The very last rays of the sunset had held out by grazing the top of the pine trees, but the lake below still remained in shadows, reflecting the pink gradient of the sky back up towards the heavens, a shimmering mirror of the painting above, its depths entirely concealed.

This particular bank had the perfect slope into the water for exploring the wildlife, or so she told him, because it deep enough that it couldn't be a beach that people regularly invaded, but it was shallow enough that you could see the wriggling masses of tadpoles just a few inches from the bottom, provided you could unfocus your eyes from the graceful dash of the water skeeters.

He didn't particularly care for the local fauna–it took virtually all he had to suppress that paranoia of a beetle or some kind of… nefarious… water… insect? crawling up his leg–but the warm squish of the mud that had seeped in between his toes kept him planted in his spot.

Well, that, and the opportunity to spend hang out alone with her.

"Oh, gross. Put that back. I'm not gonna touch it."

"Naw, c'mon! Just a little bit! He's friendly! See how much he likes you?"

"I mean, I'm not gonna get… all that… gunk on my hands… if I touch it?"

"Well, you might," she pursed her lips and pouted, "but isn't that part of the fun?"

He folded his arms across his chest and tried to scoot away, but the mud still had a firm grip on his feet. "No. It's gross. And my mom said some kinds are poisonous, too…"

"Only some kinds, and you can usually tell by how colorful they are." she frowned. "And see how normal and brown he is? That means he's safe." She squinted her eyes and looked off to the side, twirling her free hand against a strap of her overalls. "…probably."

"C'mon, Auds, don't make me do it. Isn't there something else we can do? I don't want my last memory of Camp to be touching a slimy frog."

"…even it was… for me?" She attempted to make puppy dog eyes–the 'batting eyelashes' resembling more of a 'I have something stuck in my eye'.

"Why do you even want me to pet it, anyway? You just get off on seeing me get grossed out, or something?" He scrunched his nose.

"Well… a little." She chuckled–low and hearty, completely unlike the flirty twittering giggles she made around her friends. "But! It's also a new experience for you! What if you fall in love with these little guys, and next thing you know, you dedicate your whole life to becoming a famous marine conservationist!? And then, I could say I was there when it happened!"

"I seriously doubt it…"

She bounced her eyebrows at him, looking up from below. "…buuuuuut?"

He sighed, then looked down at the water below, which had seemed to turn just a shade darker and oddly looked a bit deeper. "But I'll do it anyway. Just once. I'll boop its nose. That work for you?"

"That's fine." She flashed a toothy grin. "Here, I'll bring him closer." Shuffling her legs from under her, she placed one hand against the slick, muddy slope, and started to stand herself up.

"Whoa, whoa–don't slip. Can't have you crushing my new friend there."

"I'm fine, dummy." She stuck her tongue out at him as she shakily placed another foot down on the slope above the bank. "I've been down here a hundred times before you."

He looked down at the space between them. He hadn't remembered it being quite this palpably slick. Were they always sitting this far apart? It felt like they had just been face-to-face. He glanced back down at his own feet.

The pond below had drained, emptied, sunk, without him even noticing–a deep well with wet concrete walls led down to a black abyss. A chilled wind rose up and cut against his damp feet.

Panic pulsed like ice through his veins, as his eyes shot upwards towards her. She now walked right along next to endless pit, her flowing white dress billowing in that same wind, her hair tangling and obscuring around her face. She leaned forward, legs quivering as they stood, and held out her hand to his face.

"Here. He's yours."

He looked down at her gift–a purple, writhing thick ball of slug-like tendrils that seemed to be spewing some kind of metal grate into a cylindrical form, then extended into a triangular form, then wriggled down to produce the last piece of the construction.

A trigger.

"Audrey, stop, you can't–" He stammered, and reached out to grab her wrist, now covered in the purple slime of the tendrils.

"Oh, look at that." She pulled away, then smiled warmly and pressed a muddied, slimy finger to her lips in a hushing motion. "I guess it's time, again."

"No, you can't… Audrey, I–"

"Just take him."

