Aram Mrjoian

Pike Lake

Earlier in the evening, when the falling sun’s plumes of pink and purple discouraged skinny-dipping, Cole nearly hit two kayakers with his father’s speedboat. As Tig watched, the pair of blurry green avocado slices came into focus, and he could make out a man and woman in orange life vests shouting and waving yellow oars above their heads in an attempt to be seen. They had spent the afternoon drinking and Tig wasn’t sure whether Cole was being reckless or intended to scare them. Tig clawed at the leather seat, anxious, fingers wet with chop. Cole spun the wheel at the last second and cut right. Their wake toppled the kayaks. Tig peeked over his shoulder as the boat zipped away. The couple reemerged, heads above the surface, struggling to right their vessels, until they faded out of view.

Tig wasn’t sure what time it was now, but he had never seen so many stars freckling the sky. The moon was nowhere to be found. Still, light glowed off the water. There were six of them on the boat and they were playing fetch, a game that involved throwing a fresh beer far out into the water whenever someone ran empty. The person in need of a drink had to swim out to the bobbing can and bring it back aboard. The lake was calm and if not for the cover of darkness the speedboat would have looked out of place among the array of spotlighting skiffs that trolled along the drop-off for bass and pike. Tig was grateful Cole was at least smart enough to keep the music down so they wouldn’t attract the DNR. Along the shoreline, a chain of motorcycles rumbled down the coastal highway and pulled one by one into the parking lot of a neon bar and grill, which resembled a gaudy log cabin with high-definition televisions illuminating the patio. Tig had never been to this part of northern Michigan.

“What’s Tig short for?” Courtney asked him. She was the closest to sober, but he wondered if she had been building up the nerve. Tig hadn’t met the girls until yesterday’s car ride. He wound up on the trip because Tyler was his roommate last year, when they entered the dorms at random, but this semester Tyler moved into Sigma Chi in a room neighboring Cole. Tig found a single in the dorms and remained on the same hall as the year before. The girls were from a sorority. He would have forgotten which one if all of their clothes didn’t have Greek letters stitched across the chest. When they met, he had introduced himself as Tig.

“Tigran,” he said, “but just Tig is fine.”

“That’s so pretty,” Courtney said. “What’s the origin of that name?”

“He’s an Arab,” Tyler said.

“It’s Armenian,” Tig said.

“Like Tyler said, A-rab,” Cole smirked. The girls sipped their beers as if trying to stall while they mentally located Tig’s motherland on a classroom globe. The lull in conversation held steady after that. They drank and peered out over the water.

The girls wore zip-up hoodies and damp towels wrapped around their bare legs so that they resembled fuzzy mermaids. Tails of navy blue, lime green, and mustard yellow. The linens were from Cole’s parents’ cottage. Cole said the girls didn’t have to play the game, but they insisted. They wanted to swim. Overflowing with ice and cold beers, their Styrofoam cooler was far from empty, and there was an abundant supply of more beer and liquor back at the cabin to last the rest of the long weekend. Cole had called the place a cottage, a cabin, and a lake house, so Tig wasn’t sure how to talk about where they were staying for the next two nights. In any other context he would’ve referred to it as a mansion. Tig was frustrated by the extra night away because he knew he would miss his morning biology lecture and even a week into the semester the coursework already proved more challenging than he had imagined upon enrolling. He thought they would return on Labor Day, but Cole informed him otherwise on the ride up north while they cruised along windswept highways, an endless blur of apple and cherry orchards. Cole insisted that the holiday traffic would be a full day’s worth of bumper-to-bumper hell.

Tyler passed Cole a cheap cigar. He removed another one from the package, but Tig shook him away. They’d been drinking since lunch, and Tig knew the smoke would nauseate him to the point of no return. Tobacco gave him the spins. The subtle rock of the boat was more than enough for him to feel askew, and Cole’s unpredictable driving hadn’t helped the matter. The boat was sleek and cozy and decked out with a fancy speaker system and (if they weren’t trying to remain inconspicuous) trim lights that cycled through the colors of the rainbow. Cole fiddled with his phone and changed the music to an old T.I. track. While Tig was trying to remember the last time he had heard it, Emily threw an empty beer can into the amassing pile at the boat’s center.

