setting his beer on the curb and sitting down beside it. It felt like a lot longer than just two days since he’d heard her voice. “I didn’t think you’d call,” he said, rubbing hard at the back of his neck.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Meg countered immediately. Then: “What’s that sound?”
Colby glanced over his shoulder at where Jordan and Micah were launching firecrackers in the direction of the tree line, neon light streaking through the air. “What sound?” he asked, even as he reminded himself there was no reason to lie to her at this point. It didn’t actually matter what she thought.
“That—” Meg broke off. “Forget it,” she said. “Don’t tell me.” Then she sighed. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to make sure you made it home.”
She could have texted if that was what she wanted. Colby didn’t know what it meant that she’d called. “I did.”
“Okay.”
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Colby flopped back into the scruffy, weedy grass. “Meg,” he said, at the same time as she said, “Colby . . .”