Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
ROXY
I drive for two hours before I’m able to breathe properly again.
The van hums beneath me, that familiar rattle in the engine that I'd stopped trying to fix months ago. It’s a comforting sound, it has become part of the daily routine, acting like a white noise.
The fairy lights strung across the ceiling cast soft purple and gold shadows over the dashboard, and somewhere behind me, a cassette tape clicks and whirrs, playing The Cure for the third time since I left the roadside.
Boys Don't Cry bled through the speakers, Robert Smith's voice filling the small space with that particular brand of melancholy I've always loved.
The 80s understood something that modern music doesn't, it had that sadness that didn't need to be dressed up or apologized for. It just lived in that moment with you.
I should be thinking about where I’m going and planning my next stop, checking my phone for messages from collectors, or maybe pulling over to edit the photos I'd taken of the fox before the light died completely.
But I’m not thinking about any of that. I’m too busy thinking about him.
Dom.
The name rolls around my head like a marble in an empty room, bouncing off the walls of my skull. I don’t know his last name, or know where he is from or where he is going or what the fuck he does when he’s not appearing out of nowhere to compliment dead things on the side of the road.
But I know his eyes.
Dark brown, almost black in the fading light.
The kind of eyes that have seen too much, that have looked at things most people spent their whole lives avoiding.
I'd seen eyes like that in mirrors, in the faces of the subjects I photographed when they didn't know I was watching.
Eyes that had stopped pretending the world was a good place.
I wiggle in my seat, trying to shake off the feeling crawling up my spine.
This is stupid. I don't do this, obsess over people, replay conversations in my head and wonder what someone thought of me after they walked away. People are background noise to me, extras in the movie of my life. They come and go, and I don’t give a shit either way.
But he wasn't background noise.
He'd looked at my drawing and seen it. Not the technical skill or the composition or any of the surface level bullshit art teachers used to drone on about. He'd seen what I was actually drawing, the purpose behind it. He'd understood it in a way that made my chest tight and my hands shake.
"That's what death looks like," he'd said.
Yeah. It fucking was.
I reach forward and eject the cassette, fumbling through the milk crate wedged between the seats until I find what I’m looking for.
The Depeche Mode Album, Violator. I shove it into the player and fast-forward until "Waiting For The Night" kicks in.
The synth washes over me, familiar and grounding, and I let myself sink into it.
The highway stretches out ahead, a sense of eeriness with the occasional car or truck passing by, but I’m mostly alone where there are no lights except my headlights cutting through the blackness.
This is my favorite time of day to drive, when the world feels abandoned, when it’s just me and the road and the night pressing in from all sides.
Alone.
Nothing new there as I've always been alone.
Even when I was a kid, surrounded by other kids at school or sitting at the dinner table with my parents before they left for whatever business trip was more important than being at home.
I'd been alone in every way that mattered, locked inside my own head with thoughts that nobody else seemed to have.
Why does everyone pretend to be happy when they clearly aren't? Why do people lie about everything? About their feelings, their desires, their fears? Why does the world insist on this performance of normalcy when everything underneath is rotting, broken and dying?
I'd asked my mother once, when I was maybe ten. She'd looked at me like I'd grown a second head, then told me I needed to stop being so morbid and go play outside like a normal child.
Normal.
I chuckle to myself at the word. I'd stopped trying to be normal after that.
Stopped faking that I cared about the things other kids cared about.
I gave up forcing smiles and fake laughs, and pretending to have interest in conversations that made me want to claw my own skin off.
So I'd retreated into my drawings, into the truth I could capture on paper, enjoying the silence of my own company.
And it had been fine, better than fine. I didn't need people and I didn't want them. They were exhausting and fake and so goddamn draining in their desperate need to be liked.
So why can’t I stop thinking about him?
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, biting down hard enough to hurt.
The pain helps, grounding me, pulling me out of my head for a second.
But then the song shifts to "Policy of Truth" and I’m right back there, replaying the moment he'd crouched down beside me.
Close enough that I could smell him, cigarettes and leather that made my pulse quicken in a way I didn't want to examine too closely.
He hadn't invaded my space exactly, but he'd tested the boundaries, seen how close he could get before I pulled away.
I didn’t pull away.
Maybe the right thing I should’ve done is told him to fuck off, should've packed up my shit and gotten in the van and left him standing there in the dust. That's what I would've done with anyone else.
But for some reason I'd stayed. Let him look at my drawing, let him see life through my eyes, let him speak the truth I'd been carrying around my whole life without anyone to share it with.
The van rattles over a rough patch of road and I grip the steering wheel tighter, forcing myself to focus.
I’m being ridiculous. So what if some random guy understood my art?
So what if he had the same dark eyes and the same ability to see through bullshit?
That didn't mean anything. It didn't change anything. I'd probably never see him again.
The thought hits me harder than it should, a sharp twist in my chest that feels uncomfortably close to disappointment. I shake my head, trying to dislodge it. This is insane. I don’t know him and I don't want to know him. I’m fine on my own. I've always been fine on my own.
But even as the thought plays in my head, I know it’s a lie.
