Chapter 1: Midnight in the Maverick
The air in the backseat was a stale cocktail of spilled vodka, saltwater, and Tim’s cheap drugstore cologne. Moonlight, pale and thin, filtered through the windshield of his mum’s Maverick, painting stripes across Taylah’s bare thighs where they pressed into the cracked leather. Outside, the surf was a constant, low roar, the heartbeat of the bay.
Tim’s fingers trembled slightly on the zipper of her cutoff denim shorts. It was stuck.
“Christ,” he muttered, tugging again.
A soft laugh escaped Taylah’s lips. She was propped on her elbows, watching him with an expression that was half-amused, half-something else. Her honey-blonde hair was a tangled mess from the beach, a few grains of sand still clinging to her temple. “You know, most guys at least buy a girl a drink first.”
“I gave you beer,” he said, defensively, nodding towards the cans rolling on the floorboards.
“Warm beer.” She reached down and covered his hand with hers. Her touch was cool, her fingers deft. With a quiet shick, she freed the zipper herself. “There you go. World’s your oyster.”
He flushed, grateful for the dark. He’d seen her around, of course. Everyone had. Taylah Mifsud, whose Polaroid ghosts haunted the local surf mags and Instagram feeds, all sun-freckles and seaglass eyes and that infuriating, knowing smirk.
He’d never dreamed of sliding into her DMs. He’d just liked a few of her pictures—the one of her with a mud-caked knee holding a tiny, wounded galah, the one of her journal open on a rock at sunrise, the words blurred by spray. She’d followed him back last Tuesday. On Thursday, she’d replied to his story. Tonight, she’d said sure when he asked if she wanted to hang out.
Now here they were, in the cramped sanctuary of the Maverick, parked in the empty lot above Tallow Beach.
“You sure about this?” Taylah whispered with a laugh, her voice a low, warm thing in the close space. She leaned back, granting him a view of the smooth plane of her stomach, the lace edge of her underwear.
“Yeah.” His voice came out thicker than he intended.
Her smirk softened into something more genuine, almost curious, as she watched the shift in his expression. Clothes became a forgotten heap on the floor, peeled away in the urgent, fumbling dark until there was only skin and moonlight.
The world narrowed to the heat of her, the salt on his lips, the crushing weight of his own heartbeat in his ears. He entered her without a condom, a single, reckless moment of pure feeling obliterating every practical thought.
A sharp, quiet gasp escaped her—not pleasure, not pain, but raw surprise—and her fingernails dug into the bare skin of his shoulders.
He fucks, groaning into her ear, a raw and graceless sound that swallowed her gasp. The surprise in her eyes hardens, sharpens into a sudden, chilling comprehension.
"Wait," she breathes, the word swallowed by the next thrust. "You're not... fuck, Tim, you're not wearing anything." The motion stops, leaving only the sound of the surf and their ragged breathing hanging in the salt-thick air.
"It's fine, I'll pull out," he whispers, the plea muffled against her neck, his voice a shaky mix of want and manufactured confidence. He kisses her then, deep and distracting, a tactical move to dissolve the protest forming on her lips. His hips begin to move again, a slow, insistent roll that she doesn't stop. The decision is made in the silence between waves, in the warm, reckless dark where promises are just sounds you make with your mouth.
He keeps going. The rhythm is hurried now, a selfish pound against the leather that makes the old suspension creak, and Taylah turns her face toward the window, her expression dissolving into the shadows. Her earlier laughter is a ghost in the charged air, replaced by the muffled sound of skin and a tension that has nothing to do with pleasure.
His rhythm faltered, a stuttering, frantic push. A low groan clawed up from his chest, his hips jerking erratically against hers. His breath hitched, coming in sharp, desperate gasps against her neck, and his fingers, splayed on the leather beside her head, curled into tight, white-knuckled fists.
His breath hitched, coming in sharp, desperate gasps against her neck, and his fingers, splayed on the leather beside her head, curled into tight, white-knuckled fists. A ragged, "Fuck," tore from his throat, more a plea than a word, as his body seized. The orgasm ripped through him with a violent, total surrender, a hot, pulsing release deep inside her as he shuddered and collapsed. For a long moment, there was only the sound of the surf and his slowing breath in her ear. Then, in the silent dark, she let out a quiet, shattered sigh.
The weight of him slumped off her, a sudden chill replacing the damp heat where their bodies had been glued together. In the moon-striped dark, she shifted, the leather letting out a tired groan beneath her. “Did you just… come?” she asked, her voice flat, a stark contrast to the laughter from before.
“Yeah,” he breathed, the word simple, satisfied, already drifting.
She sat up, reaching for her discarded top with a shrug that felt too casual, too loose for the sharp twist in her gut. “Right. No worries,” she said, but the silence that followed was thick and screaming.
He nods. "Yeah. Sorry." He followed it up with an awkward chuckle. It was sickening. She said nothing.
The flat silence gnawed at his post-coital buzz. With a muffled, grunting sigh, Tim shoved his underwear up his thighs, fumbled for his discarded jeans in the footwell, and yanked them on over damp skin, the denim scraping roughly against his bare legs.
He felt suddenly foolish, shivering in the salt-damp air, all his fuckboy energy evaporated. Taylah moved first, a fluid shift in the dark that broke the spell of his stillness. Her fingers found the lace of her underwear, damp and tangled near her ankle. She pulled them up, the fabric sticking to her skin where he’d spilled himself inside her. The silence was a physical thing, thick and salted, broken only by the distant crash of waves.
Tim watched, his mouth dry, wanting to say something—anything—to cut the heaviness. But no words came; his throat was tight with a shame he couldn’t name. She reached for her cutoff shorts, the denim rough against her thighs as she stepped into them. The zipper sounded loud in the quiet, a definitive shick that sealed the moment. Her top came next, a loose cotton thing she slipped over her head, hiding the freckles on her shoulders. She didn’t look at him, her eyes fixed on some point beyond the windshield, on the black ocean.
Her thoughts were a cold, rushing stream: Idiot. Careless. Again. She calculated dates in her head, the dry cycle of her pill pack left in the bathroom drawer at home. The risk sat in her belly, a warm, unwanted weight. She thought of the zines she’d make, the angry poetry scrawled in midnight ink, another ghost to fold into paper.
His breath hitched, a soft sound meant to apologize, but it died in the air between them. She felt the chill now, the sweat cooling on her skin, and rubbed her arms briefly. The car smelled of sex and regret, a cheap perfume she’d wear home. Outside, a lone set of headlights cut through the dark, then vanished, leaving them in isolation.
Taylah closed her eyes, let the roar of the surf fill her, and for a second, she was already gone.