“Oh shit, looks like it’s time to get wet, Em,” Alyssa said. She waddled to the cooler, holding the towel tight around her legs. Ice cubes rattled as she searched for a can. When Alyssa found one, silver and shimmering in her hand like a fishing lure in the starlight, she lobbed it from the back of the boat. It didn’t go far. A bad cast, Tig thought. Emily unzipped her sweatshirt and shook the towel from her legs and walked in her maroon bikini out of the seating area and dove off the platform from the back of the boat with the grace of someone who’d spent countless hours in the pool practicing her form. Tig watched her paddle out until she retrieved the can and made her way back. She looked so natural in the water. Emily was the one he was supposed to be paired up with. Cole and Tyler had it all planned out before the trip. She was single, a junior, and the only one old enough to legally drink, which proved a boon to the rest of them.

She treaded water next to the boat and cracked her beer. Tig thought she must’ve been a swimmer. Without flapping his arms frantically, he couldn’t keep his head above the surface to save his life. He finished his beer and flung it from his hand. It clanked against the others and Cole had a fresh beer in the air before the empty came to rest. Tig lost sight of the can against the silhouette of trees on shore but heard it crash into the deep in the distance. He removed his orange Tigers longsleeve and shook away his flip-flops and leapt into the lake next to Emily. When he surfaced, she splashed him and laughed.

“Your beer is way out there,” she said. “Cole played baseball in high school.”

“Right field!” He gloated from somewhere unseen above them.

“I’ll find it,” Tig said. He hated not feeling the ground beneath his feet. He felt panicked in his fight against the unyielding force of gravity but didn’t want Emily to see him struggle.

“Be careful,” she said, and he could tell she meant it. He combined a doggie paddle with a front crawl and flopped away from the boat. He felt exposed, untethered, lost from the floating island he relied on to stay safe out in the unknown. He paused and propelled himself in a circle to find the boat for reference. It was nothing more than a far-off, dark blotch towering over his low plain of vision, but he could hear laughs and mumbled voices over the faint music. He turned side to side and saw his beer nodding up and down a few more yards in front of him. Cole had really hurled it. Tig threw together a clumsy sidestroke for the last few measures, but as he neared he noticed another figure neighboring the can. It was a loon. He had no idea why it was swimming alone at night. He slowed his stroke and the bird entered a staring contest with him for the blink of an eye before diving below. Tig knew he wouldn’t see the loon come up for air anytime soon. The empty surface rippled and filled Tig with an eerie chill.

“Tig, you okay out there?” It was Emily’s voice. The boys, with less concern, yipped like puppies. Tig yipped back. He snagged the beer and returned to his sidestroke so he could see the location of the boat ahead of him without veering off or overshooting it. By the time he got a hand on the back ladder, his arms were throbbing with fatigue. His legs felt leaden. Emily was still drinking her beer beside the boat, but at least now she was gripping a rung too. Tig’s hair clung to his forehead and in front of his eyes like little dark blinds across a glass sliding door, blocking his vision. He had been growing his hair out since the beginning of summer and it felt heavy on his scalp. Emily pushed the waterlogged strands back over his head.

“I wish I had your hair,” she said. “It’s so thick.”

“Nah, I like your hair,” Tig replied. He was lightheaded from the booze and realized how dumb this sounded the moment it left his mouth. He climbed the ladder back onto the boat before he embarrassed himself any further. The others were now paired off on beach towels at the bow. Tyler and Alyssa. Cole and Courtney. Or maybe it was the stern. Tig couldn’t remember which was the front. Tyler popped up from his towel with the deft maneuver of a surfer and met Tig at the helm. He sat and rested his fingers atop the wheel. Emily hadn’t boarded and Tig worried he should go check on her.

