He ended up falling in line. Somewhere inside of it.

Vance followed up after Johnny and settled the heel of his palm on green woolen cloth, setting the cue on his knuckles, aligning the cue the way Danny blathered on about between every shot. He tried not to let Danny's nagging take up so much space in his brain, but it was there, and it was telling him to stop pussy-footing around the shot and just—go.

The cue ball shot straight and hit the right edge of his solid orange, knocking it through a tight thread between two other billiard balls. It tumbled into the left corner pocket.

"Gee, who the hell invited Vance to pool?" Franco groused to the whole club as if Vance hadn't seen himself sneak three stripes into the pockets.

Danny frowned and started up again. "C'mon, Franco, you gotta play your shot the best you can, so quit honkin' about Vance already. Look, try and bang out the yellow."

Vance fell back into the shadow-y outer ring of the greasy yellow light hanging low over the table, and he leaned back against cigarette ash-stained wood paneling as Johnny took up the next shot. The local pool club was just part of the seedy bar around ten miles west off of Northfield, but Danny could always nick his dad's keys to the truck some way or another, and if he couldn't, then he'd always find someone to bum a ride off of. It was easy to understand why Danny came out to this place like a goddamn moth on a lamp.

Everyone here was smoking like a chimney, layering the air with it, and the bar didn't ID, so Danny could queue up all the rum and cokes he wanted. It was all busy here, too, when half of Northfield's goons hung around here just to clatter around some pool balls and cackle and taunt with bottles in their hands. Vance sometimes looked at them and wondered how easily they could grin in this dank, low-down place gulping down some their dark liquids.

Vance didn't bother since a flat stare was just as fine as wiry grins. If he had it his way, a flat stare would be all he'd bother giving to Eugie's Dive, but Danny looked up at him and nodded. "Go up."

He stepped back into the yellow ring and glanced over the lay of the balls. It hardly even made sense how Vance had to play the game. It was the same thing over and over, and Vance couldn't make himself see what was even going on.

Lay the cue on his knuckles, line up the shot to sink a solid or a stripe or whatever the hell—fire. Don't check to see whether it goes in. Brag about it or blame the light. Smile when someone slaps your back, go back to not giving a damn about the game right until you win or lose. Buy someone a beer or drink your spoils. Play again. Watch the moths circle the lamps.

Vance shot the white, and he pushed out the last stripe he needed. The eight-ball was left up to Johnny's hands, but Vance was busy with Danny's backslapping. He offered up the vague smile and set himself up leaning against the pool table this time, occupying himself with a beer. It was fine enough after a certain number of sips.

"La-dies and ladies!" Some ruckus was flying around at the front door as a couple more Northfield goons filed into the club, and some scrawny, acne-riddled upstart was right at the front. "The gentleman has arrived!"

From there, the noise in the place was boiling over from mumbling chatter to rowdy shouting as that ginger kid was getting all over the place and ordering enough rum and cokes to drown the place. Vance had too many beers for this. It was making him loose in a way that got him stuck on the goddamn noise over by the bar, but Vance pulled it back, settling back into the big game of "I don't give a damn" around the pool table.

"Hey, someone put a muzzle on that guy!" Danny barked over the mess of arguing and grumbling, and there were some folks adding their opinions with him.

The crowd stirred a little 'til the kid came busting out with some friends behind him, and he was out swinging. "Hey, whoever said that, say it to my face!"

"Jesus," Vance muttered, setting his beer down on the edge as whatever mess Danny got them into started to unfold.

Danny stepped right out, using all the muscle on him to totally shadow the kid. "I said, put a muzzle on it, kid. Why don't you take your yapping somewhere else and just beat it?"

The way the kid was looking at him, shaking in his goddamn boots—it was more than obvious that the whole encounter wouldn't ever get to a fight, but the kid was hardly gonna let this issue go without getting a few words in. Vin, Franco, and Johnny were all crowding up behind Danny, ready to back up a fight against some bean pole, but Vance stayed right on the pool table with his beer in his hands. This idiotic scene wasn't gonna go anywhere, so neither was Vance.

