Chapter 3: Friday Again
The gravel crunched under John’s boot as he kicked at a chunk of broken concrete. “So this new guy, Travis. Thinks he’s hot shit cause he worked up north. Big fucking deal.” He took a long swallow from his can, his Adam’s apple working. “Made a comment today. About line speed.”
Elena watched a pale, oily bubble drift on the river’s gray surface. The air was cool but close, carrying the chemical tang from upstream. “What kind of comment?”
“Said we were running slow. That we’d lose the contract.” John snorted. “I told him to worry about his own station before his mouth writes a check his ass can’t cash.”
“You said that?”
“More or less.” He belched softly, without apology. His hand landed on her thigh, a heavy, warm weight. It was always here, by the river, that the transaction moved from potential to inevitable. The city hummed distantly behind them, a world away.
She drank, letting the cheap beer’s fizz coat her tongue. She’d been doing this all afternoon, building a fog between herself and the moment. The voicemail played on a loop in the back of her mind. Maya. From high school. A face surfaced from the murk: wild black hair, a laugh that sounded like breaking glass in the quiet hallways of their rural school. A person who had left. Elena had stayed.
“You’re quiet,” John said, his thumb rubbing circles on her jeans. A proprietary gesture.
“Tired.”
“You’re always tired.” He said it not with sympathy, but with a mild contempt, as if it were a moral failing. “You need to get more sleep.”
She almost laughed. Instead, she finished her beer, crumpled the can, and reached for another from the plastic ring at their feet. The crack-hiss of the tab was sharp in the twilight. “I slept fine.”
“Bullshit.” He leaned back on his elbows, his gaze fixed on the sluggish water. “You were thinking again. I can tell. Your face goes all… far away.”
She didn’t deny it. She drank. The beer was warmer now, sickly-sweet. She focused on the physical sensations: the grit of the concrete beneath her, the chill seeping through her jeans, the persistent ache in her lower back from eight hours of standing on the killing floor. The memory of the stun gun’s pneumatic sigh. Thump. Then the hook.
“You thinking about that cow again? The one with the eyelashes?” He smirked, nudging her with his elbow. “It’s dead, Elena. It’s beef. It’s in a freezer somewhere, wrapped in plastic.”
“I know what it is,” she said, her voice flat.
His hand moved from her thigh to the back of her neck, his fingers pressing into the tight cords of muscle there. “You need to get out of your own head.” His voice dropped, taking on the familiar, rough tone that signaled a shift. The pretense of conversation was over. “Let me help.”
She’d initiated it last time, a calculated move to control the uncontrollable. Tonight, the energy was different. His need was a palpable thing, a current emanating from him, born from the confrontation with Travis, from the futility of the river, from the vast, lonely silence of his own life. He wasn’t asking.
Elena looked at him—at the patchy beard, the tired eyes already glossing over with beer and desire. She felt nothing. A clean, hollow nothing. It was easier than disgust, softer than hatred. It was a neutral space.
“Okay,” she whispered, the word disappearing into the sound of the water.
It was a dry, fumbling archaeology. The gravel bit into her spine through her thin shirt. His breath was hot and beery against her ear, his movements hurried, practiced in their selfishness. She turned her head to the side, her cheek pressed against the cold, gritty concrete. Her open eyes stared at the river. In the dying light, the oily surface reflected the neon haze of the city, a pretty sheen on poison. She thought of Maya’s voice, frayed with static. A sound from another world. She thought of the chipped tooth in her own mouth, the feel of blood under her nails no amount of scrubbing could completely erase.
John grunted, a short, sharp sound of completion. He collapsed against her, heavy and damp. He lay there for a minute, his weight driving the breath from her lungs. Then he pushed himself up, fumbling with his jeans.
Elena sat up, brushing gravel from her arms. Her skin felt tacky, used. A profound emptiness echoed in her chest, wider and deeper than before.
“See?” John said, breathing heavily as he re-buckled his belt. His voice was softer now, satisfied. “Better.”
She didn’t answer. She found her can and drank the last warm, bitter sip.
He lit a cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating his face for a second—a glimpse of something boyish and pleased before the darkness reclaimed it. He offered it to her. She took it, letting the smoke scorch her throat, letting the familiarity of the shared vice anchor her back to this place, this moment, him.
“We should do something this weekend,” he said, his gaze on the far bank. “Get out of this dump. Go to a movie or something. A real date.”
The word date landed between them like a stone. It was a new gambit, a push against the unspoken boundaries of their arrangement. It threatened a future she did not want to imagine.
“Maybe,” she said, the non-committal syllable swallowed by the vast, indifferent sky.
He seemed to accept it. He finished his cigarette in silence, then stood, extending a hand to pull her up. His grip was strong, calloused. He didn’t let go immediately once she was on her feet. “I’ll drive you home. You’re in no shape.”
She wasn’t. The world tilted gently. She let him guide her up the crumbling embankment to his pickup, its interior smelling of old fries, motor oil, and him. As the truck rumbled to life, she leaned her head against the cold window. The river disappeared behind them, a dark scar in the landscape.
At her apartment door, he kissed her, a clumsy, possessive press of his lips. “Friday,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
She just nodded, slipping inside.
The silence of her apartment was a physical relief. She stood in the dark, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the drip from the bathroom faucet. She didn’t turn on the lights. She walked to the couch, but didn’t sit. Her body felt alien, a vessel carrying the scent of the river and him.
Her phone, discarded on the kitchen counter, glowed with a notification. A missed call. The same unknown number.
The empty nothing inside her crystallized into a single, sharp point of defiance.
She picked up the phone. Her fingers, stained with ochre river dust, hovered over the screen. She looked at the brown water stain on the ceiling, the screaming head. It was just a stain. It wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t a prophecy. It was just a leak in a shitty apartment.
She pressed ‘call back.’
It rang once, twice. Elena held her breath, the hollow in her chest expanding into a vault of silence.
Then, a click. “Hello?” The voice was clearer now, unmistakably Maya’s, edged with a hope so tentative it sounded like fear.
Elena’s own voice, when it came, was a rough whisper, unused for anything real. “Hey. Maya? It’s Elena.”