Chapter 1: Gas Station Glances
The neon sign buzzed and spat above her, a flickering G-S STAT-ON painting the wet pavement in sickly green light. Ryli braced herself against the cold metal of the air compressor, the world tilting on a drunken axis. Every car that roared past on the slick street sent a spray of gutter-water against her boots. She’d lost her keys thirty minutes ago, or maybe an hour. Time was glue.
Headlights cut through the drizzle, slowing. A car pulled into the far pump. Ryli looked away, digging in her pocket for a cigarette she knew wasn’t there. The last thing she needed was some creep offering a “ride.”
Footsteps approached, slow and deliberate on the asphalt. Ryli tensed, the familiar, sour anger rising in her throat like bile. She’d scream if she had to. She’d fight.
“You okay?”
The voice was soft. Not a question soaked in pity, just a plain, quiet thing. Ryli turned her head.
The girl stood a few feet away, hands in the pockets of her faded jacket. Blonde hair haloed by the broken neon, freckles like a dusting of cinnamon across her nose. Her eyes were a calm, impossible blue.
“Peachy,” Ryli snarled, the word slurring. “Just admiring the architecture.”
The girl—Cadence, Ryli would learn later—didn’t flinch. She didn’t smile at the sarcasm or frown at the hostility. She just looked. Her gaze dropped to Ryli’s hands, white-knuckled on the compressor, then back to her face. Seeing too much.
“You’re going to freeze out here,” Cadence said. It wasn’t a line. It was a fact.
“I’m fine.”
“Your car here?”
“What’s it to you?”
Cadence shrugged. A simple, easy motion. “My shift ended. I’m going home. You look like you shouldn’t be driving.” She paused. “Or standing, really.”
Ryli wanted to spit something vile, something that would send this stranger scurrying back to her sensible car. The armor was right there, familiar and heavy. But her head was pounding, and the cold was seeping through her jacket, and the kindness in Cadence’s voice was so alien it felt like a physical ache. The anger deflated, leaving a hollow, shivering mess behind.
“Lost my keys,” Ryli muttered, looking at the oil-stained ground.
Cadence nodded. She turned and walked back to her car, an old hatchback with a mismatched door. Ryli’s chest clenched. Of course. You show one crack and they bolt. A wave of hot, shameful tears blurred the green neon into smears.
The car door clicked open.
Cadence didn’t get in. She held it open, the interior light washing over her. She just stood there, waiting, the engine purring softly.
The silence was an invitation. It was the loudest thing Ryli had ever heard. Something in her ribcage, something she’d kept welded shut for years, gave a sharp, terrifying crack.
She pushed off the compressor. Her legs were unsteady. She took one step, then another, the six feet of pavement feeling like a mile. Cadence didn’t move to help her, didn’t say a word. She just waited until Ryli slumped into the passenger seat, the smell of warm upholstery and lemon-scented cleaner enveloping her.
The door shut. The world went quiet, just the patter of rain on the roof and the soft hum of the heater Cadence had already turned on.
Ryli stared straight ahead, her jaw tight. “I’m not a serial killer.”
“Good to know,” Cadence said, pulling her seatbelt on. “Me either.” She backed out of the lot. “Where to?”
Ryli gave a mumbled address, a shitty apartment complex on the south side. Cadence just nodded, turning the wheel.
The silence should have been suffocating. It wasn’t. It was filled with the rhythm of the wipers, the glow of the dashboard lighting Cadence’s profile. Ryli stole glances. The gentle slope of her nose. The way she bit her lower lip in concentration when she checked a mirror.
“Why?” The word was out before Ryli could stop it, raw and raspy.
Cadence was quiet for a block. “You looked like you needed a ride.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
No one had ever thought it was. For Ryli, kindness had always been a transaction, a down payment on something she’d eventually owe. This felt weightless. It made her nervous.
They drove. Ryli’s drunkenness receded into a throbbing, aware misery. She felt every flaw magnified under the quiet in the car. The tear tracks she hadn’t fully wiped away. The rip in the knee of her jeans. The bruise on her jaw, purpling and tender, where her stepfather’s wedding ring had caught her last night during a argument about rent. She’d covered it with foundation that had since sweated and smeared off.
She saw Cadence’s eyes flick to it, then quickly back to the road. No comment. No prying.
