In the waning light, Virginia waits for me, a lollipop pressed to her lips. Stained red, they smile up at me and she asks, "How's Jake? And Lily? Done trick-or-treating already?"
Her breath billows upward, fringed with frost, from her place on the park bench. A coat covers her slinky, cookie-cutter cat costume, complete with headband ears and slightly smeared whiskers. Her eyes are critical and questioning.
"She's at a party this year. Trick or treating is for kids. Jake's out at a bar. Some kind of sports game." I say as I sit down, feeling dowdy in my jeans and hoodie.
Lily had left the house earlier with a gaggle of girlfriends, heading all of 3 blocks away to a boy's house for a costume party. And Jake had announced soon after that he'd also be going out. There had been no invitation in his voice and I didn't speak up about my hopes and half-plans for the evening. With Jake, it was better not to mention Virginia.
Out on the streets around us, children still run wild. Sugar pumping in their blood, they bang on doors and scramble to get the last of the holiday's loot. All of them are the children of the people we grew up with, went to school with.
A few people, cutting through the park on their way home, walk past us with smiles and nods, how-do-you-dos and calculating looks. This one was in every school play. That one played the cello. She married a doctor. And him? Well, he still works at the supermarket. Everyone here knows us and we know them.
Welcome to Nowhere, USA, population two thousand and twelve. The only town for twenty miles. Virginia and I used to laugh. Always rumors, always eyes.
We had been accused of things that had made my parents squirm.
"Did you tell him where you were going?" Virginia asks quietly, as the streets begin to empty. The last sugar-fueled howls of children echo down the streets, cut off by closing doors.
Her thigh presses against mine. Instinctively, I lean into her warmth. The cold night has me seeking it. The touch is brief, hardly there before we shift away.
"Does it matter?" I shrug. My fingertips slowly trace the creases in the bench's weathered wood as the sun's brightness disappears behind the rambling mountain peaks and the soft sounds of night come trickling in. "He'll find out anyway."
"Well, let's get out of here," Virginia's feline face paint highlights the mischievous curve of her smile."I'll drive."
The bench creaks loudly as she stands and the crossroads are empty as we leave the park, dashing across the street diagonally.
On the sidewalk, we walk more slowly, and side by side. Close enough that I feel her fingertips as they brush mine, concealed from any eyes by the dark. Her presence is everything, everywhere; real and raw.
Feeling bold, I grab her hand, yanking on her arm to pull her close. Leaning my head on her shoulder, I tell her, "I'm glad you're back."
"Me too," she says, smiling and squeezing my hand before pushing me towards the other side of the car. "Get in."
We clamor into the old pickup, her brother's car, parked just street down. Seatbelts click into place and the engine grumbles as Virginia turns the key, deafening after the silence of the park bench.
Before shifting out of park, Virginia lights a cigarette and then gives it to me as we roll away. We pass the cigarette back and forth and I fiddle with the radio. Virginia cringes at the noise.
"Alexander has terrible taste in music," I laugh. Finished with the presets, I aimlessly flip through the stations as we drive past tidy rows of houses until they fade into long stretches of cornfields punctuated with an occasional silo or barn. Soon our headlights and the stars are the only light for miles.
