Tisper came overdressed, as always.

She wore a leather pencil skirt that tied her together at the knees and a jacket with a faux minx neckline that cradled her long black locks into the shape of a silken heart. Her eye patch had been laced with tiny silver studs that matched the spikes on her bracelet and the leather band in her hair.

She captured eyes the moment she stepped into the bar—a dollar-deal diva in plastic pearls earrings.

She hugged Matt and he hugged her back. He didn't stop huggin' her back until she took him by the shoulders and peeled him off like he adhered at the chest. That was the moment her face changed from I'm excited to see you! toWhat the hell happened?

Matt told her all about Bailey. About the kissing lips and the burning hands and the yelling and the shoving and the moment everything broke into a million suffocating asbestos pieces. He tossed back his beers until they were only droplets at the bottom, then eventually switched to a pitcher. And as he drank himself sick, Matt couldn't help but think she looked amazing. 

All the blurred lines of her had come into focus over the years. She filled the air with a sense of eloquence, like the smell of fine wine or the sound of diamond glasses jangling in a toast. She told him about her classes and impending graduation and all the while, he thought, I kissed her. I kissed a girl like this and I didn't feel anything. I kissed a girl like Jess and I didn't feel anything.

But when he kissed Bailey he felt a million things. A million things that have only haunted him since—good and terrible, tingling like bugs beneath his skin. Maybe he could learn to forget. Maybe it wasn't just Bailey who made him feel those things.

He grazed the faces in the bar until he spotted a set of gray eyes in the back corner—dark, like silver storm clouds. His hair was well-groomed, his grin arctic and sheening like a set of diamond veneers. He wore a puffy jacket that he'd folded over in his lap, a denim shirt that stuck up at the collar. He met Matt's eyes and a very certain feeling crimped his insides.

Tisper traced his gaze back to the distant table. "Wow, you're even popular with the guys, huh?"

"People like to stare," Matt said, his beer suddenly tasting terrible, "but they never actually come up to me."

Tisper hummed and twisted her lips like she was giving the sour situation a taste. "Well, he's giving you sex eyes from across the bar so I'm gonna assume he likes guys. Why don't you test it out? Kiss him, see if you feel anything."

"I'm not just gonna walk over there and kiss a dude."

"I'd do it."

Matt's words drawled, wet with beer. "If you're so confident why aren't you and Cummins a thing yet?"

The name made Tisper pout—downright pout, a child who ran outta quarters on a carnival game. Matt wanted to kiss her then. That hadn't changed about him—the desire, the appreciation for beautiful women. But he knew if he were to try, he wouldn't feel a thing. It'd end just like last time, except they'd both be in tears.

"Have you tried calling him?" Tisper asked. "Maybe you can convince him to come back."

"He was working with the rogues, Tis. Leadin' them right to me." Matt worked his palms into his eyes, sighing out the fire in his belly. "And anyway, what if I got him in more trouble than he's already in?"

Tisper frowned and reached out to brush her fingers against the hand that held Matt's glass. He laid it flat on the table and she walked his palm with a set of long, manicured nails. "What are you doin'?" Matt asked.

"Reading your future," Tisper said.

"You can't read my future."

"Shut up," she said. "Yes I can." Her nails traced the folds in his palm and the veins in his wrist and she hummed again. "Nope, no doom here. You're going to live a long, happy life Matthew Richards."

Matt gave her an exasperated look and slumped back in his chair. "You're full of it."

"Matt." She dragged his hand back to her edge of the table and held it between her own, his deadened nerves waking to the smooth skin and sharp plastic nails. Matt wanted to stay there in her hands, just like that. She was soft and warm and he wasn't alone.

Her single cat-lined eye pinned him. "I need to say something and I need you to listen."

So Matt stared down at his clasped hand and let her speak.

"There's a look in your eyes that scares me," Tisper said. "It scares me because I've only seen it in one other person and that was myself. I want you to be alright."

"I am alright."

"Matt, that's exactly the kinda shit people say when they aren't alright. I know things have been sucky, and I'm sorry about your cow, Matt—really, I am." Matt let out a humored breath and Tisper smiled sweetly in response. She embraced his hand, holding his knuckles to her chin and said, "Jay and I—we're always gonna be here, alright? I know things have been weird and uncomfortable with me and you, but..."