Tyler leaned in and bumped his forehead against Tig’s. “You have a real chance with Emily this weekend, bud. Stop being so shy.”

“She seems cool,” Tig whispered. He didn’t want to be overheard.

Tyler smiled. “There we go. You know, Courtney says she’s into ethnic guys. You got this.”

Tig didn’t say anything, just nodded. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to set him up this way. In high school, a group of Tig’s lacrosse teammates coerced him into taking an Indian girl to prom because she was part of their clique of girlfriends and it was obvious they would be a perfect match. Last fall, a few weeks after he first moved into the dorms, a girl he brought back from a graffiti party that Tyler had dragged him to at Sigma Chi paused while they undressed and rubbed a hand across his abdomen. Your skin is like caramel. He shrugged it off, but when she rebuffed him he dug caramel sauce from his mini-fridge, the bottle he’d purchased at the convenience store for when Tyler snuck pints of cookie dough ice cream from his Thursday closing shift in the dorm cafeteria. He poured a line down his forearm to reveal the disparity in color. The girl licked it off him, and they attempted to use the sauce as a romantic accoutrement, but soon the caramel left their bodies sticky and their mouths parched and the night concluded with them sharing a bottle of orange Gatorade under a brisk shower and falling asleep on Tig’s futon before they got anywhere.

“I should check on her,” Tig said. He stood and lumbered to the back of the boat. Emily wasn’t there, but her swimsuit hung dripping from the top of the ladder. Tig heard Cole and the girls shouting from the bow or stern, followed by the sound of their splashing bodies. The boat rocked back and forth.

Tyler grabbed Tig by the shoulder. “Looks like you’re going to have to lose those board shorts, bud.” Tyler flung off his shirt and dropped his own swimsuit at his feet, all out in front of Tig, before vaulting into the lake. Tig was soaked and the night felt cold, but he knew getting out of his clothes would fill him with new energy. He slithered from the cling of his board shorts and checked his package to ensure everything was presentable. Before he could talk himself out of it he was in the air and a second later, when his body was submerged and he couldn’t see a thing but aqueous blackness, he thought about the loon that for as much as he knew could be swimming beneath them, scavenging for minnows, peering up through the darkness at their dozen lean flapping legs, but when he resurfaced and the water cascaded free from his eyes, Emily was right in front of him, round bare shoulders like soap bubbles under the stars, seemingly unbothered by their nakedness, and she smiled at him in a way he thought signaled that she knew he wouldn’t be able to paddle about on his own as long as the rest of them, like she would keep him afloat if he was sinking.

*

Back at the cabin, Cole and Tyler built a roaring fire in the mammoth hearth at the center of the sitting room. The girls scattered to separate bathrooms to shower. Tig couldn’t believe how big Cole’s parents’ cottage was. Six bedrooms and a small bunkhouse for kids in a repurposed garage. There was a game room with a foosball table and two darts boards. The kitchen was stocked with food and liquor from earlier in the summer. It abutted the bay with a private dock for the speedboat and a pontoon. Tyler handed Tig a tumbler of Blanton’s bourbon Cole had dug out from behind the bar. A chilled Petoskey stone clanked around against the glass. The bourbon was smooth but didn’t taste much different than the Wild Turkey back in his dorm room. They both made him wince after he swallowed. Tig sunk in at the end of an enormous leather sectional couch. He was exhausted from the swimming and the alcohol, but the fire mesmerized him and even though he was head-to-toe tired he couldn’t imagine falling asleep. Courtney, Alyssa, and Emily made their way downstairs together in matching flannel pajama pants and sorority t-shirts, hair sopped down their backs. Emily nestled in next to him and put her wet head on his shoulder.

“What time is it?” she asked the room.