He'd done it before here, and the shattered beer stains were still on the wall to prove it. He'd drunk enough to try the other pointless games of butting heads and glaring and shoving and raging, and he'd come home with nothing to show for it but a shiner and a slap on the back from Danny. His mother was in the kitchen, and she'd seen her husband's son with that ugly mark on his face. She wouldn't even nag him about it. She murmured the stuff of his childhood that just made him feel lost and far from home.

Even when Vance would come home late and drunk from sneaking out to pool, she wouldn't nag him. He wished she'd do it just once, so he wouldn't keep listening to Danny's voice about everything.

He got up finishing off his beer as he went and ducked out of the bar while Danny was busy pushing around that brat. The wind ruffled through his hair and clothes a particular way—comfortingly at this time of night as it blew away the dregs of cigarette smoke. It was like Vance cut a different shape in the wind than anyone else.

He reached for his back pocket and joined up with the other stranger outside starting up a smoke. He pulled out a cigarette, and he patted his front pocket just as he remembered that Danny bummed his book off him.

Vance only had to look up at the stranger for him to give him a wry smile and say, "Need a match?"

The stranger came closer, lit smoke between his lips as he flicked out a matchbox. The match swiped and sparked to life, flame already eating its way down the stick as it lit the two of them a type of yellow that lived and breathed and died. The stranger reached up to shield the match as he lit the end of Vance's smoke, something like a smile playing at his lips. Vance didn't know which one he wasn't supposed to be looking at between that faint smile or his flame-painted hands near his mouth.

And just as quick, the flame was left to the wind, knocking it out along with that overwhelming, brief light. Vance tried to make peace with it. The dark blues and blacks settled back on them, silvers cutting out the most prominent parts of their faces for each other. Vance looked at him for a moment, and he muttered, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." The shadow swallowed whatever twitch of his smile that was supposed to go with the friendly glint in his eyes.

That was that.

It was, but that moment was all it took to make Vance hate smoking all over again. It suddenly tasted as bitter as it ever had to him even though he'd worked hard to numb himself to the taste. But this ash on his tongue was something else tonight. It was something to put him here in a yellow that wasn't so sickly-pale.

"Not a fan of pool?"

Startled, all Vance could think to say was, "Come again?"

He motioned over his own face with a half-grin.

The question shocked Vance out of his resting scowl.

He laughed a little. "You're no good at it either?"

Vance's head was silent, leaving the decision entirely up to him. Oddly enough, he chose to lie. "No."

He cocked his head in interest, inky-black curls falling over his forehead. He almost seemed mythological, the way he looked to Vance. The way he smiled and smoked and looked at the woods opposite of them. This guy should've stayed in the silver screens. "Wow. I thought this place was crawling with pool rats. What're you doing here, then?"

Vance felt like he was caught without an excuse. The one lit in his mouth somehow didn't count. "I'm just... out."

The stranger left that reply alone. He blew out a breath. The smoke was soft and lit slate gray by the moon falling through it, and it looked sweet to Vance. "So am I."

#

Vance came home, the scent of sin radiating off of him as he stepped into his father's home where his mother was waiting alone in the living room. The shame was sobering enough even as he was swaying on his feet, and his mother carted him into the kitchen to salvage the wreck of him.

Maybe it was her hands he was looking for all night. He was looking for the soft lonely yellows of the kitchen and the cold touch of her fingers covered by a wet rag wiping his face. He was looking for that chance to hold her hands in his and beg forgiveness, and he was looking for her hands to stroke him with all the mercy that he hoped should never run out for her prodigal son.

He wished he was a little boy again, doing dishes because his mother was punishing him for tracking mud into her kitchen. He wished he was little, so he could do as his mother and God told him. He wished he wasn't a man with his father's face and his mother's heart and Eve's weakness.

#

Zio Fransisco gave him beers. Vance didn't want them because it would be out back after work with his other uncles, and all the old men would stand around talking about what was once around.