I pull over at a rest stop about twenty miles outside of Moab, killing the engine and sitting in the sudden silence. The cassette had stopped playing at some point and I hadn't noticed, too lost in my own head. I climb into the back of the van, my bare feet cold against the worn wooden floor.
The space is small, but it’s all mine. Fairy lights crisscross the ceiling, casting everything in a soft, dreamy glow.
My mattress takes up most of the floor, covered in a patchwork of blankets and pillows I've collected over the years. Milk crates line one wall, stuffed with records and cassettes and art supplies. My cameras sit on a makeshift shelf, next to stacks of developed photographs held together with rubber bands. On the other side I have a secured box that contains my single camping gas stove, a small cool box, and some dry food items that won’t spoil.
I also have a crate full of my lollipops that I mass order online when I’m in a town for more than two days. It’s my little haven of peace.
I grab my sketchbook and sit cross-legged on the mattress, flipping through the pages. The fox stares back at me, rendered in careful detail. I'd captured everything needed to honor its life.
My fingers trace the lines I've drawn, remembering the way Dom had studied it. The way he'd understood it without me having to explain. He didn’t look at me like a freak or some disturbed girl that needs help, who is broken because she’s not like other girls.
He'd looked at it and seen me.
I slam the sketchbook shut, my heart pounding.
Fucking Dom. This is exactly what I don’t need, to have someone who understands me and who makes me feel less alone.
Because being alone is safe. Being alone means I can't be disappointed when people inevitably reveal themselves to be just as fake and shallow as everyone else.
But what if he isn't?
The question whispers through my mind, insidious and tempting. What if he really is like me? What if I’m not the only one who feels like an alien in a world of people playing dress up?
I grab my digital camera and start scrolling through the photos I've taken today.
The roadkill from different angles, the landscape, the way the light hits the backdrop of the desert.
And then, almost without meaning to, I find myself studying the background of one shot, looking for any sign of him.
His car, his shadow, anything to prove he was there.
Nothing.
He'd appeared and disappeared like a ghost, leaving nothing behind except the memory of his voice and the way he'd looked at me like he could see straight through to my bones.
I set the camera down and lay back on the mattress, removing my hoodie, staring up at the fairy lights.
Siouxsie and the Banshees drifts through my mind, Kiss Them for Me, all sultry and uplifting.
I should put on some music and distract myself with something, anything other than this obsessive loop my brain has gotten stuck in.
But I don’t move.
I just lay here, replaying every second of our interaction. The way he'd smiled when I asked who he was. The tattoos on his forearms, dark ink against tan skin. The way he'd said my name, Roxy, like he was testing how it felt in his mouth. That mouth was delicious, plum and pouty.
The way he'd said "see you around" like it was a promise instead of a goodbye.
Holy shit, why is he doing this to me? Turning me into a babbling mess.
My hands are shaking and I press them flat against my stomach, trying to steady them to calm myself.
This feeling, this pull and finally being noticed is dangerous.
It makes me vulnerable in a way I've spent my whole life avoiding.
But god, I want it.
I want to see him again. I need to know if that moment was real or if I'd imagined the connection of our mutual understanding.
Was it real with the way the air between us had felt charged with something I couldn't name?
I want to know what he thinks about when he looks at death, what was it that broke him to reach the same level of brokenness as me.
I need to know if he’s thinking about me, too.
The thought makes me laugh, sharp and bitter in the quiet of the van.
Of course he isn't thinking about me. He’s probably miles away by now, already having forgotten about the weird girl crouched on the roadside.
I was just another strange encounter on a long road, nothing more.
He’s probably fucking some stranger right now.
But I can't shake the feeling that I’m wrong.
A seismic shift had happened back there, like a door opening that I hadn't even known existed. And now that it is open, I can't close it. There is no way to go back to the way things were before, when I was content in my solitude and my art and my carefully constructed isolation.
He'd seen me. Really seen me, and I want more of his attention. I want his eyes on me.
I sit up, becoming suddenly restless with all of these voices in my head. I need to move, I need to drive, to do something other than lie here obsessing over a stranger. I climb back into the driver's seat and start the engine, pulling back onto the highway without any real destination in mind.
The road unwinds before me like a never ending corridor.
I drive north toward the mountains, toward whatever comes next.
My van's headlights cut through the darkness and I let myself get lost in the rhythm of driving, the white lines flashing past, the purr of the engine, the way the open expanse of land covers me from all sides like a hug.
But even as I drive, as I try to focus on the road along with the music and anything else, I can’t fucking stop thinking about him and hoping that "see you around" meant exactly what it sounded like.
What are the chances of meeting someone who clicks with you in ways nobody else can? That they won’t run when they see the murky dark depths bleed through you, that they want to stick around?
The road plays on and I follow it, driving toward nothing and everything, alone but somehow less alone than I've been in years. And in the back of my mind, a voice that’s quiet but insistent, whispers that this was just the beginning.
That everything is about to change.
That he is out there somewhere, in the night, and our paths will cross again.
I don't know if that voice is hope or fear.
Maybe it’s both.