I texted Duncan that night, but I got no response. I dared text him again the next morning, and got nothing. I bit the bullet and took the chance of coming off desperate by sending one more—and last—text that night. That one he did respond to, but only with, busy with lots of shit, will get with u soon.

That, of course, did not mean anything, and the answer was wholly unsatisfying, especially since I’d sworn we were really hitting it off at the bar. However, Josh had told me I could get clingy, so I took a deep breath and decided that I’d wait for his text, even if it took all week.

It took all week. And then another.

By that point, I was pissed. And what I did when I got pissed and frustrated and emotional was hit up the closest dive, drink way too much, and search for someone to go home with. Fuck Duncan. I hated the games that men played, and I wasn’t going to waste time on him if he wasn’t going to bother communicating with me. He could have at least said still busy, thinking of u or some shit, right? He didn’t have to write me a goddamn novel about his life or how he felt about me. All I wanted was a blowjob and maybe a morning that I got to spend with him instead of with his empty apartment.

This was why I liked Dylan, and why sometimes I still missed him. He never blew me off like this. The longest he ever ignored me was a day, and usually he apologized later. Why was I always chasing people? Why did no one want to spend time with me? I wasn’t ugly. I wasn’t an idiot. I had a sense of humor. I was a goddamn catch.

Good luck convincing my shattered self-esteem that.

I was pretty smashed when I found a man much too old for me who seemed interested in taking me to his place. I put him around forty-five or fifty, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get off and think about something that wasn’t Duncan or my taste for unattainable men. The guy told me his name, but I forgot it. He asked for a blowjob in his car, but I told him I needed to sober up a little before I attempted putting anything near my throat. He didn’t really get the memo, because he kept pushing me toward his crotch, even when he was driving. So I gave up and attempted a very lackluster blowjob as we waited at an intersection. Then I promptly vomited on his crotch.

It wasn’t much—just a trickle—but the guy shoved me back and vigorously wiped at himself. That didn’t work well, so he jerked the car out of the travel lanes, put on his hazard lights, and ordered me out of the vehicle.

“What? You can’t drop me off on the street!” I growled.

“Get the fuck out of my car before you throw up on my seats, too!”

This guy was so fucking old. I was not turned on at all, and I felt terrible. I decided the street would be a better place to pass out and sober up, so I told him he was a motherfucking skid mark before I dragged myself out of the car and slammed the door shut. The force of it made me stumble, and I tried to steady myself by grasping the car, but he pulled away with a squeal of tires, so I ended up falling on my face anyway.

I might have passed out, but I couldn’t remember. I slowly pushed myself to a sit, groaning and leaning over my lap when I felt the threat of bile at the back of my throat. But I didn’t toss chunks, so I shakily rose to my feet. I had to call Josh. Or an Uber.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It wouldn’t turn on at all. I remembered it being at 5% when I left the house, but I’d been in such a rush to get wasted that I decided I didn’t need to wait around to charge it.

“Oh, this is perfect,” I grumbled, poking at my phone’s power button again and again with no results. With an aggravated sigh, I looked up and down the road. I hadn’t traveled far from my apartment, so a bus could probably take me close enough to it to walk. It had been a while since I’d bothered with the fucking Metro buses, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Maybe the waiting around for the bus would sober me up enough to get home safely.

I staggered down the sidewalk and collapsed onto a cold metal bench inside the bus shelter, which was lit so brightly that it looked like a beacon on a street otherwise cast in an eerie orange haze. Behind the bus shelter was a smoke shop, a shuttered medical clinic, and a bodega. At this time of night, there weren’t many people parked in the lot, but it wasn’t dead either.

“This is the worst,” I muttered to myself. I was sloppy, but never this sloppy. I hadn’t thrown up on someone since high school. I’m sure Duncan was sitting in his apartment playing video games and not giving me a second thought. Or he was out fucking someone else hotter. Or doing both. Did I do this to spite him? Duncan wouldn’t care, and I’d never tell him, so none of this mattered. I wasn’t sure why I thought booze and sex with strangers would help me when I was in this mental state. Of course, my addictions never made any sense in hindsight—that’s why they were addictions and not hobbies.

Someone else sat on the other side of the bus shelter bench. I ignored him at first because that’s a courtesy you extended when using public transportation. But then I caught a glance of him out of the corner of my eye and my drunken brain was intrigued.

He was very blond. That was the first thing I noticed, because while Los Angeles had plenty of blondes, he was not a Californian blond. He could have been an albino, actually, with papery white skin and hair that nearly matched it. I had no idea why someone so pale would want to live in a place with so many sunny days, because he’d be a lobster in half an hour of exposure. His too-big jeans, worn shoes, and faded red sweatshirt also seemed out of place, and for whatever reason, I felt compelled to socialize.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up from his lap. I noticed several thing: his dorky glasses, his blue eyes, and a large reddened patch of skin on the left side of his chin, like a birthmark.

“Hi?” he said cautiously, like you would to any random stranger at a bus stop late at night.

“You know when the bus is coming?” I asked.

“No, sorry.”

“Don’t you have the app?”

“I don’t have my phone on my at the moment.”

Lame. The guy looked to be college-age. Also, what was up with his accent? That was the least local thing about him.

“Do you have a phone?” he asked me.

“My phone is dead.” I sighed, my head thunking back against the glass of the shelter. “Fucking sucks.”