Courtney thumbed at her phone. “Two in the morning.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no last call here,” Cole said. Tig had decided he wasn’t a huge fan of Cole, though it was difficult to remain upset given the circumstances. Cole had gifted Tig with a perfect extended weekend. He’d never known anyone else with a place this big, much less a summer home. Emily’s warmth felt good against his side, and she smelled like green apples. The same biodegradable shampoo must have been in every bathroom in the house. maybe the runoff drained back out into the lake. Environmental stewardship became much easier to pay attention to when it directly affected you. He hadn’t bothered to rinse the lake off him and hair clung to his arms and legs from air-drying. He had changed into university sweatpants and a black t-shirt, one of many uniform tees he bought in a pack of ten at Target two weeks ago before the fall semester began.

The fire settled and a few embers fell in a blanket over the stone. Tyler went to collect more firewood from under a muddied tarp on the back deck, but Cole called him off. Courtney and Alyssa were drowsy-eyed. The dim lights of their phones cast their faces in doleful blue. Cole somehow still possessed energy and Tig could tell Tyler was trying to keep pace. He wondered if they had taken something. With a fire iron, Cole slid an orange coal the size of a golf ball from the center to the edge of the hearth. He set the iron aside and leaned down and blew white flecks of ash off the coal back into the fireplace. The coal glowed and a lone spark spiraled toward the ceiling. Cole deftly plucked the fiery mass into the air and, for a split second, got a hand beneath it. He tossed the coal from hand to hand in a high arc, so that it never remained pressed to his skin.

“You know, this body of water was named Pike Lake because it’s shaped like an iron, not because of the fish, believe it or not,” Cole said. Tig watched the coal rise and fall. He thought about how one name could have two meanings. Cole nodded, “Hot potato, Ty,” and volleyed the hot chunk of wood in Tyler’s direction. Tig feared Tyler would drop it and they would burn a hole in the carpet, but Tyler let his arm flow into the coal’s downward arc and mimicked Cole’s rhythm of quick hand-to-hand motion. The girls peered up from their phones and Emily dug her fingernails into Tig’s palm. The four of them watched as Tyler and Cole lobbed the torrid projectile back and forth until their hands were blackened with soot and bits crumbled to the floor. Cole batted it from the air, pieces scattered back into the containment of flames.

“I’ll go get more wood,” Tyler said. He wiped his darkened hands against the hearth.

“We’re pretty wiped out,” Alyssa said. “How about we call it a night?”

Emily and Tig remained on the sofa while Cole spread the embers out with the pike until there were no more flecks of light to be seen. He closed a sheet of chainmail over the opening so nothing would escape. Courtney and Alyssa meandered upstairs, and Tyler and Cole hungrily followed them. Unmoving, Tig hoped Emily couldn’t hear him swallowing every few seconds. His mouth was dry and he was thirsty for water. His body made so much noise. Emily peeled herself from his shoulder and stretched her arms toward the ceiling. She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead.

“Want to go out on the dock?” she asked.

“You’re not tired?”

“Exhausted, but I’m from Chicago. I’ve never seen stars like this in my life.”

Tig nodded and they rose together. Outside, the wind felt as if it was guiding them through a slow dance. Tig was grateful for the astronomy class he’d taken as a freshman. He remembered a few of the constellations. They strolled hand in hand across the beach and made their way to the end of the dock. Once they sat back down, with their bare toes skimming the crests of tiny waves, Emily kissed him on the mouth.

“So it doesn’t bother you that we were set up?” Tig asked when they separated.

“That was the idea,” Emily said. “Worked out though. I like you.”

“Yeah, Tyler told me.”

“Told you what exactly?”

“He said he thought we would be a good match because you’re into guys like me.”

“Sophomores?”

“Umm. You know, ethnic guys.”

Emily sighed. The whole time they’d been talking her head was tilted back to take in the sky. Tig thought he could make out the summer triangle, but he forgot which constellations the trio of bright stars signified. Aquila the Eagle, the other two mysteries. He spotted Ursa Major and Minor, Orion’s belt, what was maybe Scorpio coming into view at the horizon.

