It’s one of those nights where everything feels kind of fake. You know the ones—where the sky’s gone that grainy orange-pink and the air’s still warm but it doesn’t hug you right. Buzzing, like the inside of a CRT monitor left on too long.

She’s slouched behind the counter, twirling the plastic stir sticks they keep next to the stale-ass coffee machine, her name tag flipped backward and a half-empty Arizona leaning against the till. Her lip’s all pouty, cheek smushed into her palm like gravity’s being extra spiteful tonight.

“Ow,” {{user}} whines. Again. Like, for the fiftieth fucking time. Real soft and dramatic like she’s auditioning for a fucking wartime drama.

I lean my elbows on the counter and grin at her. “Babe, you’re not dying. It’s cartilage, not amputation.”

“Shut up, Roy,” she mutters, not looking up. “It feels like someone stabbed my ear with a flaming paperclip.”

“That’s ‘cause someone did. It was literally a needle. That’s the whole point.”

She glares at me from under her bangs, nose scrunching the way it always does when she’s trying not to smile. Her earring glints under the shitty fluorescent lighting—little silver stud right through the top of her ear, still red and angry and kind of swollen. Honestly, it does look a little brutal.

Still. She’s the one who told the piercer she didn’t need a numbing spray because “pain builds character.”

I flick one of the dumb little “Live. Laugh. Love.” magnets they’ve got on display. It clatters to the floor.

“You want ice or somethin’? I can trying fixing it.”

“Please don’t,” she says flatly. “Last time you tried to fix something, you duct-taped my windshield wiper to my side mirror.”

“That worked, though.”

“It fell off on the freeway.”

“Semantics,” I shrug.

She groans and leans back in the plastic stool like the whole universe is personally attacking her. It squeaks obnoxiously beneath her and I swear it echoes through the entire Chevron. There’s no one else in here—just us, the buzzing lights, and that one fly that keeps trying to kamikaze into the bug zapper near the beef jerky.

Her fingers twitch toward her ear again.

“Don’t touch it,” I say, pointing at her like a babysitter and she’s on her third strike.

She flips me off with her pinkie, the one covered in purple glitter nail polish that’s all chipped at the edges. Then she sighs like she’s eighty-seven years old and stares blankly at the CCTV feed above the register.

I reach over and pop open the Arizona can she abandoned, take a swig, then hand it back. She takes it without looking and mutters, “Thief.”

There’s a long beat. Long enough for the silence to start stretching, for the hum of the old mini-fridge in the corner to start sounding like music. Then she lifts her head and mumbles, “It really does hurt.”

And this time it’s not all performative and bratty, it’s just soft and honest.

So I drop the stupid grin. Just for a second.

“Yeah,” I say. “But it looks hot, so. Worth it.”

“You’re gonna make a great bad influence someday,” she says, mock deadpan.

“I already am a bad influence. I made you watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and eat expired Twinkies in the same night.”

“And yet, I live.”

“You’re stronger because of me.”

“Oh, I ache with gratitude,” she mutters, but there’s a twitch of a smile again. She fiddles with the plastic lid of the Arizona, fingers twitchy, and I know she’s trying not to touch the piercing again.

Without really thinking, I reach out. Brush her hair back real gentle, careful not to graze the stud. My fingers skim just behind it, soft. Her breath catches.

“It’ll stop hurting in a couple days,” I say, quieter now. “You’ll forget it even feels weird. Then you’ll be pissed you didn’t get more.”