"Ha-ha! Look at Mateo's boy now; it's like we've got him right back here." Fransisco ruffled him around and patted his shoulder like Danny would, and they were all looking at him in such a goddamn awful way.

Zio Giovanni was looking at him, edges of his lips twisted down into a failing smile, and he looked away to sip his beer. He didn't say anything else for the rest of the time as everyone took their turns talking their way around their brother's death. Vance stood where he was told and drank trying not to look at anyone directly.

"Dai. He really is just like him." Fransisco was sloshing his beer around as he gestured at his nephew. "The only thing Vance needs now is a nice Sophia. Oh, how he got all wound up about her!"

They started chuckling and pitching in stories about daisies and church and wedding dresses, and Vance looked away with his beer. Danny was standing around a hundred feet away down the alley, back facing them as he leaned on the corner of the alleyway, smoking with Johnny. Head ducked, quiet.

Vance put his beer down. This was one of the other reasons why he didn't like drinking with zio Fransisco. He walked back into the empty shop and picked up the broom to start closing up.

#

He brought a case to Danny that night. Six of 'em, and he drank 'em all down with him. Vance was sick of the amber crap and wished that they had some wine around.

Danny was being quiet for once and drinking up a beer that could hardly even get him to blush. He was just looking at the truck sitting in the dirt road they drove on to get out here to the field near the chapel where wild daisies grew and children fell in love through the old church windows and got hitched after high school.

"He kept talking about my dad." Vance was watching the moon's mirage swim through the sky, wisps of cloud passing over it like sweet gray smoke. His head swam, swaying like an acrobat on a tightrope. "Said I'm just like him."

Danny watched the grass a bit. Vance wished he could just be like this more often instead of yammering on about beer and pool and broads. Then, he started up again. "You know what, you, me, 'n everyone else oughta get out like this. We should grab the truck and just drive like madmen all over the country.

Vance didn't move from where he'd been resting his head on his knee. "What? I don't wanna."

"Well, start wanting. Look at us, drinking at church in the dirt like a couple of bums talkin' sentimental about your old man," Danny sneered, but not at him. Their old men. "Christ, get up, let's have some real fun."

His head was swirling around a solid no, and he didn't want to go through more pointless crap like that, but he was just sitting there like a sack of dirt. He opened his mouth and said, "Fine."

Danny clapped and grinned at Vance in that seedy way, but he jumped up, and he coulda been the sun when he smacked Vance awake on the shoulder and put out his hand. "Hey, come on. Let's grab the guys. Maybe Bianca, too, while we're at it."

The only part of this plan Vance actually wanted to participate in was grabbing Danny's hand. From there, Vance trudged himself along behind him.

#

Sometimes, when Vance walking up to the dive that glowed dark in the night with the false steeple of its high-gabled roof, it was like coming to church. Sometimes, it was eerily like that as partook of blood and flesh. Swam in bitter incense. Recited the codes.

As with every church, it was crawling with sinners. All of them burning alive with it and loving every moment as they knelt at stained woolen altars and asked for God to guide their hands.

Vance's eyes flickered to the left where "their table" was. He only needed to approach before the game playing there had cleared off, players skulking into shadow to beggar around to play a few shots elsewhere. Danny clapped his back. It felt good. "Attaboy, Vance."

It was all Vance needed to get him to spend an hour, hard at work, playing the usual games. It almost felt like he was winning something by the time he wrested a shot of whiskey from Danny's wallet. He drank it, and it was warm fire, but this was another game of "I don't give a damn", too, so he just blinked and exhaled. Danny grinned at him, the only real, true thing he'd seen all night in this shadowy, stained place, and he grabbed Vance's shoulder. Shook it and patted it.

Vance would sell his soul for a slap on the back.

"Who's that hot shot?" Franco put his elbow on the counter, hand curled over his glass of coke and rum in just the right way. He was only fourteen, and he was better than Vance.

They looked, and it was a crowd all ringing the pool table. Some sat like beer glasses perched on the wooden ledge. Others observed like wolves from the outer ring of the yellow light which was starting to look like a spotlight for the hand splayed atop the felt. The cue pierced the light, and someone was blocking the view of the shot, but Vance didn't need to see it to know that it was flawless because a silver grin flashed right before he fired his shot. Vance turned back around as the billiard balls clattered and the voices hissed, jabbered, taunted.