“Courtney can’t keep her mouth shut,” Emily said. “You need to know it’s not like that, more of a correlation than causation thing.”

“You had to take that freshman comp class too huh?”

She laughed and Tig felt as if he had mitigated disaster. “I mean,” she said, “it’s not like you get to be all high and mighty. Cole and Tyler just invited us here in hopes you all get laid, and we both know I’m half here to purchase alcohol for you juveniles in case his dad’s stash gets low.”

“I’m sorry,” Tig said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

“You did anyway.”

“I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I mean I grew up ten miles away from campus. I’ve never even been as far as Chicago. I’d feel like a liar if you thought I was something I wasn’t. More exotic or whatever.”

“I guess we still have a lot to learn about each other,” she said, squeezing out her hair over the water. “And you’d like Chicago. Lake Michigan feels so much bigger over there. The shore is lit up for miles, all the way to Indiana.”

Tig knew she was right about whatever was developing between them. The truth was he knew little about Emily other than where she was from and that he thought she was gorgeous. She was a swimmer, or at least she could swim well. She alone had declined the joint they passed around Cole’s SUV on the ride up. He recognized that superficial facts had little to do with her identity; that he never should have assumed her dating history was related to why she was into him. He leaned in and kissed her again and soon lost track of time, as they held one another close to fend off the wind, until neither of them could keep their eyes open a second longer. They stumbled back to the cottage and Emily led him to the bedroom where her stuff was flung about and they slid under a duvet that smelled like sand dunes and fell asleep holding hands without even bothering to say goodnight.

*

Sunday and Monday were an inebriated blur. The six of them spent their time sunbathing on the water, drinking away humid afternoons to loud music, all viewed through the dark lenses of cheap plastic sunglasses they’d purchased in bulk in town. Monday afternoon, Emily and Tig floated on a large tube tied to the stern so they could talk in privacy, but Courtney and Alyssa soon drifted out on a second tube and joined them so they could escape the constant cloud of cigar smoke hovering around the boat.

“It’s hard to read up there with my eyes watering,” Alyssa said. Her and Courtney had been plowing through two copies of the same paperback.

“What’s the book?” Tig asked.

“Good Morning, Midnight,” Courtney said. “We’re in the same English class.”

“Is that for the general literature requirement?”

Emily placed a hand on Tig’s shoulder, as if he had forgotten something he already knew. “They’re English majors, remember?” she said.

“It’s a noir fiction class,” Alyssa said. “Courtney convinced me to take it because she likes old Bogart films. It’s already a lot of work though. We’re supposed to read The Secret Agent this weekend too.”

“It would have been easier if we went back today,” Courtney said. “This semester is already kicking my ass.” Tig was grateful he wasn’t the only one fretting over the amount of time they were away from campus.

The four of them relaxed on the tubes. Emily fell asleep. Courtney and Alyssa kept reading. Tig drank a beer while he counted the passing pontoons and jet skis, a hand at rest on Emily’s thigh. The sun filled him with itchy drowsiness. He thought about the previous afternoon. While Cole and Tyler had grilled fresh perch and cod from a market down the road, Emily and Tig crammed into the small shower of their guest bedroom and rinsed a day’s buildup of sunscreen off of one another and once they were clean, she went down on him in a cloud of steam, but the stream of water proved too much for her to breathe and so they retired to bed where Tig did his best to return the favor. He knew he had done a mediocre job. He was worried she thought he didn’t know what he was doing.

After they docked for the day, Tig and Emily spent the sunset talking on the beach while the others played beer pong and flip cup. Tig had learned a lot about her, but it all blurred in his mind the more he drank. Once or twice he asked Emily a question before realizing he had asked the same one earlier in the weekend. Too lazy to pull together a meal from the barren pantry, Cole ordered pizza and charged it to his credit card. They ate from paper plates on the deck overlooking the dark lake. Once they finished, Tig and Emily stole a bottle of champagne from the back of the fridge and didn’t leave their room for the rest of the evening.