“Mm,” he said in response, and looked away.

“Where’s that accent from?” I asked, still drunk and chatty. He had to smell me, right? I probably reeked of booze and vomit.

“Hmm? Oh. Uh. I’m from Alabama.”

I whistled. “Wow. Alabama. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Sitting at a bus shelter, I guess.”

I laughed. “Yeah. You and me both.” I paused, but not long enough for this guy to get comfortable. “I’m Justin.”

“Uh, hi.”

“What’s your name?”

He scratched his upper lip, as if considering ignoring me. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. “It’s Thad.”

“Thad. Thad from Alabama. Alabama.” I tried out my best Southern accent, then giggled until I snorted. “Sweet home Alabama, where the skies are so blue.”

“They ain’t,” he said. “Not like here.”

“What?”

“The skies. They ain’t as blue as they are in California.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Ain’t. Cute. I liked this guy, even if he only seemed to be humoring me out of politeness. “What’s Alabama like?”

“Not great.”

I laughed. “Not surprised. When did you move here?”

“A week ago.”

“Really? Wow! You’re super new. How you like California, huh?”

“I dunno.” He scuffed one of his sneakers on the sidewalk. “Kinda overwhelming.”

“For sure.” Poor guy looked lost. I wondered what college he went to. It was the end of July, so probably a little early to move into dorms, but maybe he’d found some off-campus housing. Or maybe he didn’t go to college. Maybe he’d moved for the hell of it. Clearly Alabama wasn’t doing it for him.

I looked at him a little closer, trying to place his age. It was difficult, because he had large wire-framed glasses that even hipsters would consider too outdated and a rather large, wide nose that made him seem older than he was. His complexion and hair, on the other hand, made him seem younger. He wasn’t scrawny, but he wasn’t fat either, though it was hard to tell because his clothing did not flatter him.

“You had time to look around at all?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“No.”

“So you haven’t even visited the Hollywood Sign?”

He shook his head.

“Are you here to be an actor?”

He did grin a bit at that. “Definitely not.”

“Thank fucking God. Actors are the worst.” I rolled my eyes dramatically. No one was as quick to name drop all the “important” film industry people they knew and what parties they’d gone to last night as aspiring actors. You couldn’t escape them. One guy even tried to read me his monologue after a hook-up. The only thing worse than the actors were their fucking agents. “I’m an Uber driver myself.”

“And you’re waiting for a bus?”

“Too drunk to drive right now.”

“That’s… socially responsible, I guess.”

“Do you not have a car?”

“My car’s nonfunctional at the moment,” he said. “But the bus is fine. I don’t mind it. I never got to ride any in Alabama.”

I couldn’t imagine getting excited over buses, but at least someone was. I could feel the onset of exhaustion that usually came after throwing up, and I was afraid of falling asleep before the bus even showed up.

“Hey. Hey, Thad.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna see stuff around town? Cuz—cuz, like, I can do that for ya.” I struggled to sit up straight so I could face him properly. “I know I’m kinda drunk right now and a total stranger but like if you ever need anything or like a ride or whatever, like… I can hook you up, you know? Yeah. I’m an Uber driver.”

“You told me.”

“I don’t drive when I’m drunk, promise.” I laughed. “But I have lived in this hellhole for most my life. I can show you around, ya know?”

“That’s okay. I think I’m fine.”

“Listen to me, okay?” I held up a finger for emphasis. “Listen to me. Thad. My man, my dude. You need anything, you let me know. You seem real nice. You’re new here. I wanna help you. I’m that kind of person.”

“Uh-huh.” His expression said that he was not convinced.

“I got a… hang on, I got some business cards…” I tried to pull out my wallet, failed twice, and finally managed on the third try. It wasn’t easy to pick through the bills inside, but I finally came upon the few business cards I’d had printed back when I thought that driving my car around to pick up drunk strangers was entrepreneurship. I held one out to Thad, who gingerly took it form me.

“See? Real Uber driver, promise. I could show you around for free. I could do that for you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious, Thad. Look at my face.” I pointed to my face. “Okay?”

A hint of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m not this drunk all the time, promise. Tonight was just shitty for me. I normally have things together. I’m nice. And I am not hitting on you. That’s not what I’m doing. It’s not.”

Thad’s forehead wrinkled, and I realized I probably shouldn’t have said the latter part. Whoops.

“I am gay,” I said, bumbling even further into idiocy. “I know that’s prolly not cool in Alabama—”

“I’m not homophobic,” Thad said, and he sounded very firm about it, so… good for him, I guess.

“Okay, great. I’m just being nice, that’s all.”

“Well, thank you.” To his credit, Thad pocketed the business card instead of tossing it out like I would have in his position.

The bus decided to show up, and I waved Thad forward because I knew it would take a while for me to get my feet steady underneath me. He got on, and I grabbed onto the bars on the bus’s folding doors in order to hoist myself up. But then I struggled to pull apart the bills in my wallet to pay, dropping the wallet twice. Thad picked it up the second time I dropped it, put the bills into the fare machine, and handed me back my wallet.

“Thanks,” I muttered. Thad nodded and went to the back of the bus while I slithered onto the front seats reserved for handicapped people. There were only five other people on the bus, so I was probably fine with this.

I glanced over at Thad, but he was staring out the window, probably ignoring me. I sighed and slumped down, hoping I didn’t fall asleep and miss my stop.