I turn my head and our gazes collide. I want to cry because he looks in misery and like he’s silently begging me to put him out of it. God, what I’d give to know the right thing to say, something that could take away his pain. The problem is I know from experience there’s no right thing to say that can take away the pain. There’s nothing that can save him from it. He just has to learn to live with it and not give it so much power over him.

“Like what?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice balanced.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “You said on the roof that I was easy to talk to last summer and I said it was because you were high, so prove me wrong right now. Talk to me about something—something about you.”

I consider what he said as I tap the brakes, stopping at a red light. Something about me. Maybe something that will help him see that people can be helped. “I watched Landon’s…my old boyfriend’s video, the one he made minutes before he killed himself.” I don’t look at him when I say it because I can’t, but his elongated silence says that I’ve stunned him. The light turns green and I drive down the road, heading toward the gas station on the right side.

Finally he says, “When?”

“I already told you he made it right before he died,” I say as I pull into the gas station. “I actually had the video file forever, but I was too scared to watch it. I had it there on my computer and then my phone all last summer, but wouldn’t…couldn’t watch it.”

“No, I mean when did you watch it?” he asks as I park the car in front of the gas station doors and beneath the florescent glow of the signs.

I turn off the engine. “It was the day I took off from the concert,” I tell him, our gazes locked. “The morning after you left me at the pond.”

“And did it make you feel better?” he questions. “Knowing what he thought before he…” His voice cracks and he clears it, putting his hands at his sides.

“Yes and no,” I answer honestly, and when he looks at me funny, I explain. “Yes, because it helped me see what I’d really become—what I was turning into. Even though it was right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see it and his words reminded me of what I used to be and what I wanted to be again.”

He absorbs my words like they’re oxygen, breathing in and out. “And why do you regret it?”

I shrug, but everything inside me winds tight as I stare out the windshield at the store lights, letting them burn against my eyes so I won’t cry. “Because I still ended up confused over why he did it…he never did give a real explanation, and honestly, I’m not even sure one exists. Plus, it hurt to watch him like that, you know.” I look over at him and even though it’s hard I hold his gaze. “Watching him hurt like that and knowing that soon his pain was going to end—that he was going to die soon and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. That I missed my chance…I never want to miss my chance again.”

“I’m not going to die, Nova,” he says. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You don’t know that,” I say, looking back at him, seeing spots from staring at the lights. “What you’re doing…it could kill you.”

“Well, it’s not going to,” he insists. “Trust me, I’ve been trying to die for a very long time and I can’t make it happen, no matter how hard I try.”

The hope inside me poofs out and before I can even get myself together, tears flood my eyes. Quinton’s honey-brown eyes become Landon’s and abruptly it feels like I’m sitting in the car with him and we’re just talking, but I can feel that he’s sad and I’m just watching him getting sadder and sadder and not doing a goddamned thing about it—watching him die.

“Why would you ever say something like that?” I say as hot tears drip from my eyes. I want to hit him but at the same time I want to hug him. I’m conflicted, so instead I just sit there and cry and he just sits there and watches me like he doesn’t care. But then the tears start streaming down my cheeks and splattering on the console and when he sees them falling it’s like he suddenly realizes I’m crying and that he played a part in it.

He leans over quickly and wraps his arm around me and pulls me against him, crushing our bodies together. “God, Nova, I’m so sorry. Fuck. I’m such an asshole…I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time…don’t even listen to me.”

I let him hold me as tears soak his shirt and he kisses the top of my head, whispering apologies. For a fleeting moment, it’s not me and this warped version of Quinton in the car. It’s me and a different Quinton I wish I could meet, the one from before the accident. I’m not really sure what he’s like, but I’ve gotten enough glimpses of him that I can picture a loving, genuinely good guy. And he’s the one holding me right now, rather than the one who made me cry.

Eventually I suck the tears back and return to reality. I start to retreat, but he keeps his arms around me, pressing on my back, and I notice his arms are trembling.