"I don't want him, Audrey, I want you to–"

Her footing suddenly slipped. Her torso collapsed against the side, the edge of her calves now dangling over the well, but her expression stayed flat, showing no surprise, but only a pleading stare as she continued to hold her hand forward, the ends of the rifle still twisting into shape.

"Asher, please," she whimpered. "You know that I have to go. Just please, please, take him, and let me go."

An ungodly roar filled the air, shaking the ground, the sky flickering towards a violent shade of red. She slipped once again, holding herself up by one forearm, her free hand still holding up her gift towards him.

"…I… I can't. I can't take him." He fought back tears. "And you know I have to do whatever it takes to keep you here."

She shook her head, then smiled once again. "So be it."

He watched as her fingers slowly uncurled from their grip, and with one last longing look… she fell, gift still in hand.

"Audrey!" He shouted, his vision blurring as the darkness began to swallow the last of her frame. "Audrey! Please!"

The very edge of the rifle was the last to disappear, as a single purple slug jumped out of the tip and fell back down, before he felt a blunt force shove him forward, and his skull jolted towards the edge of the cement.

"Gah!" Asher's eyes shot open, and his arms whipped forward, his elbows and wrists breaking his fall against the wood floor. His vision was blurry, and dry at the edges–if it wasn't for the surely newfound bruises on his forearms, just keeping his eyes open would've been pain enough to force tears as he directed his vision up towards the top of the bed. "…what was that for!?"

"You broke my one rule," a flippant, husky voice echoed against the walls from the top of the bed, accompanied with the characteristic flicking noise of a lighter. "No dead-girlfriend talk in my bed, ever. Under any circumstances. Zero tolerance."

"You're kidding." Asher leaned against the nightstand and pushed up his tired body to standing position. "I was asleep! I can't control that stuff."

"Doesn't matter. Rules are rules." Xan took her first draw of the morning. "It's depressing, it makes me feel shitty, and most importantly–hey, hey! Get your damn hands off that blanket! Are you even listening to me?"

Asher dropped the duvet. "You can not be serious."

"Bet." She scrunched up the covers and bundled them all over her tiny body on her side fo the bed. "Your sorry ass is banned until further notice. You may, however, pursue a re-negotiation this evening," she smirked, "though you must be willing to agree to the new terms."

"New terms?!" Asher picked up a pillow and tossed it onto the bed, which Xan grabbed and quickly absorbed into her mountain of blankets. "Jesus, how long have you been awake?"

Xan placed her joint on the ashtray on her side of the bed. "Basically the moment your mumbling turned to screaming. Again. And then, long enough to feel bad for you, and then not feel bad for you anymore. And then, long enough to come up with new terms."

"Fine." Asher picked up yesterday's basketball shorts from the floor, haphazardly sliding them over his own legs and pulling up. "New terms? Do we have to?"

She shot him a dirty look.

He folded his arms. "…whatever."

She held up a hand with one finger pointed upwards. "First off, you're going to shower right before you come to bed. You may think it's hot and edgy to be sad, but I promise that it absolutely is not when you stink from not washing yourself more than once a week. Do better."

Asher bit his lip and leaned against the wall. "…sure. Fine."

"Second," she wiggled her second finger, "you're going to grab me coffee every weekday morning. No more depression naps until fucking noon when the rest of us have jobs and things to do."

"Xan, that's ridiculous. Waking up before noon… it's just unnatural. Humans aren't meant to do such things." Asher shook his head. "Plus, the closest shop is three blocks away, and–"

"Easy. Then find a closer one. Don't be such a baby. Unless you want to go back to sleeping alone."

"…whatever."

"Third, you will now refer to me exclusively as 'Mommy', from now on."

"Fucking what?" Asher guffawed. "But you're literally two years younger than me!"

Xan rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but, you live in my apartment, eat my food, use my Netflix account, and sleep in my bed when you have nightmares. I think I've more than earned it, at this point." She rolled another blunt and took a draw.

"Come on… that's just demeaning. You can't make me do stuff like that–I'm a grown man." Asher scratched himself.