He felt sick.

He had another shot of whiskey.

"An upstart's not all that," Danny scoffed, and he nudged Vance's shoulder with his own. "Our Vance here could pound him."

Vance just flickered a glance at him and mustered half a chuckle. "Right."

"Hey, yeah, why don't you go and show him who's king around here?" Franco leaned in, grinning just like Danny. A natural, this kid. Vance was jealous enough to cry.

"The king around here is Danny," Vance rumbled, dragging the last shot of whiskey closer.

"You're damn right!" Another pat on the back. Vance smiled down at the bar. "But Vance, you should go on and knock him down a peg. Mop the floor with him."

He rubbed his back. Danny still had his hand on Vance's back, leaning in, but he wasn't so riled up like he always got when he was at the dive. His eyes were on Vance, and he was grinning because Vance was doing something right for once, and that was all he needed.

Vance got off the stool and sunk into the crowd. It was so tight and dark that he would've lost his way if he wasn't a bit taller than everyone. And once people got wind of who was coming through, they parted like the red goddamn sea on either side, the pool table at the end. Vance stared down a barrel of sinners that drew his eyes and steps like a black hole toward the dark figure chalking his cue. His palms prickled like they were going to get clammy, but he had enough whiskey that they stayed hot and dry.

There weren't any footsteps behind him. A single glance back, and he saw Danny keeping everyone at the bar to let Vance have this moment for himself. He turned back to meet the stranger's grin, gilded with interest and a light that turned gold on his face. "You the king around here?"

Vance grabbed a cue from someone without breaking eye-contact because that was also part of these games. "Give me a match."

He looked at Vance for a moment. Smiled privately. Just for him. "Sure. I'll give you another."

The light above them felt like the sun, glaring down hot and knowing. Vance thought he was sweating under all this heat and light, but there wasn't a drop on his skin.

The guys around them all reset the table for them, and that stranger never took his eyes off him. Never stopped with that smile. Even when Vance was pulling him apart on the table.

He felt like he was losing with every ball he sunk. It was a goddamn disaster.

God was no longer here in this place. The drinks and the jeering and the sinners fell away, leaving Vance under the strongest light of his life and a grin he didn't want to remember. He thought he was going to die after every shot he took, and maybe he would someday, over a different altar, maybe with a different stranger.

Vance sunk the eight-ball, and he looked up against his will at the stranger across the table whose grin only grew wider after he'd lost. The mob around them was drunk off the drama of it, and Vance couldn't even say the right words. Couldn't make himself take the killing stroke and brag over him. Rub his face into the dirt like Danny taught.

All that practice was for shit at the moment of truth.

Vance just put his eyes down and receded back into the crowd where his family intercepted him. They roughed him up all over, saying all the things that he'd been working all night for, and he was getting the slaps on the back that he'd sell his pitiful soul for.

He walked back to the bar and found his last shot of whiskey waiting there. He tipped it back.

#

The drive back was the same as most nights. The whiskey, though, made everything a little louder.

The bodies around him, rising and falling, unusually silent. Drunk, spent, warm. Vance was not different, but he was awake. It was hard to sleep when he was this warm, the engine rattling his heart. The road before him was just a corridor of black wood, standing all around him and watching down. The moon was just a memory here.

Headlights were a different type of sickly. Yellow, like the eyes of wolves.

He was breathing hard, but he was breathing alright. The air felt warm in here, but it was fine because the trouble was only when the air felt small in his throat. But that time wasn't here yet, so he was breathing heavy and fine.

He blinked slowly, staring down yet another barrel of the road. He coughed, and he didn't like that it was the only human sound he'd heard so far after Danny had knocked out a couple miles ago. It was just him in this car, the others fallen hopelessly asleep. It was just him for the vigil back home. Just him and the black eyes of God peering in from the wood.

