Redbrick Mini-Marts

It was a little after eight—the sky a void of raspberry and periwinkle and lavender carnations—and possibly the most humid day in the middle of July when I first saw him tagging the side of an abandoned building next to the rundown Mini-Mart.

The air was nothing but the taste of sticky sea salt even though the beach was miles away, pelicans flocked overhead like the kind of stars the city dreamt about, desperate for a chunk of somebody's soft pretzel or the syrupy sweet liquid of some kid's sandy ice cream cone on the boardwalk.

And he—Noah—he was steadily working an aerosol can against the side of the building like he owned the place, and under the dim, blueberry light it almost seemed like he did.

Noah Fields was peculiar. He was always so cut out for this life in a way that I never seemed to grasp; green eyes so wide and large and a supernova of shaggy hair, freckles stretched and dotted against tanned shoulders like the sandy shores, like some sort of constellations amidst an entire galaxy. He was all a bright smile, board shorts, and flip-flops, and catching waves when the tide was high and I'd never thought I'd see him in a scene like this. In this part of town, the spray of bright green paint almost blinding against the dirty old bricks. It coated his fingers and his hoodie and his shorts and a pair of sneakers I'd never seen him wear, didn't know he owned—and it was like he didn't belong here.

And he didn't. Noah Fields was all fumbled laughs with his bros—his dudes—the kind that owned five boats in five different colors and only worried about twisted guitar strings or the time the next bonfire kegger was supposed to start on the slabs of private beach attached to the backs of equally private houses.

Yet here he was, scratching out blades of grass against a slab of grimy bricks, and I was watching him, two plastic bags and a jug of skim milk juggled in one arm with my keys in the other. I wondered which was worse, the fact that he was defacing public property that nobody cared about, or the fact that I was watching him when I was supposed to be getting home with ingredients so that Graham could finally make his cookies and leave me alone about it.

I decided to leave, and my shoes crunched on the yellowed-out grass in the singule exhale that Noah put his can down to take a breather, and it was like a miracle in the way his head snapped up, ash locks falling against his forehead and shielding jade and olive eyes, amethyst shadows illuminating high on a clenched jaw. He looked ready to bolt and I wondered what all of his friends would say between days of greasy burgers and ketchup-stained fingertips and wicked, sandy shores. Wondered if he looked so frightened, so caught because if anybody else—anybody else caught him here—caught Noah Fields in a small stretch of grimy, abandoned walls—

And after two slow sweeps of his lashes and three equally awaited breaths I realized that he wasn't going to say anything, and I shifted the milk to give him half a smile and to push up the sleeves of my shirt because it wasn't hot but it was still so unbearably humid. "So Noah Fields is a little rebel, is he?"

It took him another second before his lips quirked out of the frown that they'd worked themselves into, before the tension seeped from his shoulders and he wasn't bracing himself against the wall anymore like a life-preserver in the middle of the ocean. "And little Alexandra is a bit of a stalker?"

"Little?" I asked him, and he rocked back on paint-splattered sneakers to look at me properly. "I'm five-foot-ten. I think that's taller than you."

He laughed at that, green and orange fingertips licking at this corner of a smile while he shook his head. "I'm an inch taller."

"Doesn't explain why you're out here spray-painting—doing graffiti—does it?" I shifted the milk again. "I'm pretty sure that this is technically illegal."