If I’d known anything about how car engines started, I could have come at it that way, but all I could remember was something about explosions. I could just imagine that, with my luck, I’d blow up his friggin’ car. Maybe I was just being too complicated. Start, I willed furiously. Start.
This was pointless. Nothing was happening. The image of the car was slipping away, replaced by the red vinyl of the booth seat across from me.
Luke whispered in my ear. “Name it.”
Bucephalus, I thought. Instantly, the image of the car strengthened again, forming solid lines around me as if I sat inside it and around it and over it all at once. I could see a line of pistons, the brake line, the gas pedal, the ignition, the seats, all at the same time. Bucephalus, start.
Across the parking lot, headlights flicked on and blinded us both, but not before I saw the car jerk sideways as the engine turned over and roared to life.
The waitress set down two plates in front of us.
“Have a sandwich!” Luke said, glowing brighter than the headlights.
“Can I get you any sauce?”
I blinked at her. “I think I need to get sauced.”
The waitress blinked back.
“She’s fine,” Luke said. After the waitress had gone, he looked at me, the corners of his mouth quirking, and said, “Are you just going to leave it running? Now that my salary’s not being paid by supernaturals, I have to worry about the price of gas.”
I tried to convince the engine to turn off, but it remained running. Eventually, I had to let Luke out of the booth to go switch off the ignition. I watched him out the window, his lanky form trotting to the car and getting in, fumbling behind the wheel for a few minutes, and then popping the hood open and fussing under it. He shut the hood, climbed back into the driver’s seat, and in a few seconds the car lurched forward, the lights finally going out.
He returned and slid back in next to me, a little out of breath. “You’re a bit of an atom bomb, aren’t you? I had to stall the engine to get it to stop.”
A smile broke out across my face; I couldn’t help it. It was just so crazy. And instead of feeling shaky, like I did whenever I moved stuff in the daytime, I felt great. I felt like that great mass of night pressing in the windows was pulsing through me, huge waves of energy pumping like a wicked bass line. I felt like whooping, but when I found words, it was just an ordinary question. “How did you know I should use the name?”
“They think names are very important, remember? And so they are.”
I frowned. “Is that why no one can remember your name?”
He nodded, mouth full of barbecue, and mumbled past the food. “Names are a way of keeping someone in your head. Most people don’t remember me very well, either.”
“But I do. I can say your name: Luke Dillon. And They can too. At least, Brendan could.”
“They see things differently. I guess you do, too. Big shock there.” He poked the corner of my mouth where my smile ought to be. “Eat your food.”
I remembered my hunger, and we both ate our sandwiches in silence. When we were done, Luke put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him. Resting my head on his chest, listening to oldies music playing overhead, feeling the cold touch of the vinyl booth on the back of my arms, I thought, again—despite the Sticky Pig looking the same as it always did—that this night wasn’t like any other night.
Luke leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I wish I could have this with you.” Something about his breath against my skin as he spoke, his fingers brushing against my neck, and the unfamiliar, exciting night pressing in against the windows made my stomach turn over. I sat up and grabbed his hand, tugging him out of the booth with a sort of urgency. “Let’s go outside.”
I waited slow minutes while he looked at the check and counted out a tip, and then I pulled him out of the restaurant and back into the dull red light of the parking lot. With every step I took into the night, the pale moon looking down from overhead, I felt like I was shedding a skin; a weighty slab of flesh that peeled away to reveal a brilliant, light creature inside. All around me was a wall I’d spent sixteen years building, and with every thud of my heart, pieces crumbled from it. I was practically shaking by the time we reached the car, and before he could get his keys out, I kissed him. Crazy, out-of-control kissing, my mouth pressed against his, my arms linked around his neck.
Caught off guard, Luke took a moment before he wrapped his arms around me and kissed back, his fingers crumpling my shirt. There was something honest and raw in our kisses; a gasp of fear or impending loss that we couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge in conscious thought. He held me tightly, lifting me off my feet and sitting me on the hood of his car so I wouldn’t have to stand on my tiptoes to reach him, and I tasted the skin of his neck and his face and his lips until I had no more breath, and then I linked my legs around him and kissed him some more.
Inside the car, my phone rang, quiet but clearly audible. I didn’t want to get it. I didn’t want this night to end, because I didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. But Luke’s hands dropped to his sides and he rested his face against my neck, out of breath. “You have to get that, don’t you?”
I wanted to say no. But while I tried to imagine how I could justify ignoring it, Luke lifted me from the hood of the car and got his keys out of his pocket. The phone had stopped ringing by the time he retrieved it from the passenger seat, but my parents’ number was still displayed under the words missed call.
Standing outside the car, shivering for no reason, I punched the redial button and pressed the phone to my ear. Luke stood behind me and crossed his arms over my chest, pressing his cheek against mine while I listened to the phone ringing.
“Deirdre? Where are you?” Mom’s voice had a strange edge to it that I didn’t recognize.
“At the Sticky Pig. We—”
“You need to come home. Right now.”
I hadn’t expected that. Maybe her chastity radar had gone off. “We just finished getting dinner. The party—”
“Deirdre, just come home. It’s important.”
The phone clicked and I stared at it for a few moments before relating the call to Luke. He released me abruptly. “Okay. Get in.”
I got into the passenger seat, unhappy with the turn of events. “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t either,” Luke said. “But something’s happened. We need to go.”