Just him and this car, driving to a bed he was going to sleep in, and someday, when he was truly alone, somewhere much farther. He was breathing heavy, but the worst part was that he was breathing fine tonight.

Men fell apart from plenty of things, but they weren't often things to be scared of. Vice. Pride. Misfortune. These were the natural things. They were the natural deaths; nothing to be ashamed or proud of. Men didn't know how they were going to fall, and that innocence of an ignorant lamb was what saved them before God and other men.

Vance breathed in, felt himself expand, tug at his loosening seams, and breathed out. What was natural about knowing where his seams were? What was natural about seeing the first loose stitch in him, and then seeing the next three, five, nine?

But today, he was traveling among the living, as drunk and warm and dying as the rest of them as he drove toward a place to sleep. Most nights, that was enough for him.

And some nights, he swallowed around the mark of Cain and murmured his prayers.

#

"I'm sorry, mamma." Her hands, on his face, wiping. He wished he could cry. "I'm sorry."

"Tesoro mio," she whispered back, and he wished he didn't look like his father. Maybe she would love him less that way. Maybe she would tell him that he'd sinned against her. Maybe she would finally recognize what he was.

"I'm sorry." He was no lamb like his father was. He couldn't sacrifice himself on distant beaches on a different continent, couldn't disappear without even a body to bury. He had his own fate. "I'm sorry."

Her kiss against his brow. Her tears on his cheek. No one could be baptized twice, no matter how much their mamma wept over them, so Vance stayed the same as he ever was.

#

He and Danny were down at the lake. Just them.

Just them about their old men.

Danny flung a smooth stone at the water, and it skipped twice.

Vance still had his hands in his pockets and just watched. The stone, not Danny. He tended to get really irritable if Vance even glanced at this kind of shiner.

Danny hucked another one. "See? Look at that. Three skips. Get it at an angle."

Vance grunted and looked out at where some ducks were flying low across the water.

"Here, you try." He stuffed a rock into Vance's hand.

He didn't want to learn a new game to play, but Danny only ever worked in games—usually ones that he won. So, Vance made his best toss.

They stood in silence as his stone fell right in as rocks usually did when they hit water. Danny shifted around for a moment and sniffed. "Yeah, alright. It was the rock. Wasn't the best."

Danny kept giving him rocks, and Vance kept throwing them. Each and every one of them a dud. It was almost hilarious, but neither of them were laughing.

Danny kept giving him stones anyway. "It's all in the wrist. Loosen up, huh?"

He readjusted his feet and angled his hand to toss it again. Nothing.

"Why are you moving around like that? Just toss it; nothing to it." He gave him another rock. "Just be cool. Rocks skip themselves."

Vance tried to relax. The grip was so loose, it slipped out of his hand as he threw it, and it didn't even make it into the water.

It was pathetic, but Danny pretended it didn't even happen. Put another stone into Vance's dud of a hand.

"You'll get it. It takes practice and all that crap." He tapped Vance's shoulder with the back of his hand. "Like pool."

He could probably keep giving Vance rocks forever even if he never got a single skip. Vance kept trying, feeling bad for Danny. Vance would say it was a lost cause, but he didn't want Danny to give up on him.

"Here, watch me." Four skips. He laughed.

Vance smiled with him. "I like this better than pool."

Danny just shook his head at him. "Man, you're nuts. Still too good for pool?"

"Too many people in there. It's just antsville."

Danny handed him a stone before he reached into his back pocket. "You're king in there. Who cares if it's chump city?"

Vance dared a glance at him. "King of chump city?"

"Better than being a chump yourself." He pulled out a smoke and put it between his lips, looking up at the lake. "A goddamn good for nothing loser."

He looked at the lake with him, hearing his match flare. Smoke blowing west, past Vance. This time a little less bitter.

"I hate your old man."

"Yeah?" he replied, kind of angry, but not at Vance. He kicked around in the mud-orange leaves for another rock. "At least that makes one of us."

#

If he had the choice, he would spend every hour in church, instead of going just once on Sundays with his mamma.