Tig awoke Tuesday morning, unclothed and greasy, with the severity of headache champagne solely provides. Emily was packing when he emerged from underneath his pillow, which was moist with sweat.

“Everyone else is asleep except Cole,” Emily said. She was in a pair of his basketball shorts and yet another sorority t-shirt. “He’s cleaning up like a madman. Said we’re going to breakfast in town in an hour.”

“It’ll take me half that time to shower and pack,” Tig said. He reburied his head under the pillow.

“Nice try,” she smiled. “Trust me, the moment you stand up you’re going to want to spend an hour in the shower.”

“Nice rhyme. I see you’re a poet now.” He playfully flung the pillow in her direction and shook the sheet off his body. He slid his feet from the bed to the floor, but when he stood he thought he was going to fall over. He pushed a palm hard between his eyes. “You’re right though. Please don’t watch me flee. I am weak.”

“Can’t help but watch you wiggle,” she said with a familiar lilt in her voice like this was a repeat conversation between them. He kept experiencing déjà vu around her but could not figure out why. She threw a clean towel in his direction. Tig was nauseated and wobbly. Under the scalding spigot, his appetite returned. He adjusted the knobs to cool water and rinsed away the grime. Emily wasn’t there when he returned to the bedroom. All he had left to wear was malodorous laundry clumped together in his duffel bag. He packed his toothbrush, deodorant, and the pair of uniform blocky wayfarers on the nightstand, where he found some Advil in the drawer to allay his headache. He returned to the bathroom and chugged water from beneath the faucet to calm his stomach. Breakfast awaited.

*

In town, the six of them slunk into chrome chairs at a round banquet table in an unremarkable diner decorated with tin signs for American cars and sodas pinned helter-skelter across the walls. Their server brought carafes of ice water and coffee without being asked. Tig couldn’t remember another time when he appeared so disheveled. In the bathroom mirror, he’d noticed green and purple bags under his eyes. They possessed the translucent fleshiness of overripe plums. The girls dug quarters from their purses and gathered around half a dozen novelty vending machines. The kind found in bowling alleys and arcades. Tig watched them twist the tiny steel handles over and over, gambling on temporary tattoos, silly putty, glow-in-the-dark parachute men, massive gumballs. A group of men leaning against the counter tried to get their attention. Billy Joel was on the radio. The girls returned to the table displaying their forearms, the crumbly outlines of fresh-pressed skulls and cobras and barbed wire already losing their ephemeral clarity. Emily revealed to Tig a lone eyeball with a blue iris at its center, hidden in the palm of her hand. The diner filled up and their food took longer to deliver than Tig expected. He was ravenous by the time his omelet and sausage patties were set in front of him.

“We should’ve stayed another few days,” Tyler said, cutting at the English muffin of his eggs benedict. “The second week of classes is pretty much bonus syllabus time anyway.”

“I already feel so behind,” Tig said. “It’s going to be a mess getting back on track.”

Emily dragged her fingers through his hair. “Oh Tigran,” she said, “so studious all of a sudden?”

A chortle came from behind them. Tig craned his neck around, where the four men from the counter, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, were tromping toward the door. They carried milkshakes in Styrofoam cups. The one staring at Tig was muscled, a brick of torn jeans and camouflage shirt. A Detroit Lions baseball cap sat low over his forehead. “Tig-ran,” he said. “That some type of camel jockey name?”

Tig gave the response he gave everyone. “It’s Armenian.”

The man removed the lid off his milkshake and raised it to his mouth. Chocolate ice cream inundated the fuzz across his lip. His friends stood behind him in a line, watching, waiting to see what happened next. “Sounds like some made up durkha durkha bullshit to me.”

“Maybe look at a map sometime,” Emily said. “You probably can’t find your own dick.”

