Page 72 of Angels Fall

Like, you wouldn’t know it meeting him on the street, but the guy has one of the kindest hearts you’ll ever encounter. You can tell he just wants to do the right thing by people. Even if he doesn’t always know what that is.

Something about that gives me hope.

I smile and say, “See ya, Pete.”

He nods at me. “Tyler.”

I turn to Maddie. She’s so sweet, and pretty, and fucking sexy, and her jeans look good, and her tits look amazing, and she’s watching me with a look that says she’s nervous but excited, and I’m still trying to hide my fucking erection from Pete, and I start to take her hand, but then I stop because I’m not sure if I should in front of Pete, but then I go to take it again, stop again, step past her to the door, open it for her, and wave her forward to take her leave.

She smirks at me and shakes her head. I assume because she can’t wrap her brain around how I can be so sexy, dangerous, indestructible, hot as shit, and adorable all at the same time.

As opposed to not being able to wrap her brain around what a fucking dipshit I am. Y’know, could go either way.

Maddie grins back at Pete and also says, “See ya, Pete.”

There is an honest-to-goodness smile in his eyes (if not on his lips) as he looks at her, then at me, then back to her.

“What?” she asks him on a tiny chuckle.

He shakes his head, says, “Nothin’,” then nods at her, offering a, “See ya, Maddie.”

She walks past me through the open door, and just as I’m about to pull it shut and go, seemingly out of nowhere, Pete says, “Flanagan.”

“What?” I ask, looking over my shoulder in time to see him spin in his chair and take the urn off the shelf behind him and begin polishing it with a cloth.

“My name,” he says, not turning around to face us. “It’s Flanagan.”

A big grin spreads across my face, and Maddie looks at me, quizzically. But I just shake my head slightly and let the smile live there, unexplained.

Pete…

With his back still to us, he raises his meaty hand in another goodbye, and as I close the door shut, and he disappears out of sight, I find myself… unexpectedly nervous too.

We pull into the empty parking lot and, looking out the window, Maddie says, “Wow.”

“I know, right?”

“People made this. People, like, made this,” she says.

“I know.”

The Hoover Dam is incredible. It’s the perfect blending of the enormous power of the natural world and the ingenuity and effort of the human animal.

Or else it’s the perfect symbol of our struggle to control the seemingly uncontrollable.

Or else it’s just a big fucking hunk of concrete and steel that looks really cool and is, like, super pretty at night when it’s all lit up.

Maybe it’s all three.

“Yeah,” I say, throwing the car into park. “When Evan got his driver’s license, we’d come out here at night sometimes and like, sneak around, drink, bring girls. Well, Evan wouldn’t. Bring girls, I mean. Obviously. But, yeah, we’d do that shit.”

“Really?” she asks.

“Yeah… Scotty probably never said anything about it, huh?”

“No. He didn’t.” She’s wearing a frown, now.

“Well, I mean, you were, like, eleven. That’d be a weird thing to talk to your eleven-year-old sister about.”