Time stopped under this steeple, standing like an old god over Northfield. The rules had been the same ever since his mamma had taught them to him under her breath during the liturgy of the word. Had been the same even before, when she was just a little girl kneeling on the same hard pews. It was the same Sunday each time. The same faces bringing the same old stories.

Vance wanted to be one of those faces drawing the same words. At least for now.

Even if he was approaching the holy communion in father John's old, thick hands like the old chipped white window sills, warped with time. Vance had fasted an hour before this moment, clean in body, but as he knelt before him and took the bread on his tongue, it was a little like putting a fresh coat of white paint on rotten wood. It would do for now until someone set weight to it.

He stood back up and accompanied mamma back to their pew where he knelt again on creaking wooden floors. There was a place for Vance, here, on his knees in repentance. It was just one more place to lodge yet another plea if he could only make so many on the floor of his father's kitchen.

#

At the end of it, Danny was always going to be king. They went to Eugie's Dive again.

Vance followed behind him, half his slave, half his brother. It probably made him a chump. It wasn't really his own business what it made him, but he'd been following Danny around for nineteen long years. It would always be like this until one day he won't be able to. Either because Danny was skipping the kinds of rocks that only sunk for Vance or because Vance's seams started pulling too hard.

So, he'd better get his time in now.

"See? Look at that, good!" Danny was a bit worse than usual tonight. Maybe because of how Vance mouthed off at the lake. "Best man in the club."

He kept putting bottles and shots in his hand. Spoiling him rotten like Vance was going to keel over without it. Vance didn't say anything and drank.

Vance indeed felt like one of the chumps as he walked to the toilet, whiskey-warm and ale-dumb. Went and pissed away all the drinks Danny was pouring into him tonight and thought that he'd like to go home now. He wasn't drunk enough to be a wreck once he got home, but he was tipsy enough to feel all sparky in his stomach. Nervous as all get out.

It was worse for him once he stepped back into the bar where he heard all the jabber and clattering. It was making him anxious as hell, especially when eyes tagged behind him as he passed, so he went outside like an idiot. Maybe he should've just gotten drunker, so he wouldn't mind the noise and smell so much, but he was going to come back here one way or another.

He stood outside, alone, the wind splitting on his shoulder and trying to get at his match. He was lit and smoking, but there was no one around to clap his back for it. No one around to see how he didn't flinch at the burn in his throat. He really was just a complete chump.

The wood yawned in front of him. He took a drag.

A scuffle of shoes, off to his left.

Like a fool, Vance turned to look. He was already losing the big game of "I don't give a damn" before that silver smile even found him again. He turned around like he hadn't given himself away.

He went and stood right next to him. "Got a match?"

"No," Vance lied, not looking at him directly. He took the smoke out of his mouth and blew out a cloud. "Sorry."

A scuffle of shoes.

Vance turned again like a chump.

That smile, painted around a smoke. He gestured Vance toward him.

There wasn't time to think. Like a moth to a flame, Vance leaned in, heart thumping like a silent drum. He was hardly breathing, but his seams were pulling anyway. The ends of their smokes met, and Vance inhaled lethally sweet smoke, burning up his end a little brighter.

They pulled back, and Vance couldn't even remember the details of it. It was worse because his brain was filling it all in on its own. Painting a brighter, sweeter, tipsier picture.

"Thanks."

Vance grunted, and he was waiting for the next move. Waited for the usual scalpels digging into Vance's deal. Waited to carefully play a stony defense.

But it was sweet smoke and bright moonlight. The wind was going, too.

"Guess we both got caught." He laughed like it was something to laugh about. He took his smoke out. The wind looked like it fit him, ruffling his black hair like that.

Vance looked away, not knowing what to say.

"You don't like pool either?" The stranger was just cutting both of them open.

Vance felt compelled to reply. "No. Too many people."

He nodded. "It's quieter on Monday nights. If you'd let me bum a match off you."

The stranger was playing a different game. Vance didn't know how to play. Wasn't sure if he should. He wanted Danny to tell him what to do.

"Let me buy you a beer." There. That was something Danny would do.