“I’m so sorry,” he says and he’s shaking like he’s scared. “I should have never said that.”

“It’s fine.” I move back enough to look him in the eyes. “You’re probably just tired, right?” I offer him an excuse, hoping he’ll take it and we can let this go.

“Yeah…tired,” he says warily because we both know that’s not the case.

I lift my hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks, but he grabs my hand. Then he moves forward and I instantly tense as he brushes his lips across my cheeks where the tears stain my skin.

“Tired or not,” he says between kisses. “I should never make you cry. Ever. I’m a horrible person who you should just stay away from,” he whispers through another kiss. “God, I don’t deserve to be here with you. You should just take me back home.”

“No, you do deserve to be with me.” My eyes shut as his warm breath touches my cheeks and his chest brushes against mine with every breath he takes. Emotions surface…how much I care for him…how much I wish he could be in my future…my life…healed. I’m painfully reminded of why I came here. Why I needed to help him. And it’s painful because I know how hard it is, how hopeless it’s becoming, but how worth it it is because of the glimpses like these.

“What can I do to make it better?” he whispers against my cheek. “I’ll do anything that you tell me to.”

I know I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t help it. “Stop doing drugs.” I stiffen, waiting for him to shout at me, but all he does is lean back, keeping his hand on my hip.

“I can’t do that,” he says softly, almost sounding disappointed, but maybe that’s me just reaching for hope.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

I want to press him more, but he’s shutting down, the life dying in his eyes. I know that once it’s gone, he’ll ask me to take him home, so I let him go and search for a way to keep him here beside me.

“Hey, know what we should do?” I say as he sits back in his seat.

He drums his fingers on his knee as he stares at the gas station. “What should we do, Nova like the car?” he asks, giving me a sideways half-smile. It’s been a while since he’s used my nickname and memories of last summer flow through me so powerfully it makes me light-headed.

“We should play twenty questions again,” I tell him. “Like we did last summer.”

“That’s what you really want to do?” he questions with a crook of his brow.

I yawn as my fingers wrap around the door handle. “Just as soon as I go get a soda.”

He studies me, looking torn, but then gives in. “All right, go get your soda and we’ll play twenty questions for a little bit.”

I get out of the car, not feeling happy, but at the same time not feeling like I’m drowning in hopelessness. Although I do worry that by the time I make it back to the car, he’ll be gone. So I rush to buy a soda and when I step back outside, relief washes over me when I see him lying on the hood of my car, smoking a cigarette, staring up at the stars in the midnight sky. The street is fairly quiet and there are no other cars parked nearby. The only noise is coming from the gas station radio speakers and it’s set on the oldies station, playing soft tunes. It’s almost like we have the quiet he was talking about on the roof. It’d be a perfect moment if I didn’t know what’s going to happen when I take him back to the apartment. Still, I climb up on the hood with him and take a swallow of soda as the scent of cigarette smoke encircles me.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask him, looking up at the night sky, feeling calm inside as I stare at the constellations.

He puts the cigarette up to his lips and inhales. “Thinking about my first question,” he says, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

“Oh yeah?” I say, twisting the cap back on my soda. “Who said you get to go first?”

He slants his head to the side. “You’re not going to let me go first?” He’s almost playful.

I smile. “I’m kidding. You can go first.”

He thinks about it for a moment while sticking his arm to the side and ashing his cigarette onto the ground. “If you could be one place in the world, where would you be?”

“Honestly,” I say, and he nods. “I think I’d be all over the world, videotaping everything.”

“Everything?”

I nod. “Everything. There’s just so much to see, you know, and sometimes it feels like I’m just sitting around, missing everything.”

He turns to his side and props himself up on his elbow, cigarette smoke circling around us. “Then why don’t you just go?”

“For a lot of reasons,” I reply, rotating the soda bottle in my hand. “One being that I need to graduate first…it’s important for my future.”

“Yeah, I can see that…needing a degree if you have a future,” he says with a frown, and it stabs at my heart.