"Here, don't lose this."
"You coming back for it?"
"You know I am, Carrie."

The pad of her thumb flicked thoughtlessly at the wheel of a lighter that had long since run out of fluid. Alex couldn't see it through the film of tears over her eyes, but she knew it wasn't producing a flame. And she didn't need an absence of heat to tell her that. She still remembered the day that it had stopped working  --  almost as well as she remembered the day that he had given it to her.

"You make a habit of getting pretty girls alone at these things?"
"You make a habit of leading pretty boys out to desolate areas?"

A sharp hiss through clenched teeth, a sob masked as something different, she buried her face in his pillow and breathed in what was left of him. It would have been simpler, leaving, but he had been the one to do that. The expression on his face was one that Alex would never be able to absolve herself of causing. There was anger, undoubtedly, but there were other emotions present that she never thought she would be the one to make him feel:  Heartbreak, disappointment, regret, agony. She had done that. Her lie had done that.

"Well, Lex, whaddya think?"

The pair of them took a step back from the kitchen wall. Smoothing a hand over her forehead to brush a strand of purple from her line of sight, she smeared a streak of red paint across her temple in the process. "Christ. I think he's gonna love it." Teeth caught the corner of her bottom lip. She swung her gaze and half of her body toward him. "Thanks for doing this, J. I couldn't take on a whole wall by myself."

"Hey, any time." He took a step closer to her, something Alex thought nothing of, and swept his thumb over the paint-smudged skin on her face. "Got a little somethin' there."

"What the fuck is this?"

She hadn't heard the door.