He chuckled. "I don't drink, but I could take something else."

He felt like he was stuck in the headlights once he was looking at that stranger who dropped his cigarette and scraped it under his shoe. He seams were pulling harder, snapping. "Like what?"

"A name."

His heart was pumping too hard. He didn't want his stranger to take his name. It brought him too close to Vance. "Romano."

A twitch of his lips. "Coleman."

#

He got visions through his dreams. In all of them, he was driving alone.

There were no trees here, only light with no sun. Just light the color of dying leaves, a yellow that was just a beautiful, inevitable kind of sickly that was the shade before death.

He was in zio Francisco's terribly loud truck again, and there was no one asleep around him. There was no whiskey lighting his blood. It was just him, the heavens, and the fallow American plains that wasn't in Northfield or anywhere else in New York. He was driving off west, like every other man with some destiny to manifest, but there wasn't land or gold or God at the end of this road. But Vance was driving. His foot wasn't even on the peddle. The car was taking him whether he wanted it or not, and it was going to take him alone whether he wanted it or not.

But when he looked to his right: a beautiful stranger, smiling at him, feet on the busted dash.

He turned back around, throat tight.

Vance could die like this.

Vance would die like this.

He turned, and there was no one in that seat.

#

"Hey, wanna head to the dive?" Another ugly mark on his cheek.

"Sure."

"That's it, killer."

"Who else is going?"

"No one."

"Why not?"

"Chumps, all of them. It's just us royalty tonight."

#

Danny drove. It didn't make Vance feel any better, but his endless blabbing did.

"Man, did she look stacked in that blouse." He shook his head with a grin. "She was smiling at me and all—bet you I'm peeling that thing off Saturday night."

It was like that. Vance didn't have much to say, but Danny let him off.

He drove like a madman all the way back up to the dive. All Vance could think about was that it was Monday.

It was Monday, and when he stepped in, the bar was quiet.

Danny didn't care. Slammed his buck on the counter, ordered two bottles of Lucky.

Vance went to grab their table, but Danny stopped him and looked him over. Then, he jerked his head toward the bar, so they sat and kept talking about Jolene Stein's tits until they started talking about her sister's. Vance kept his eyes down, and he grunted and sipped where appropriate.

Someone took the stool next to Vance. "Two shots of Harper. A coke, too."

"Hey," Danny called out because Vance wasn't going to do it. "Aren't you that hotshot from a while ago?"

"Not so hot anymore," he chuckled, sliding the shots over to them.

Danny was too busy sizing him up to laugh. He still took the whiskey. "What gives?"

"Just looking for decent company." Coleman's eyes strayed to Vance's.

Vance looked away.

"Yeah, well." He lifted the shot. "Thanks."

Coleman bought them more beers. It earned points with Danny. He didn't ask about the shiner. Earned even more.

The three of them were drinking their way through the evening, none of them having exchanged names because this was also how to play "I don't give a damn", having long, hard conversations about nothing.

("Your old man sounds like a dream."

"Some dream. What's your deal, hot-shot?"

"Same as yours."

"The hell's that mean?"

"Means we're both sitting here drinking instead of having meatloaf at the dinner table.")

They talked their way around Vance, who said nothing really, but Coleman kept taking his glances at him. Danny couldn't see, so deep in whiskey and company who knew what he was talking about, but even if Danny could see, he wouldn't know what it meant when Coleman's eyes smiled at him.

Vance kept pouring back liquor because there was nothing else to do but keep checking to see if there was still a stranger in the seat next to him. Every glance at him was another sin that God would tally up once Vance made his way west. Coleman was just going to be another thing to apologize for, drunk in his mamma's arms.

He slipped off the stool. "Going for a smoke. Be back."

He was alone the moment he put his boot back on the floor, and he was traveling out of the bar and out into the wind which wanted to blow him west. He couldn't even take his smoke out and pretend at it anymore. He couldn't even move once he saw the truck in front of him, his keys in his hand, headlights casting a dead stare at him.

The moon and sun were gone tonight, somewhere else as everything glowed a pallid silver.

