Lily's residence turned out to be in a shitty trailer park off a dirt road in Brighton. The trailer had a mustard yellow stripe down its side and looked like it had been made in the 80's. Ramshackle neighboring trailers abounded. The streets were cracked with weeds protruding, and the trees all seemed to droop.

Evan parked in the street out in front of the trailer. There was a large black pick-up in the driveway, and a decrepit set of wooden stairs leading to the flimsy metal front door.

Lily gave him a big hug upon their arrival. He felt her breasts against his arm and hugged her back.

"You're nice," she told him.

"Thanks," said Evan, reeling with emotion. "You're..."

He hesitated, then spit it out.

"...fucking beautiful."

She snorted laughter.

"Thank you, dear."

She opened the door and was out of the car.

"We should hang out sometime," she said, turning back and holding the door open.

"Definitely," said Evan. "When?"

"Oh, I think we'll know when the time is right."

"Well, I'll need your phone number," he said. "If we're going to hang out."

"Oh, right," she said. "Here, give me yours."

He told her, and she called him.

"It's ringing," she said, holding her phone up.

Evan felt his phone buzz. Lily had an iPhone and he didn't want her to see his flip phone so he muted it through his pocket.

"Great," said Evan, feeling as though his pocket was now full of priceless treasure. "Got it."

"Thanks for driving me and for the Chipotle," said Lily.

"Anytime," said Evan.

Lily slammed the door shut. Then she was gone, up the rickety wooden steps and into the trailer. The flimsy metal door slammed behind her. Her scent, a mixture of cigarettes and sweet fruit, lingered in her absence.

Evan thought about her all the way home. He reflected on the years they'd known each other, how she and her family had been a constant presence in the neighborhood until they'd abruptly pulled up roots and moved the summer between Evan's sophomore and junior year. Lily would've been fourteen then.

He thought of her dancing naked onstage at the Blue, flashing her shaved vagina to a crowd of men whose age averaged at least fifteen years older than her. The thought disturbed him, and he thought of her smiling face, her dark eyes brightening, and the slight gap between her lower front teeth showing. Her prominent forehead with the hair swept back in a thicket of tangles that never seemed to straighten out no matter how many times she'd run her brush through it that morning.

"She's like a sexy little witch," Evan said aloud, then laughed at himself. His emotions bubbled over, euphoria filling him. "She looks like a sexy little witch."

The way she'd moved the night before, her stomach and hips sending ripples of desire through him.

This was not Lily Trent he was falling for. Lily Trent was the skinny, bratty girl from down the street who always seemed to be fighting with her parents, particularly her step dad. The young woman he'd just dropped off and had cuddled with last night was Lola. The Lovely Lola of midnight, of hearts beating like a fist against a pillow, like a bed against a wall.

At a stoplight Evan dug around the mess in his backseat and found what he was looking for—a mix CD from the fall before, a giant X on its center to distinguish it. He inserted it in the CD slit.

On it was a random collection of songs he'd LimeWired. There were songs he'd heard off the radio in his car, in Subways, in malls, in waiting rooms, ripped off Youtube performances. He skipped through them-- Carbon Leaf, Cold, Social Distortion, Pilot Speed, Colbie Caillat, Aaron Lewis doing an acoustic rendition of Staind's All I Want, and finally he landed on a song by The Stills called Lola Stars and Stripes.

The hurried drum and bass intro gave way to a shimmering wall of guitars and he imagined Lily dancing the night before, her jungle cat body moving and writhing, with zero fear of the eyes that feasted upon it.

The mournful vocals kicked in, singing of chemical blasts and M16s and asking, Are you afraid?

Evan thought of holding Lily as the insurgent rays of sun ate the darkness in the basement. How her breath had felt against his collarbone, how quiet and innocent she'd looked with her eyes closed against his chest.

He sang along with the chorus, the notes flowing out of him like velvet and oil. He didn't know how he sounded, and he didn't care. The previous month was banished to the back of his mind, some dark and hideous wilderness he had passed through.