Tig noticed their server and a busboy stood off to the side now, trying to decide when and how to interject, but for the time being, they didn’t move. No one moved except the man, who kept lifting the milkshake near his mouth, as if he was trying to decide whether it was too cold, if a quick gulp was worth the brain freeze. “I’m sure I could teach you a thing or two, sweetheart,” he said. “Better than this child here,” and to emphasize the word child he flipped the milkshake at Tig. The abrupt splash of icy liquid across his body caused him to shiver. “But clearly I’m not your type.”

The busboy reacted first. He pounced, eyes pink and watery with anger, and pushed with enough force to send the man sliding across the checkered tile to the door. The man’s friends lifted him from the floor by the armpits and shoved him out of the diner. They ran to a black pickup truck in the parking lot. Two leapt in the front, the other two in the bed, and they drove off.

“Holy shit,” Tyler said. The bulk of the milkshake had landed on Tig’s shoulder and dripped across his lap. Flecks spattered his face and hair. The girls were crying. Emily had tears down her face smeared by streaks of tattoo ink from the eyeball on her palm. Their server approached Tig with fresh hand towels from the kitchen and wiped away the ice cream covering the nape of his neck. Without a word, Tig grabbed the remaining linens from her and went to the bathroom to clean up.

In front of the mirror, he rinsed away as much as he could of the mess and scrubbed behind his ears like a child. He realized how tan he was from spending so much of the weekend in the sun. Like a whole new person. Tyler stumbled in behind him. “That was fucked up, man,” he said. He yanked several paper towels from the dispenser and wadded them together. “Really fucked up. I’m sorry.” Tyler spent several minutes helping Tig clean off his back.

“Let’s go home,” Tig said. “I could use some sleep.”

They left the bathroom to find no one at their table. The server informed them Cole had picked up the tab and out the front windows Tig could see him trying to calm the girls in the parking lot. The four of them were huddled in a tight circle. Tig knew the drive back to campus would be spent in somber silence, the same set of pop songs repeated from Cole’s phone. They were all without much sleep and undernourished and hungover and now in a state of uneasy despair. Or at least that’s how Tig imagined it. Maybe no one was that affected but him. He had so many friends whose parents felt no different than the man with the milkshake, friends who grew up with similar beliefs, even if they were better at hiding it. He had so many friends who were with him until they weren’t.

In the parking lot, heat radiated from the asphalt. The clouds were lined up in flat even wisps, patterned across the sky. Tig’s headache hadn’t subsided. He felt sticky and sunbaked. Emily ran and hugged him, but he didn’t respond to her touch. He didn’t want to admit it felt comforting, her body against his.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t have said anything if I knew he would do that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tig said, even though he felt otherwise. “Guys like that do what they’re going to do either way. Doesn’t matter if they’re provoked. He was looking for a fight.” Tig knew he should stop there. “I don’t know what you were thinking though. Using my full name like you know me.”

Everyone else was in Cole’s car waiting for them. Tig saw Tyler had even climbed into the backseat so he could take shotgun. Emily sniffled, “I’ve spent all weekend getting to know you, Tig.”

“It’s a weekend, Emily. How much can you really learn?”

“You’re right, it was just a weekend. It doesn’t have to be though.”

“I don’t know,” Tig said. “If you knew what it meant to be with a guy like me you would’ve kept your mouth shut.”

Tig didn’t wait for her to respond. He walked toward the car and could see her standing behind him, minuscule and distant, in the sideview mirror. He closed his eyes and let his body drift off balance in the heat, swaying from the balls to the heels of his feet, his pulse pounding at the bridge of his nose, waiting, until he heard a car door slam behind him. When he reopened his eyes, Emily was no longer visible in the mirror, only the blank space between road and clouds, hazy with sunlight, and the glare of the sunglasses on his face. A reflection near unrecognizable, weathered, fleeting.

Aram Mrjoian is a visiting assistant professor in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University, an editor-at-large at the Chicago Review of Books, and a 2022 Creative Armenia – AGBU Fellow. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Catapult, Electric Literature, West Branch, Boulevard, Gulf Coast online, The Rumpus, The Millions, Longreads, and many other publications. Find his work at arammrjoian.com.