It comes back unannounced, a burning ache that slides through your veins and into the hollow of your bones, crawling into the space between your lungs and infecting every last bit of your insides not already left to rot.

Hours have passed since the funeral ended and you still cannot fucking breathe. In a chaotic, final burst, the sun had bled across the skyline sometime between you pushing Sylvia into your car and letting her crawl out onto Buck Merril's porch. You don't plan on heading home until she's dropped off at hers, but if it takes a couple of nights with her crying herself to sleep while she shares a bed with you upstairs inside the roadhouse, then so be it.

You glance at her out from your peripheral, watching as her shaky fingers fumble around the empty air for the cigarette you've decided to share. The aura of neon lights above your heads, declaring the bar still open, is the only source of light for miles on this long stretch of deserted road. Night is endless, an insurmountable lapse of darkness stretching from one moment to the next.

She's trying to say something, although you can't understand between her choked sighs and the cracking sound of your windpipe as you try to remember how to breathe—God knows you can barely hear over the thousands of other voices inside your head. You like to think that the only reason you're putting up with Sylvia's shit right now is because of Dallas, but fuck it if you're gonna tell yourself otherwise.

You'd met him during an Indian summer, the kind where the air is the dust and the days are long and lazy, full of nosebleeds and a sun the color of egg yolks.

He'd come into Tulsa like a bull in a china shop—messy, distracted, wrecking havoc on anything and anyone damned enough to be in its path—and you were distraught, not by how much he seemed to act and talk and be like you, but how he was. Bright and burning and broken, a splotch of color living in the black-and-white movies, he was infamous—ready to hit the ground and hit it hard.

You hated yourself because you couldn't hatehim, and for some goddamned reason you still couldn't like him, either. His father was a drunken Army veteran and his mother was a Catholic whore; what little education he had was far and few between, the rules and the ways of the streets a part of his DNA.

If anything, he was the toughest bastard you'd ever met, and for awhile you wondered how he could walk straight with a stick shoved so far up his ass. Most of all he was catastrophic, and you envied him for that—how easy it seemed to encompass the whole world with a single look in his eyes.

That summer you were looking for someone to hate and he was looking for somewhere to belong. Two halves of a whole, if you pulled back he would push forwards, always running to find the next best place to be since where you weren't was more fun than where you were, always wanting, now, now, now.

The noise is what wakes you.

There is some kind of commotion going on downstairs—boots scuffing against the floor, chairs being dragged, low laughter and cursing as glass is shattered—and you figure it'd be about time to pull your ass out of bed and see what those shitheads are doing this fine morning. That is, if you were able to open your fucking eyes.

Your eyelashes are stuck together like they've been glued, and it takes a couple of times trying to blink before you're able to get them open.

Your vision blurs for a second before outlining the curve of Sylvia's body next to you, who is still sleeping. She's facing you, her legs curled up into her chest in a fetal position, and right now you think, in all this white sound, she looks more beautiful than you've ever seen her. She's shivering despite how hot it is in the room, and once again you feel that desperate ache in the bottom of your stomach begin to expand as a distant voice reminds you that you're definitely not supposed to be in bed—especially in one with her.

You thought you learned what cold meant when you'd nearly lost your fingers trying to rescue Curly from the quarry a couple of winters ago because the fucker didn't know how to swim. Obviously, you hadn't.

Your brain throbs against your skull in tune to the rise and lowering pitch of voices in the bar. Limbs aching, you get out of bed and reach for your shirt hanging off the knob post, tugging it on over your head. It's smeared with mascara and still damp in places where Sylvia had pressed her face into it last night, along with the pillowcases and the bed sheets and whatever else she stumbled into before face-palming the mattress.

You look away, then, annoyed at yourself for paying the slightest bit of attention to her. It's not that you don'tlike her; it's just that, sometimes, you don't know why she bothers to pretend you're as close to her as she is to you.

The rush of noise you heard earlier has subsided to a low, distant hum through the floorboards. Your jeans are stiff from sleeping in them, fingers tapping against your thigh for a cigarette while you slip into your shoes and jacket. Sunlight streams in through the broken blinds, everything suddenly too white and too real for your liking.

Her voice is what stops you from leaving: "Tim?"

"Yeah, Sylvia?" Something inside of you hurts to say her name.

