It’s ugly after sunset
Thank God Maddy drives a Tesla.
Between the cameras, warning systems and whatever invisible technology keeps the vehicle from accepting its owner’s worst ideas, there is at least one intelligence in this car paying proper attention to the road.
I would trust my ten-year-old brother behind the wheel before I trusted Maddy, and he still asks which pedal makes the car stop.
She has zoned out twice, doesn’t even register that the light changed, and spent the past ten minutes of our twenty-five-minute drive moving her entire body over Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks again. All without paying a single brain cell to the road ahead of her.
At one point she looked through the windscreen and asked, “Oh. Why are we going this route?”
She is driving.
Thankfully, she turns on self-driving before I have to decide whether grabbing the wheel from a freshman counts as impolite passenger behaviour.
Whenever the music swells, however, her shoulders rise with it and her right hand slices dramatically through the air as though an invisible orchestra has been waiting all evening for an eighteen-year-old psychology student in a red Tesla to demonstrate where Hans Zimmer went wrong.
I look through the windscreen and finally register where we are. “We could’ve been home ten minutes ago if you took the highway.”
I grip the door handle.
Her thumb drums against the steering wheel. “Welcome to the scenic route.”
She returns her attention to the music and lifts two fingers precisely as the strings build.
“It’s nine at night.”
“Willy, ugly highways remain ugly after sunset.”
I should have taken DJ’s offer for the drive home but he was going to dinner with his girlfriend.
I could have taken Leon’s, but he was heading out to the bar with the guys.
Spending two hours listening to him explain why we almost won would have resulted in another disciplinary conversation with Coach.
Nate disappeared from the arena with a blonde attached to his neck before I had fully left the court. That is his preferred method of processing disappointment.
It was our home opener too, which means several thousand people got to watch us lose. First game this season on home court.
Holy hell.
We had Bucknell until the final three minutes. Then Rory missed the switch, Mason hesitated on an open shot and Leon forced a pass through a gap that had stopped existing before the ball even left his hands.
I can replay every mistake with perfect clarity.
Mine too. Especially mine. I should have taken the last shot instead of trusting the play we had drawn.
One point.
We lost by one fucking point.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sharp sound of an incoming call flooding the car speakers. The music disappears, replaced by a name across the centre screen.
Leila ??
Maddy’s conducting hand stops in midair. Her thumb hovers over the screen for half a second before she declines the call.
Pirates surges back through the speakers.
The same name appears again before the next measure begins.
“You can answer,” I turn towards her. “I’ll pretend I can’t hear anything.”
“Nope.” She declines it faster this time.
Her eyes stay on the road this time so I turn back towards the road too. The music surges louder, darker, strings gathering beneath something that sounds like an approaching war.
“The Kraken.” Of course I know the fucking track now.
In fact, since she moved in three weeks ago, I don’t know if I have listened to anything but Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. Maddy has been blasting it all over the kitchen, her room and really, all over the house.
This morning, she had occupied the upstairs bathroom for twenty minutes with the door completely open.
I understand girls take way longer to brush their teeth, I’ve seen enough of them getting ready for a party.
But Maddy? She was dancing to Soundtrack No.
7 from the first Pirates movie like she was at fucking Coachella.
I knew because I saw both hands abandon her face every thirty seconds while some kind of white cream smeared across her cheeks, her hips moving to the music. Then she remembered the cream drying across her skin and resumed rubbing it over her face, neck and collarbones.
Rubbing.
A word that shouldn’t enter my mind while Maddy was standing in sleep shorts at eight in the morning.
How does she not get a headache from this stupidly intense music at godly hours?
The sound in the car surges louder.
Davy Jones. I know this because the last song finishes.
I hate what has happened to me.
From the side, Maddy looks enough like Lizzie to irritate me, which is unfair to both of us so I keep my mouth shut and focus on the road instead.
Same impossible blond hair. Blue eyes and soft face that made her look too young, too innocent, until her lips parted or she turned her head and the whole illusion can go to hell.
But Lizzie sits still enough, while Maddy drives like she’s fleeing a continent after stealing a pirate ship.
Her perfume has taken over the car. Rose, maybe. Something warmer underneath it. Musky. Completely drowns out my after-game shower soap.
“We’re home,” she announces.
The music hasn’t stopped.
