In the back of the car, you show me your chest, and I show you mine. We agree that they are both concave and too much alike. We are eight years old, and we are often left to our own in the stifling heat of the old Buick. We pretend to go on errands and stop at the grocery, garden, and liquor stores. We catch the seeds of popped dandelions, the heads remind us of our grandparents, and we wonder when they will pop, and if like generals and presidents, they will be paraded around town in hand-crafted caskets pulled by solemn horses. Until someone dies or calls us in for supper, we hold hands and point out the windows, calling each other darling and sugar, our feet pushing on the pedals, the other looking out the wide windshield, peeking through the dust, hoping for once the car would lurch forward and we’d be on our way, to someplace where we could do more than imagine.

I’m in the backseat, head stuck between the two front seats, watching you paint your toenails. The windows are up, the cranks barely working, so the smell of dust lies under the stiff scent of the polish. Somewhere in the air, you smell of strawberries and kiwi, and I lean closer, my chin resting on your shoulder. We only talk of possibilities now. No more imagined bank robberies or running away to the Everglades. You hide what you can from me in your clothes and talk of other boys, our classmates: their eyes, the curl of the hair on the back of their neck, or the way the sun highlights the muscles of their shoulders. Tell me about your crush, you say. Does she dance? Can she sing? Does she swim laps in the early morning while the rest of us sleep? I can’t answer. My ability to imagine anyone else is lost in the heat of the car. Your turn, you say, blowing on your toes and scrunching your nose. I hold out my hands, afraid to show you my feet. You can’t hide these, she says.

Graduation night, the hats have been thrown, the pictures were taken, and our parents have gone back to their gin and television, to ignoring each other, especially when one mother cries, and another father complains about the cost of tomorrow’s open house. Midnight, and I find you curled up in the backseat, head loose from the two beers you drank to be polite, the hiccups coming like irregular clashes of a cymbal. We hold our breath together, faces plumped like stretching balloons, until you pop, a pause, heightened until my mouth opens, and your tongue slides in, our lips meeting, teeth clashing, sparking until you pull away.

“Now that’s a way to get rid of hiccups,” you say, wiping away our spit.

I lean back in, but your hand is on my chest.

“Let’s just leave it there. Then we’ll always want more,” you say.

You give in first, leaving me in the dark, the windows fogging up, left alone with only the things I could imagine.

Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. His writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Laurel Review, and elsewhere. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.