She sits up, half-asleep and hung over, pulling the bed sheets to her chest to cover up the skin you don't want to remember touching, because it might be another morning in another room with another girl, but it's all the fucking same. "You'll come back for me, won't you?"

You step outside and close the door before you let yourself go back in.

He'd come over to your house one night in the middle of a winter.

It must've been at least three in the morning when, after throwing a mixture of snow/ice balls at your second-story window from the street, he'd sulked across the lawn and pounded his fist against the door—bang bang bang—and didn't stop until you opened it. The sound was so atrociously disturbing in all that strange silence,like gunshots, and instead of worrying about why he was standing on your front porch at such an ungodly time, the only thing you could think of was that you prayed to God your mother wouldn't wake up.

He grunted a hello and stumbled past you, his shoulder banging into yours a little too roughly on his way to the couch, where he sat down on the edge, drunk and tentative. The burning, sour smell of alcohol and cigarettes and sweat and blood hung on his clothes, thickening the air as you made your way through the darkness towards him.

Three things happened at once. You'd sneered, "What the fuck are you doing here, Dallas?" and turned on the living room light just as he shrouded away from it—as if a single, distant ray could burn him if he let it—and saw his face.

The poor light that illuminated the room did nothing to hide the hollow, bruise-like shadows under his eyes; nor the large, swollen gash along his cheek, the size of a hand print, and the smeared blood on the corner of his mouth and chin. His skin was pale, whiter than usual, and his hair was disheveled, like he hadn't slept in days.

A moment passed before you heard him breathe in, a painful, gasping sound that made you wince, as if his ribs were broken, or his head had been held underwater and he had finally broken through the surface. His eyes met yours, depthless and black.

"'Cause I had nowhere else to go," he lied.

You didn't have the energy to roll your eyes. All you said was, "You could've asked me first, before you decided to break the fuckin' door down and bleed to death in my living room. Shit, this ain't no fuckin' Salvation Army, Winston."

"I know."

And then Dallas hung his head in his hands.

The moment you let yourself inside the house, Angela is on you, white on rice.

"Where were you?"

Usually, it doesn't bother you that much—how she's nice enough to worry about whether you or Curly are passed out in a gutter somewhere or in someone's bed—but her question still sets you off.

"Don't worry about it," you mumble, stepping out of your shoes and walking past her into the kitchen as she trails behind, frowning. The house is cold and dark; blinds drawn shut to keep out the midday light, wooden floor groaning under your stocking-feet. You pull out a chair at the table, head spinning, and sit down.

You focus all your straining attention on watching Angela rummage through the cabinets above the sink for a plate. The stove is on and something's burning at the bottom of a skillet—eggs—and, for a second, suddenly realizing that you haven't ate anything since yesterday morning, you're thankful that she knows you so goddamned well to make you breakfast and not ask questions you don't know the answers to.

She serves you your eggs a couple minutes later and sits down across from you, wrapping her fingers around a coffee mug. She's still in her pajamas although it must be at least one in the afternoon, hair pulled away from her face, an old leather jacket of yours hanging off her bony frame. Angela may have a little bit of height to her, considering how small your mother is, but the top of her head—even with all those curls—barely reaches your shoulders.

You move your fork around your plate, scooping up a bite of egg into your mouth, Angela's eyes on yours all the while as she fills you in on all the gossip surrounding Ana Maria DeJesus and the pig she's going out with and how Charlie O'Brien wants to take her to the drive-in this weekend—"is that okay, Tim?"—and how Curly stayed up all night until six this morning because he's been stressed about you.

You curse at this. "For God's sake, Ang, why the fuck is he pullin' that shit again?"

"I dunno." She pauses and raises the mug to her lips, takes a sip, almost like she can't muster the next part without you freaking out. "Me and Curly've been worried 'bout you, Tim. Half the time you been home you're passed out. It's like…like…"

"Like what?"

She speaks into her coffee—"like you're runnin' from somethin'"—her voice so low you can barely understand.

Exasperated, you run a hand through your hair, the unfinished plate of eggs suddenly unappetizing. You swallow, turning your head away from her, towards the hole in the wall that Donny made when he punched his fist through it. "I ain't runnin' from nothin', Ang."

You both know, however, as convincing as you might be, it's still a lie.