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Chapter Seventeen- Anarchy Date

Alice awkwardly left later that day, making eye contact with Roy quickly before quickly heading out the front door. Roy was pretty sure Alice thought this was a game. Roy had fucking won.

Roy scanned the paper looking for more job openings, still militant on not giving in and working at whatever diner MacKenzie was talking about. He supposed it couldn't hurt to check it out, but was still disappointed when there was still an ad for a position at the library. He would've gone back over right then but it was too far from MacKenzie's house. He planned to convince her to drive him there soon so he could talk to someone else, or at the very least, simply complain.

And MacKenzie arrived earlier than expected and bounced through the door with a smile on her face.

"I didn't have work today," she said, beaming.

"Okay..."

"Aren't you wondering what I was doing?"

"Sure, yeah," Roy said.

"You gotta come outside. Come on." She grabbed Roy's band, practically rolling him outside.

She skipped over to the car. But it wasn't her car, it was Roy's old car.

"Get in."

As Roy began to wheel over to the passenger side, MacKenzie stopped him in front of the drivers side.

"Get in!" She repeated.

"Uh..." A confused Roy did as he was told and MacKenzie got in next to him. "Uh..."

"So I went to the garage, and I just explained them your situation I guess, and they put in hand controls in our car."

Our car? So it's ours. We're together...

"One of the stagehands told me about it."

"Oh wow," Roy commented. "Stagehands..."

"Look, it's attached to the gas pedal and brake and you just press it like this."

"Oh, wow..."

"Let's do it!" She insisted, starting the engine. "Just like down the street so you can get used to it. So you know you can start work."

Work.

"Yeah about that..."

"Come on!"

The car jerked ahead suddenly and MacKenzie chuckled. She leaned in towards Roy, kissing him on the cheek.

"You got dis," she whispered.

Roy grinned. He was driving his car. With his hands. In LA. Los Angeles. Driving.

"Where do?" Roy asked.

"Well, I was thinking the pier...maybe?"

"There's lots of piers, Kenz."

"Keep going, I'll tell you when. And maybe Indian food later?"

"As you wish."

Roy continued to drive. The sun was setting now. A cotton candy sea above the blue deep ocean. A candy dream.

And he couldn't believe when they were at the pier, staring out into the endless coastline, the sky kissing the surface of the water, that any of this was actually reality.

MacKenzie sat on Roy's lap, clinging to his shoulders, her head resting on his chest. He couldn't see her face, he couldn't see her expressions or what she was thinking. And he was briefly taken back to that night he and Dahlia lay outside the observatory and beheld the stars. The sky looked very different today.

"You've got a meeting with Holger tomorrow, and he's gonna train you," MacKenzie whispered.

"And you don't have to drive me," Roy replied.

"Ten o'clock," she smiled.

He could almost see Dahlia's grin in the corners of her lips. Darkness consumed the sea more and more, and a calm had settled over Roy for the first time in a long time. It was happiness, yes. Even if a small part of him wanted to jump off that pier and into the black waters below. Of course he didn't.

Instead he engaged in a sort of rough barbaric intercourse in the bed of an unmarried woman, his ex's sister, who was formerly his nurse. And they fucked. They fucked hard. And it was a mixture of absolute pleasure and Roy's narcissistic outlook that nothing could get better from here. And Alice, slamming the door to the back porch at three in the morning, obviously done with hearing everything, and Roy knew it wasn't because of that, it was because she felt guilty, and he had just as much.

Still pleasure consumed him.