“It’s not what you think,” Ryli said defensively.
“I wasn’t thinking anything.”
“Bullshit. Everyone thinks something.”
Cadence slowed for a red light. She turned her head, and her gaze was so direct, so unassuming, it felt like being seen clean through. “Okay. I was thinking it looks painful. And that you should probably put ice on it.”
The light turned green. Ryli looked out her window, at the dark shops sliding past. Her reflection in the glass was a ghost overlaid on the world. Tired eyes, dark hair a mess. A girl built from sharp edges and wrong words. For a fleeting second, she imagined a different reflection. A softer one.
“My name’s Cadence.”
Ryli swallowed. “Ryli.”
“Hi, Ryli.”
They didn’t speak again until Cadence pulled into the cracked lot of her apartment complex. The car idled, rain speckling the windshield.
“Thanks,” Ryli forced out, hand on the door handle. The word was foreign in her mouth.
“Sure.” Cadence’s fingers tapped lightly on the steering wheel. A simple, rhythmic pattern. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap.
Ryli memorized it. The sound, the cadence of it. She climbed out into the drizzle, the cold air a shock.
She was three steps away when the window rolled down. Cadence leaned over. “Hey.”
Ryli turned.
“Tomorrow. If you want.” Cadence said it like she was offering a spare pen, not a lifeline. “The diner on Elm. I get off at four. Their coffee’s terrible, but the pie is okay.”
It wasn’t a demand. It wasn’t even a firm plan. It was just a door, left slightly ajar.
Ryli stood there, soaking in the rain, feeling that crack in her chest widen into a chasm. She managed a nod, a sharp, jerky movement.
Cadence gave a small, easy smile. Just a slight curve of her lips. Then she rolled up the window and drove away, taillights dissolving into the wet dark.
Ryli stood there until the silence of the parking lot roared in her ears. She brought her fingers to the bruise on her jaw, pressing until the pain was bright and clear. A focal point.
Inside, her empty apartment waited, all stale air and unresolved noise. But for the first time in years, it wasn’t the only thing waiting. There was a tomorrow. There was a terrible diner on Elm. There was a girl with freckles who tapped rhythms on a steering wheel.
Ryli fumbled her way inside, leaned against the closed door, and slid to the floor. In the dark, she practiced saying the name, letting it shape her mouth into something new.
“Cadence.”
“Cadence.”
The name was still a ghost on her lips when she woke up, sticky-mouthed and aching on the floor the next morning. Sunlight cut through the blinds, sharp as knives. Her head pounded in time with the memory of a purring engine, a quiet voice. The bruise on her jaw had deepened to a ugly plum.
She spent the day in a suspended state. She cleaned nothing. She ate nothing. The clock on the microwave blinked from 11:03 to 3:47, each minute a hammer fall. This was stupid. It was a pity offer from a nice person who’d regret it. Ryli knew how this worked. She’d show up, radiating need, and Cadence’s friendly smile would tighten with polite regret. Oh, I actually have to… Something. Always something.
At 3:55, she put on a clean sweater. It didn’t help. She still looked like what she was: frayed at the edges, a collection of angry stitches holding bad history together.
The diner on Elm was a wedge of chrome and foggy windows tucked between a laundromat and a vacant storefront. The bell above the door jangled, announcing her. The air was thick with the smell of grease, old coffee, and lemon sanitizer. A few old men sat at the counter, nursing mugs. A family argued quietly in a booth.
“Be right with you!” a voice called from behind the counter.
It was her. Cadence. Tied into a kitschy blue apron, a pen tucked behind her ear, refilling a napkin dispenser. She looked ordinary. She looked like everything.
Ryli’s throat closed. She stood, frozen just inside the door.
Cadence looked up. Her eyes found Ryli, and the recognition there was instant, warm. No pity. No regret. Just a slight, genuine crinkle at the corners. She finished with the napkins and picked up a menu. “Hey. You made it.”
“The coffee’s terrible, you said.” Ryli’s voice came out rough, a defensive rasp. “Had to see for myself.”
“Always a good policy.” Cadence gestured to a booth by the window. “Here, or you wanna be antisocial at the counter?”
“Booth.” Too fast. She sounded desperate. She slid into the cracked red vinyl, the seat cool through her jeans.
