He shrugs, kicking his feet up on the door. “I have no idea.”

Sighing, I pat down his pockets myself, causing him to laugh and squirm. The only thing I can find is what looks like an insulin monitor thing with a strip sticking out of it and also a pen-shaped object.

“Oh good, you found it…” he mutters, taking it from my hands. But his fingers falter and he drops it on his stomach. “Damn it, I’m all… I’m all…” He sighs the longest sigh in world’s history. “Violet… can you… can you check my blood sugar for me?”

I pick up the monitor and pen object and flip on the interior light, examining them. “How do I do that exactly?”

He extends his arm over his head toward me and points his finger. “Just put the pen up to my finger and push the button.”

I’m a little uneasy about helping him, but put it up to his finger, and push the button like he asked. It pricks his finger and blood pools out of it.

“Now put the strip up onto the blood,” he says, yawning.

I do what he asks and move the strip on the monitor up to his finger. He dabs his blood on it and his eyes shut, like he barely knows what he’s doing. Then he pulls his hand away and flops it down on his stomach as the machine beeps. “What’s it say?” he asks.

I glance down at the beeping screen. “Sixty-eight.”

“Shit,” he mutters, forcing his eyes open. “Can you get my pills out of the glove box?”

I reach over him, flip the handle of the glove box, and dig around the papers and past the flashlight until I find a bottle of vitamin pills. “These ones that say ‘glucose’ on them.”

He bobs his head up and down with a lot of effort. “Those would… be the… ones.”

I unscrew the cap. “How many do you need?”

“Three…”

I’m kind of worried. Luke’s drunk and I have no idea about diabetics and what happens is they don’t get the right meds. What if I do something wrong?

“Are you sure it’s three?” I ask.

He bobs his head up and down. “Yeah… three and I’ll be… good…”

I swallow hard and pour three into my hand, then put the cap back on, and put the bottle away, shutting the glove box. I nudge him gently with my arm. “Luke, here. Take them.”

His eyelids flutter open, bloodshot, with zero comprehension. He gradually lifts his hand up and scoops the pills out of my hand, opening his mouth and dropping them in. His neck muscles work as he forces them down his throat. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I mutter, confused by the momentary exchange of gratitude. Such a foreign concept to me.

I stare down at him as his eyes drift back shut and then I lean over to turn the light back off, deciding to just lie back and shut my eyes, sleep until morning and then ask him where the hell he put the keys. But as I lean back, I feel a shift on Luke’s part and suddenly I’m being grabbed and he’s pulling me down between the back of the seat and him.

“Holy shit,” I gasp, startled because it seemed like he was barely awake a few moments ago.

I start to get up when he flips us over, putting his body on top of me. I freeze as he stares down at me, the lights from outside barely illuminate the cab.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he mutters, tracing a line up my cheekbone. “It drives me so crazy how beautiful you are.”

It takes me a second to remember that I’ve never actually been pinned underneath a guy before. I’m always either standing or taking the top. I’ve never lay in bed beside one. Never touched a guy before just because I want to. Never kissed while feeling any sort of emotion behind it. It takes me another second or two to realize that this moment is going against all of my previous experiences. Because I’m pinned below him, being touched, and feeling something I desperately want to run away from. I don’t do normal feelings. There’s no point. Letting someone in and giving yourself to someone else has no purpose but heartache. I should shove him off and bail before he does.

But as he breathes heavily, leaning down, his lips inching nearer, I remain stationary. Frozen by fear and want. The contact of his lips only heightens the fear and desire, the two feelings mixing so persuasively that I start to weakly tremble as the walls I worked so hard to put up begin to crack. I try to keep my mouth closed as he works to kiss me, not wanting to give in, not wanting to give any part of me to him, knowing that eventually he won’t want me anymore. But as my body warms below him, I can’t help it and my lips readily part. Seconds later, his tongue slides into my mouth and he groans against my lips. It sends vibrations through my body and I shiver.

“Jesus, this feels so much better than I imagined…” he moans as his fingers tangle through my hair, tugging at the roots and it feels so good. “I need this… God…” There’s an alarming amount of panic in his voice as he breathes heavily. It’s deafeningly quiet around us and I’m about to say something, when his tongue slips back into my mouth more forcefully and his movements fill with desperation. I can barely keep up with him, gasping for air as his hands travel restlessly across my body, over my legs, my stomach, my breasts. I’m crushed between him and the seat, pinned down and I don’t do anything to escape. And I don’t want to because for a fleeting, unfamiliar, passionate, overwhelming moment, I feel safe with him over me. And I haven’t felt safe in a very long time.

I kiss him back, but don’t touch, feel him with my tongue, keeping some sort of boundary between us. I don’t think of anything else, but the taste of his breath, the blinding heat of his body. His scent: tequila, cologne, and a splash of cigarette smoke.

Then suddenly as quickly as he started, he stops, sliding to the side and nearly falling onto the floor. I turn over and look at him, his chest descending and rising as he breathes. He’s passed out and I’m left wide-awake. I lay there for an eternity, watching him sleep, knowing once I sit up I’m probably going to panic over what I just did. Reluctantly, I sit up and face the consequences of my choices, let them hit me square in the stomach.

I open the door to turn the interior light on and search the floor, the glove box, and the visor, for the keys. I want to get back to the dorm before he wakes up. I get out of the truck, leaving him in it, and backtrack to the bar, searching the ground for the keys. The farther I move away from the truck and into the dark, the less safe I feel, yet I keep going because it’s familiar. I continually curse myself for what I just did as I hunt for the keys behind cars and in the gravel, taking my cell phone out to use the screen as a light. That was not a no-strings-attached kiss. It had meaning behind it and I can’t stop thinking about doing it again, even though he probably can’t even remember doing it. It’s a bad place to be and I need to get away from it.

All I end up finding on the ground is the pack of cigarettes Luke dropped. I pick them up and tuck them into my pocket. The only other place to check is in the strip club and I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back in there.

I drag my hand across my face, deciding whether stay here and help Luke or bail out on the situation and hitchhike back to campus. I’ve hitchhiked a few times, wandered around a desolate highway more than once, and slept in the streets. But something is pulling me back to the truck, almost like I feel guilty for leaving him there. I don’t know where the feeling’s coming from. I’ve never cared about anyone before, but then again no one’s ever given me a reason to care about them. And no one’s ever made me feel safe. I don’t want safe—I need danger—because it’s easier.

As a car zooms by, I realize that just like everyone else who’s ever entered my life, Luke is just someone who will be gone by morning when he wakes up with a hangover, unable to remember what happened between us. So I hike up the road beneath the stars and the moon, with my arm out to the side and my thumb up. The possibilities of what could happen float through my mind like they always do. I could get run over. Picked up by some creeper, maybe the one on the phone. Be beaten. Murdered liked my parents. Is death in the cards for me tonight? Is that what I’m searching for?