"Then fucking act like it." Xan scowled. "Get a job, or a hobby, just anything to stop you from moping around. I think two years is plenty of time to have moved on from whatever-the-hell-it-is that happened to you."

Asher grumbled to himself and pulled a stained white tee over his head. "…you know exactly what–"

"Excuse me?"

"How could you know what I've been through!? You didn't even know her. You don't know what I lost. You couldn't possibly…" he choked on his words. "…couldn't possibly know."

"Yeah!? Well I'll tell you something you don't know, I… I–" Xan stopped herself, then took a draw and stared out the window. "…you know what? Okay. Maybe I don't actually understand. But I'm done pitying you–and you know what? The world is done pitying you. So go outside and start being somebody that's worth caring about again."

Closing his eyes, Asher stumbled towards the door, away from Xan's judging glare. "Fine, fine." He held his bruised elbow in his other arm. "I'll go… get a job, I guess."

"Uh-uh." Xan held up two fingers, then polished off her second joint. "You're already forgetting?"

"Sorry, right." Asher wiped his eyes as he turned the door handle. "…your coffee."

It wasn't particularly hot outside, but something about how bright the sun shone in the stark, cloudless, blue sky instantly dried and shriveled Asher's pale skin. The sidewalk felt cold and rough against his feet through the thinning pads on the bottom of his slippers.

Xan's apartment complex, while in a prime location in the middle of Vallarta Palma's downtown, was itself an ugly, discolored relic of a bygone age, merging a variety of different architecture styles in a metaphorical rusty blender, the resulting smoothie remarkably bearing an unremovable sense of dilapidation, no matter how many repairs and fix-ups the interiors and exteriors both had received over the decades. It sat across the street from the only mildly-tall building in the entire city, too, absolutely ruining any chance of a scenic view the shoddy windows might've once provided.

Of course, Asher had thought at the time, that's probably why Xan's mother was able to buy the property in the first place, which of course means that the ugliness of the building was the entire reason he had a place to live for the past two years–some semblance of a home, whatever that even meant, anymore.

Unfortunately, though, it'd been too long since he'd seen the outside of the complex, so now, as he walked away, he could only feel a sort of mild repulsion at the sore-thumbedness of the complex, which, when added to his newly-dried skin, made Asher quite miserable in the literal first minute that he had stepped outside.

Even walking felt unnatural. Sure, he'd occasionally moved around the apartment–usually to gather something microwaveable, microwave it, take it out of the microwave, then shovel the poor soggy mess into his lazily-opened mouth, then feel a pang of depression as he realized he should've used the damn toaster oven instead, because it actually preserved some of the crisp and crunch that made food worth eating, and now, because he couldn't be bothered to actually take out and clean the toaster oven, he settled for the microwave again and now was subjecting his poor body to an inherently grosser version of the same food, which he really should not have done because he knows, as he's always known, that food was one of the few threads that still tethered him to reality, and if he kept pulling that thread, eventually it would snap and he'd have one less item on the ever-shortening list of things that kept him alive–but that didn't count, because it wasn't walking outside.

Outside, every step brought you to a different scene, one that you couldn't recognize and interpret all in one glance like that same poorly-lit kitchen right outside Xan's bedroom, and every step down on the uneven ground was treacherous, as the natural rolling hills of Vallarta Palma's never took to kindly to the whole 'tiles of concrete' system, jutting up and out in odd ways in front of every building older than twenty years, catching Asher's feet and pulling his entire body in strange directions as he was forced to adjust his balance, and now the world was spinning again, and it wouldn't stop, it just kept spinning faster and faster and faster and–

"Fuck, dude–you okay?" Asher's vision solidified around a twenty-something guy in a red visor and apron, slightly discolored paint stains across all of his clothing, as his hairy, muscular arms extended forward to catch Asher's tumbling figure.

"I… I'm good." Asher laid in the man's arms for a moment, closing his eyes to recuperate. "Just… a little… overexerted… is all."

