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the porch steps, holding on to the neck of a whiskey bottle. Two guys were talking to him. They all looked up at me.
    “You cool?” Mack asked. I wanted to sob, to let the tension pour out of me in tears and heaves, but I kept it choked down, nodding instead of talking. The dam would break if I opened my mouth.
    He handed the whiskey bottle to one of the guys, then waved me over.
    “How’d you get here?”
    “I walked,” I said.
    “Jesus,” Mack said. “I’ll give you a ride home if you want, man.”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “So you handed him his ass,” he said. We left the light of the porch. Nothing but the crunch of the gravel, the darkness, and voices heavy with an urge to mend.
    “Mack Tucker–style,” I said, wiping at my eyes.
    “That’s what I hear. Must have fucked him up good. He backed into Ted’s mailbox on the way out with his truck.”
    We got into Old Gray, fully loaded with one headlight, a sagging headliner, and a radio that didn’t work.
    “No Regina?” he asked.
    “Nope.”
    “I was telling you the truth.”
    I let this revelation marinate in silence.
    “Why didn’t you tell me until today?”
    “There’s no good time, I guess. I just figured you’d just move past her. Then it wouldn’t matter when you found out. I don’t really like her or anything. And I know it probably hurt you, and it’s going to seem stupid and pointless when I tell her I don’t give a fuck about her, because that’s the truth. But I’m not a good guy when it comes to that shit. She came on to me. God as my witness, she did, and then this horny part of me convinced me it was okay to say yes, to let her do it, because it would somehow rescue you. The minute I blew my load—which is an honest moment, man—I knew I fucked up. Loads reload. That’s the problem with guys, especially ones like me.”
    I stared out the window into the tree lines and fields whispering past.
    “You remember your master plan?” I said. “The twins plan? Pick one? I take one, you take the other? What happened to that?”
    “Shit, it might have worked on accident. I think Raeanna likes you,” he said. “Makes sense. She’s a quiet one, a smart one. Just like you. She’s just as hot as Regina and she’s never had her mouth on my dick. It’s like hitting the Refresh button on the whole situation.”
    “That supposed to make me feel better about what you did?”
    He slammed on the truck’s brakes, cutting hard to the shoulder of the blacktop road. Another car zipped past, not even flinching at the sight of a car pulled over on a road like this one—in this town, on this road, if you’re pulled over at night, someone’s either puking, fucking, or passed out.
    “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
    “You have an awfully strange way of protecting me.” I opened the door and stepped into the high, itchy grass of the ditch. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
    “It’s no fun being stuck on one chick, man.” He got out of the car and jogged to catch up with me. “It was twisted, but what I’m saying is it was my bad and if you want to go after Regina, if she means that much, then go after her. Before you get all hissy, let’s be honest, she was Clint’s girl at the time, not yours. You said she left you a note? To tell you something? Well, do you want to hear it or not?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do. Good news or bad, I gotta hear it.”
    “Then let’s go do the shit, man. You’re a walking-tall, bad motherfucker tonight. You pegged Clint your own damn self, so go unleash a little swagger. Put the Regina thing to rest, one way or another. You might even score with someone else—hello, Raeanna—before the night is over. Come on, man! Think legendary. I got your back.”
    He said it with a conviction that made it feel possible.
    “Can I just take a walk?” I said. I needed to think about it, and it felt good to walk alone under the wild moonlight in the clean air you can only get in a