Forty fucking minutes later.
I unfasten my seat belt, open the door and stop. The Tesla is parked diagonally across enough driveway to accommodate three smaller cars and one functioning adult.
Normally, I would move it.
Tonight, I simply do not have the energy.
Someone else can move Maddy’s car.
————
The living room is dark. Everything's exactly where I left it, which should be a relief, except the silence sounds too much like the gym after the buzzer, when the scoreboard became final and my mistake entered the permanent record.
I cross the room once, turn near the stairs and walk back. Then again. By the fourth lap, I am counting because numbers are marginally better company than my own brain.
“You’re making the floor anxious.” Maddy stands in the kitchen doorway with a joint between two fingers and a lighter tucked into her palm.
She lifts the joint. “Want some?”
Maddy’s silhouette disappears towards the back patio.
I should say no.
Coach would say no. My father would probably produce a forty-minute lecture about judgement, consequences and the importance of learning from one’s mistakes.
Maddy doesn't look back to see if I'm coming.
Fuck it.
I’m already following her.
The concrete steps have held onto the cold from the night air. Maddy lowers herself onto the second one, leaving enough room beside her for me. So I sit.
She lights the joint, inhales and passes it over.
The first hit scratches down my throat. The second settles more comfortably, taking the sharpest edges off the noise inside my head.
Maddy watches me through narrowed eyes, the way somebody might inspect a used car after hearing an unfamiliar sound from the engine. Apparently satisfied that I am not about to die or become deeply philosophical, she nods and takes it back.
We sit close enough to be friends.
The joint moves between us while the night stretches quietly over the yard.
The edge of the stupid loss today wears down hit by hit.
Maddy is also properly loose now.
She leans back onto her elbows and tips her face towards the sky. “Astronomy was so arrogant. Scientists looked at billions of stars and named all of them after eight Greek men and a saucepan.”
I laugh under my breath and pass the joint back.
She accepts it, then turns her head towards me with the expression she gets whenever a thought has entered her mind and no intention of holding back has been developed.
“Okay. I have to ask.” She takes another drag, holding the smoke briefly before releasing it above us. “The whole no-sex thing. Is it real, or is it another campus joke?”
“It’s real.” I lift my chin.
“How real?”
I'm not prepared to explain a decision I made with my dick six months ago to my freshman housemate.
“Real enough.” I take a drag. “Nothing meaningless until the end of the season at least. Then we reconsider.”
Maddy stares at me. “You put a timeline on sex?”
“It’s a goal.” I shrug.
“It’s a hostage situation for your dick.”
“My dick is handling the transition with dignity.”
“Is he?”
“No. But his feedback was not required.”
Her laugh comes out loose and bright, carrying across the empty yard. She shifts sideways as she settles, her knee resting close to mine.
“So you really don’t do casual sex anymore.” Her eyes beam with disbelief.
Damn. This girl is not letting it go. So many people have asked me about this and tonight is not exactly the place and time where I’m in the mood to be patient with my explanation.
“Nothing casual anymore.” I correct her, deadpan.
“Well, there’s nothing casual about casual sex anyways.”
I bark out a laugh. “No? You had casual sex. You’re meant to get on it then you get off.” Another hit of cannabis and now, I’m becoming extremely honest about hookup culture.
Maddy takes the joint back from my hand. “I don’t do casual sex. I give casual heads.” She corrects me.
My head turns so quickly the yard tilts. “Only heads?”
“Only heads.” She confirms with a nod, then hands me the joint again.
The shock must be visible on me, because her smile widens. “So you’re telling me, the rumours are true? You’re giving heads then you leave?” The joint stays put in between my fingers.
“Mmm…” Another nod.
“And that’s fun for you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I hiss.
“I’m a virgin.” She giggles.
My head snaps at her so fast, I genuinely think I might break it.
What the actual fuck? Not the virgin part. Who says these things while high on the steps with their housemate?
Maddy. Apparently Maddy Fairfax does.
“You’re serious?” I have five different reasons in my head why that question is stupid. Okay, fine. I’m high, so three.
She stares at me, all serious. “Are you fantasising about fucking a virgin?”
No. This is the real one.
“What the actual fuck?” I cry, probably looking horrified. “NO.” My voice sounds even more horrified. High pitched yelp is how I sound talking to her.
I never yelp.