"Christ, man. Just, uh, take it easy for a moment." The man leaned him up against a window–the cold glass reassuring and soothing to Asher's skin. "You drunk or something?"

"No, no." Asher held up a hand in pause, then quickly covered his mouth and stifled a gag from the vertigo. "…I promise. Not hungover, either. I guess I'm bad at walking today."

"Hold on–do I know you?" The man's sharp blue eyes squinted at him. Asher's stomach dropped down from his throat to his pelvis. "Oh my god… Asher?"

Asher squinted back and faked a smile. "Oh hey… buddy? Good to, uh, see you again?"

"Aha, nice. No worries, man." The man chuckled, then slapped Asher's shoulder, still tender from breaking his fall that morning. "I heard what happened, y'know… to… yeah. S'cool if you don't remember me or nothing. You, uh, look like you been through a lot since then. It's Danny. From OCH 210."

"Danny. Good to meet you, um, again." Asher shook his hand back. "Yeah. It's beena little rough. But, y'know, I'm outside. Still kicking. Making it work."

Tilting his head, Danny stifled a laugh. "Sure, sure. Though I wouldn't call that outfit 'making it work' by any stretch. What happened to you, man?"

"Oh, well, there was the whole… y'know. Audrey thing." Asher looked sheepishly to his side, failing to meet eye contact. "That kinda knocked me on my ass."

"No, yeah, I can totally understand that. Must've been tough afterwards." Danny stared back at him with an expectant gaze.

And kept staring.

"Er, uh. Yeah. And uh… that's kinda it. Not much else."

"Oh." Danny pulled back. "You haven't… done anything? Else?"

"No, not… not really."

Danny took a lean beside him and looked up towards the sky. "How long were you two dating, anyway?"

"Well, dating dating, like a year or so. But, see I saw her at this Bible Camp I went to a handful of times, and–"

"No, no I get it. Sorry, didn't mean to press, or condescend, or… anything. I can't say I know what you went through." Danny sighed, then let out a half-hearted laugh. "Sorry. I'm making a terrible second first impression."

Asher patted Danny on the back in return. "No, it's all good. I'm sorry for being weird too–to be honest, you're like the first new person I've seen this year."

"Ha, well, not technically, cuz… we already met."

"…right." Asher huffed, exasperated with himself.

"You ever pass that final? I remember it was like your third time taking that class when I was there. Sanders was real bummed, too, since you were one of like, two Marine majors that in your year, and if you didn't–"

Asher shoved his hands into his pockets and stared downwards. "Hey, I'm real sorry, I would love to catch up about college but I gotta go pick up coffee for a… friend. She's sorta mad at me, and I really should–"

"Aha, well, it's your lucky day!" Danny exclaimed, ruffling Asher's hair–much to the receiver's chagrin. "My older sister actually just bought this joint here. Now, it's not exactly a cafe yet, but I bet if we went in and asked real nice, she might make you a free cup or two for your… friend." He winked.

The glass behind them was still covered with paper and painter's tape. Asher warily eyed the fading paint around the new spots and the boxes piled up around the front door. "…you sure? Things look sorta hectic."

"Nah, Jenna's always got time for a customer. Just put in the good word around here for this place if you like it–not like she'll ask, but you'd be doing her a huge favor–cuz opening a cafe in a coastal town's sorta been like… her dream, I guess. So just be nice, and we're a shoo-in." He sniffed the air once. "And maybe don't stand too close to her. And take this." He shoved an apron over to Asher. "You look a mess. No offense."

"None taken," Asher mumbled, tying the thin fabric of the apron's string around his back, the sun-baked cotton grazing his legs. "We just walk in?"

"Mm. Not quite yet." Danny put a hand to his chin, then lifted a nearby paint bucket, dipped a couple fingers inside, and flicked some of the paint flecks over towards Asher's borrowed apron. "…perfect."

"…perfect, yeah." Asher coughed, and tried to wipe out a couple spare flecks that had landed in his mouth. "Seems like a lot for a measly cup of coffee."

"Not for this coffee." Danny smiled, then slapped Asher on the butt. "Trust me."