“You’re okay,” he soothed, his voice deep and steady. He let me go as I kept trying to regroup. “Hey, come here,” he said, lowering himself to the ground. “Just sit down for a second. Breathe.”

Easier said than done.

I sat down beside him, leaning my back against the mural of our town.

“Good,” he told me. “Now lower your head between your legs and take deep breaths.”

“I-I ca-can’t…”

“Yes, princess, you can. Just slow down. Lower your head and lace your fingers together on the back of your neck. You can do this.”

I did as he said, and every time I tried to apologize, he told me to stop and just breathe.

Slowly but surely, my heartbeats began to return to a normal pace. Slowly but surely, embarrassment filled me as I raised my head and found Jackson’s intense stare on me.

I wiped my eyes and inhaled. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Sorry,” I murmured, making him roll his eyes.

“I said stop saying that.”

“Sor—” I started but then caught myself. “Okay.”

He sighed, his face still hard. “Okay.”

I combed my hands through my hair and shook my head back and forth. “You can go, I swear. I’m just a bit of a hot mess, remember? I should probably get going, too,” I said, moving to stand, but he placed his hand on my forearm.

“Just give it a minute. Let your body calm down. Panic attacks take a second to disappear completely.”

“You’ve had panic attacks before?”

He fiddled with his hands and looked down at the ground. “My mother used to suffer from them.” He kept staring down at his hands before saying, “You’ll be fine. Just give it a minute, all right? Take small breaths.”

Take small breaths.

I can do that.

We sat in silence, both staring forward and letting the warm night air touch our skin.

“What’s your story?” I asked, tilting my head toward him, somewhat confused by his entire existence. He was so mean, so dark, but at the same time, he managed to somehow be gentle…

A gentle monster.

“You know my story, remember? You said you know me. Everyone in this place seems to know me,” he replied, almost growling. “I’m the town asshole, and that’s all there is to it.” He stood and then cleared his throat. “Just give it about five more minutes, all right?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He brushed his hands on the back of his neck and shook his head. “Stop talking. Just breathe.”

His hazel eyes locked with mine, and we spent a moment taking one another in. It was as if we truly saw each other for the first time. As I looked into his eyes, I recognized something I saw in my own soul: loneliness.

The way he stared made me think he recognized it, too.

He glanced my way one last time. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown, and somehow, that felt like a small victory.

As he left, I silently thanked him again. After an evening of drowning, the town’s bad seed was the one who’d helped me come up for a small breath of air.

6

Jackson

“I see we’re out and about, making new friends,” Alex remarked as I walked back into the shop with a pizza a while later. I tossed it in the break room then came back out, arching an eyebrow in his direction.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as he stood under the hood of that disgustingly pink automobile.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m working on Grace’s car.”

“I said take it to the scrapyard, not here.”

“Oh? Did you? I must’ve missed that,” he lied. Alex was a great listener; he never missed a word anyone said. “Well, since it’s here…” He smirked at me, and I rolled my eyes, making him laugh. “Come on, man. It could be our newest passion project. We’ve been looking for the perfect new toy to play with.”

I walked around the car, kicking one of the tires. “There’s nothing about this thing that makes me passionate. It’s a piece of shit. It’s seriously a piece of actual shit. If it were an animal’s shit, it would be a monkey’s. If it were a person’s shit, it would be yours. It’s the worst piece of shit that ever existed.”

“Hmm…” Alex whistled low. “I’m glad to see you’ve been working on watching your language, and really? You think monkey shit is worse than hippo shit?”

“Well, I guess it depends on the size of the monkey.”

“No, Jackson”—he shook his head—“it doesn’t.”

“I’m serious, man. Get this out of the shop.”

“Listen, kiddo, you know I love you like you’re my own son, but I think it’s childish that you are refusing a perfectly good learning experience on this pink hot mama because of the hate you have for the family it belongs to.”

“That family is nothing but shit,” I barked. “You should hate them, too.”

“Yes, sure, of course. But this”—Alex hugged the car—“this is a precious baby. It didn’t choose its family. It had no say in who owned it. It’s just sitting in our shop, looking for a little love. Can’t we give it a little love, Jack-Jack?”