Cadence put the menu down. “I’ve got like, twenty minutes left on my shift. Then I can sit. If you want.”
Ryli nodded, staring at the laminated list of breakfasts that never ended. She heard Cadence move away, the soft swish of her sneakers on the linoleum. She risked a glance. Cadence was taking an order at the counter, nodding, her profile soft in the afternoon light. She laughed at something one of the old men said, a soft, muffled sound Ryli felt in her own ribs.
Too much. This was already too much.
Cadence came back with a glass of water. “Know what you want?”
“You said the pie was okay.”
“It’s edible. The apple’s less suspicious than the cherry.”
“Apple. And the terrible coffee.”
“Brave.” Cadence scribbled on her pad, didn’t walk away. “How’s the jaw?”
Ryli instinctively touched it. “Colorful.”
“It suits you.” Cadence said it so easily, like she was commenting on a scarf. Then she blinked, as if hearing her own words. “I mean—not the bruise. Just. The color. Purple’s… a thing.” A faint pink touched her cheeks. “I’ll shut up now. Pie and poison coming right up.”
She vanished into the kitchen. Ryli stared after her, the world tilting again, but differently. No alcohol this time. Something else, more vertigo than spin.
The coffee was, as promised, burnt and bitter. Ryli drank it anyway. The pie arrived, a sad-looking wedge with crust too pale. Cadence slid into the booth opposite her, her apron gone. She’d taken her hair down from its messy bun; it fell in blonde waves around her shoulders. Ryli memorized the pattern of freckles on her forearm where she rested it on the table.
“So,” Cadence said, stealing a forkful of Ryli’s pie before she could protest. She made a face. “Yep. Okay at best.”
“You’re stealing my okay pie.”
“I’m quality testing. It’s a service.” Cadence propped her chin in her hand. “You always this much fun, or did I get a special preview last night?”
The old armor sparked. A sharp retort lined up on her tongue. But Cadence’s eyes were teasing, not cutting. It was a question, not a judgment. Ryli forced her shoulders to relax. “I have a wide range of emotions. Drunk and belligerent is just the most popular.”
“What’s the least popular?”
“This,” Ryli admitted before she could stop herself. “Quiet. Unsure.”
Cadence held her gaze. The diner noise faded—the clatter of plates, the hiss of the grill, the low murmur of the TV above the counter. “I like that one,” Cadence said, her voice lower. “It’s honest.”
Ryli’s heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. “Honesty’s overrated. Gets you in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” A smile played on Cadence’s lips. Not a smirk. A real, curious smile.
“The kind where you agree to see someone again.” Ryli looked down, swirling the sludge in her mug. “The kind where you memorize the way they tap their fingers on a steering wheel.”
The silence stretched, but it was full. Buzzing. Ryli couldn’t believe she’d said that. She braced for the retreat.
Cadence’s foot nudged hers under the table. A brief, solid point of contact. Ryli looked up.
“It was three taps, then two,” Cadence said softly. “The rhythm. You asked why I stopped last night. I was thinking about a song. It’s been stuck in my head. That was the beat of the chorus.”
Ryli couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t how it went. People didn’t notice you noticing them. They didn’t give you answers to questions you were too afraid to ask.
“What’s the song?”
Cadence’s smile widened, just a little. “I’ll tell you. Maybe. If you let me drive you home again. My car smells better in the daylight.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“I’m a low-bar kind of girl.” Cadence stood, gathering the empty plates. Her fingers brushed Ryli’s as she took the mug. The touch was electric, a jolt that shot straight up her arm. “My shift’s done. You finished with this… culinary experience?”
Ryli nodded, wordless.
“Good. Come on.”
She followed Cadence out into the sharp afternoon light, the bell jangling behind them. The world outside was the same—dirty sidewalks, growling traffic, the same gray sky. But it felt different. Cadence walked close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
“So,” Ryli said, her voice barely above the street noise. “Just a ride home?”
Cadence unlocked her car. She looked over the roof, her blue eyes clear and steady. “For now.”
It wasn’t a promise. It was a possibility. It was a crack of light under a door Ryli had thought was sealed shut. She got in, and this time, she didn’t look at her own reflection in the window. She watched the driver. She counted the freckles on the back of Cadence’s hand as it rested on the gear shift. She waited for the tap of a new rhythm to begin.