Whiskey was hot in his throat. The air was tight.

And when he looked right, his beautiful stranger.

"Ha. Not smoking either?"

Vance let Coleman cut both of them open. "I don't like smoking."

He smiled. "Mysterious, aren't you?"

Vance looked away, wondering if he could still make himself go back into the bar or if it was too late for him.

"Don't worry." He touched Vance's elbow. "I don't mind."

Vance could cry. "Would you drive west with me?"

He blinked. Smiled. "With you? Anywhere."

Vance came closer, the wind blowing at his back, pushing him toward that silver smile. He reached up, slow, trembling.

Coleman let that hand touch his neck. He was so warm. Vance forgot how warm other people could be. His heart was bursting, snapping open his seams. He was going to pull away and get into the truck, but Coleman grabbed his hand before it could slip off.

Like the wind, his stranger pulled him west toward him.

Another person was so heartbreakingly warm. It was the warmest thing Vance might ever feel, and he would be cold for the rest of his life after this. So cold that he'll eventually die from it.

He gasped, and Coleman kept him close, lips moving against his. He tasted like smoke. It was so sweet. Vance didn't know what to do without him. He was going to die without him. He was going to die because of him.

They kept pulling apart but coming back together. Vance's mouth continuously coming back against his, pulling back, touching back down again, and he finally learned how to skip the way Danny hadn't taught him.

"My name's Blake," he said between kisses. An amused scoff. "If you care about that."

"Vance," he replied because he did give a damn, and he took another kiss to add to the big talley. And another. And another.

And it would have gone on, Vance skipping this stone forever, until a workboot scuffled on gravel. He looked up, and there was Danny looking at him.

Vance stepped away, cold. Walked west to judgement day.

He came to Danny and resisted the urge to kneel like he was at a pew. He just put out his hand, and Vance gave him the keys. Danny took them and went to the driver's side. He looked back at Vance, expectant.

He felt such a sick type of relief, and he climbed into the truck with him.

They were driving away with the engine rattled between them as it ever did, but it wasn't enough to eclipse what was between them. Vance didn't dare speak.

Danny cleared his throat. "You were drunk. It's okay."

He really would keep handing him rocks forever. Vance was sick at the thought. He turned his face to the window, unable to drop this stupid game even when he lost everytime.

"It's alright, Vance. You didn't know what you were doing."

Another fucking rock. Vance can't even skip it.

"It's okay. Nothing happened."

"I—" A sob.

"You just had too much to drink, alright?"

"Jesus, pull over." Vance bent down, gasping. "Pull over!"

He stopped, and he piled out into the wind, turning into ashes. He hit the side of the road, into a pile of leaves, and his stomach was coming out. His heart was coming out with it. His organs. His goddamn brains. All of it, spilling right out of him through his torn open seams.

"Christ almighty." He was slapping Vance on the back even though Vance's soul was already sold. "See? You're drunker than a horse."

"Just leave me here."

"Don't say that. Get back in the car, and we'll get you fixed up."

"I can't." Vance laid down, air squeezed to nothing in his throat. He looked up at the merciless, moonless sky. "I can't skip stones. I can't do it. Just give up. I don't want to try anymore. It'll never work."

"Vance, what are you talking about?" Danny asked because he'll never know what Vance was talking about. He refused to even see what Vance did. He was looking right through him like he was a ghost.

"Just let me die," he said, not to Danny. "I don't want to do this anymore."

"Get in the truck. I'm not letting you die here." He was trying to drag Vance up. Danny won't even let him die.

"Please, I'm begging you to just leave me here. I don't want to go home. No one even fucking knows what I am over there. No one even knows what the hell I am."

Danny stopped pulling at him. He sat in the dirt with him. Unwilling to really see him, even more unwilling to leave him. He was going to sit there forever with him.

Vance closed his eyes, knowing he wasn't alone for tonight. He had his brother visiting in on him this evening before in the morning, Danny would go on east, back to Northfield.

And Vance would be heading west, his stranger shimmering next to him.

END