As she went on, the hair on the back of Matt's neck bristled. He looked beyond Tisper to the window panes where a figure passed by in the dense foot traffic, face half-mangled with scars and a glinting white ball where an eye should be. Matt peeled back his memories to that Perigee night when he'd watched Bailey smash a bottle over Rico's head. He wore an eye patch back then, but Matt remembered the shape of his bald skull—the scar that stretched around the top of his ear and to the back of his neck.

Matt shot up from his seat.

"Damnit Matt," said Tisper. "Sit your attention deficit ass down. I was in the middle of a monologue!"

"That was him," Matt said.

"Who?"

Matt shoved his way around the table and out into the cold wind and graying skies. Rico was several yards ahead, but he was tall—so tall, Matt could see him despite the bustles of bodies blocking his path. He felt in his coat pocket and wrapped his fingers around Bailey's knife—let the blade loose, but kept it well hidden. And on quick feet, he followed Rico, twisting his shoulders to thread through the throngs of foot traffic. He was a bus-length away now. If he could just get him away from the street—confirm it was really Rico...

Something hard shoved into the side of him and Matt went stumbling into a puddled alleyway. He was slammed back against the bricks, the air punched out of him. His vision starred and speckled, Matt jerked the knife from his coat pocket. A hand caught his wrist and crushed it against the bricks, mouth pressing against his fiercely. That sweet nothing-taste, the tongue that put needles up his arms and moths in his stomach. He latched onto the frayed fabric of Bailey's bomber jacket, held on like he'd fall to his death if he were let go.

For a moment, he thought he was drunk or dreaming—trapped in one of his lucid nightmares where kissing turned to decay. But there were no bruises this time—just Bailey's lips. The sound of rushed breath, the heat of it on his skin. The hot fire of his palm as it moved down Matt's hand, folded the blade back into his knife with a click. Then the feel of his mouth left, drawn back just enough that his breath still beat against Matt's teeth and the tips of their noses grazed.

Bailey lifted his wrist, the knife still clutched in his fingers and whispered, "Don't do that to me."

To you? Matt thought. But he was too breathless to speak. A raindrop chilled his scalp. Another bounced from the shoulders of Bailey's jacket. Slowly, the rain began to fall in hard, machine-gun static. Matt's vision steadied to all the fierce edges of Bailey's face. The forest-green of his eyes, a fresh cut on his high cheekbone, the scar on his brow.

"Don't go with him," Matt managed to say, as Bailey took him beneath the jaw and kissed him again, fingers pressed rough into the flesh of his cheeks. There was a wet sound as Bailey's palm hit the bricks by his head, a hard breath as Matt crushed him in by the jacket. As he kissed Bailey back in that same, starved way they'd kissed that night in the barn. Rain dampened his jacket and wet his hair, and Matt could taste it on Bailey's lips—the sweet, cool droplets that slipped between the tangle of them.

Then he was touching Bailey's cheek, the cold, slick skin beneath his fingers. He hadn't even noticed he was doing it until suddenly, very suddenly, Bailey tore back. He shoved Matt back against the bricks, hand on his chest to keep him at bay. Palm burning through his thin, gray t-shirt. After a deep breath, his shoulders seemed to relax and he moved back to that close place where Matt couldn't see a thing but those night eyes.

Cold fingers brushed his neck as he straightened the collar of Matt's jacket and said with a deep exhale, "Go home, Cowboy."

"Come with me—"

"No." He pried the fisted fingers from his jacket and staggered out of Matt's grip, boots stamping into a welling puddle. The hard rain pelted his shoulders and rivered down his narrow chin, and if just for a moment, Matt thought he saw something in his face—a want. A desperate want. If ever it was really there, that look vanished with the next blink of his eyes. Bailey didn't hesitate as he turned and left the alley, rain turning to a halo of mist around the shape of his shoulders.

Matt's hand went numb around the switch blade, rain soaking his hair and setting into his jacket. He'd had it. The feeling. If just for a second, he had it back.

The beer had found its way to his legs. His knees buckled and he grappled for control over the placement of his feet, stumbling along the dimpled alley ground until he broke through the busy sidewalks. He searched for Bailey, but his eyes blurred with smeared ghosts of headlights and pale skins. Somewhere not far off, Tisper called his name.

It wasn't long until she was closing in with timid footsteps, searching the drunken, damaged look on his face. And once she read the anguish, she wrapped her arms around him and Matt buried himself in the warm fur of her hood.

He wanted to drown in the rain.