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The first thing Lilith did when she got to Alex's was to dig through her backpack. She rooted around in there, burying her face into the old, forgotten smell of pencil shavings and sweat. She wasn't looking for anything in particular, having only brought the usual: Her laptop, a book of puzzles and a mechanical pencil, her handheld games console, some noise-canceling headphones, and no spare change of clothing.

Alex had to coax her into the living room, which wasn't even a separate room from the kitchen. This was their seventeenth weekend together, and still he had to nag her to take off her shoes and relax. Alex pulled a packet of Twinkies and a couple bottles of beer from the fridge after he'd convinced her to pass by. He sat down beside her on the couch and flicked on his flat-screen television. "Throw on whatever you want, babe."

Her hands clenched whenever he called her that. He could see it, but chose to ignore it. She barely ever said his name. He cracked open one of the beers and stuck it under her nose. The putrid sweetness of carbonated decay tickled her nostrils and she recoiled like a stray cat being tossed a rock. "I'll just leave this one here for you," he said, placing the unopened bottle on the coffee table. He stretched one arm behind her and kicked off his shoes, gazing ahead at the screen. Some shitty TV movie about an angry woman and her useless husband was playing.

"Can't think of anything to watch?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "No, sorry."

He unwrapped the Twinkies and offered one to her, which she accepted. She held it with both hands, clutching the sticky pastry between her fingertips, and bit cutely at it. He just ripped into his and finished it in no time flat, then swilled it all down in his gut with another swallow of alcohol. With a passive-aggressive sigh, he flicked over to the one remaining science fiction network still on TV. Her favorite show was playing, he thought. She had played it just once before on a streaming service her handheld console could use. She hadn't used her headphones. At the time, he'd said, "Sorry, but I can't take this cliched trash." She had gone all red-faced then, and he couldn't get a peep out of her for upwards of half an hour.

Yet she still came back the weekend after next when he felt like he could endure her again.

"Wanna watch something else?" he asked.

"I mean, you don't have to watch this if you don't want to," she said.

"No, I'm kinda into it now," he lied. He'd rather be watching what he'd been watching since he was in middle school: Some show about a guy filming himself tearing up office spaces and setting his parents' bed on fire when they were out of town. He'd tried to get her to watch it, and she had been _pissed._Saying things like, "Who's shoving their money at this?" and "Why don't they change their locks?" He'd been offended, but he didn't clam up on her. Didn't the stupid bitch know that the way you get ahead in life is by reaping the greatest reward with the littlest effort? Who the hell was so desperate to prove they were better than everyone else by trying hard?

Alex reached for that second beer. He knew _she_wasn't going to have any, so he just packed it away. He had four more in the fridge, and another six pack on the warped tile floor beside the fridge.

He knew she didn't get any freedom at home. He'd read her blog posts about that. Such miserable thoughts toward her own family. Alex had had to keep his together, caring for his mom until she passed from multiple sclerosis. Then the rest of the family showed up after the fact to paw through her belongings. He couldn't understand why the hell she didn't appreciate her family more, but he'd had friends who'd told him horror stories about their abusive parents. He'd wanted to protect them too. That's all he was doing for her. Protecting her from not having the few pleasures in life.

He leaned over and kissed her neck. She always cringed when he did that. She couldn't help herself. She would whine and squirm, and sometimes she'd even hold his head down harder. She could smell his sour, loaded breath and she pushed away from him with an arm. "Aw, come on," he said. She fellt back passively onto the couch and stared up at him with this vacant sort of expression. He let out a belch as he flung himself bodily on top of her.

"This is what you want, right?" he asked. He kissed her jawline and her cheek. She felt cold. His hands crept up under her striped shirt. He even nibbled at her neck, but somehow, this time, she didn't move. She just stared at the TV.

He waited for her to recognize he had stopped moving, then he sat up with an annoyed sigh. "Will you stop watching the TV when I'm trying to be close to you? You know I have feelings too, don't you? It's really insulting."

Now she couldn't look at him. What, was this really going to be one of _those_visits? "Sorry," she said the instant he sighed louder.

"Don't say you're sorry. People say that, and they don't mean it. You keep saying sorry, and soon people aren't going to believe you when it's important." Why did she do this to him? Sometimes she really brought the hate out in his eyes. He marched over to the fridge and cracked open another beer.

It was eleven at night by now. He'd deliberately gone driving with her in the dark for a while, then took her to a Walmart to browse around. Told her they weren't leaving until she bought something. He wasn't being pushy, was he? Sometimes people needed a little push, but he wasn't going too far. He was certain of that. So they'd laughed at the toy dinosaurs and mumbled over their favorite board games, though he reminded her that he couldn't really spend much on her. After all, he thought. _That_would be pushy. Letting her earn it was pulling. Drawing her out. Making her brave and not such a coward even to turn on the TV.

"Did I tell you we found out my manager at work's on crack?" he asked. He forced a small laugh.

"Uh, no," she said. "You didn't." Boom, four words there.

"Yeah, she's been asking people for money, and one of the shipping crew caught her wiping white powder off her desk. Her nose has been bleeding like crazy all the time."

"She sounds like she should be fired." Six words! No, wait. Seven.

"That's how it is in the working world," he told her. "Managers are dumbasses, and you can't pick and choose. But look. She's gotten so desperate for money to feed her habit, she sent me this text asking her for sex. Wanna see?"

Lilith looked as if she'd been slapped. "That's depressing. She needs help."

No, Alex thought. Depressing was how his older brother felt when he totaled his car, killing himself and his two passengers in the process on Breakneck Hill. Alex was certain that's how Roger must have felt.

"I think it's pathetic," Alex said. "Don't worry, though. She's trash, and everyone knows it."

"Yeah," Lilith said. There was a glimmer of resentment in her eyes. She didn't even know Stacey's name.

So Alex let it alone for the remainder of the night. Lilith was getting sleepy. Her eyes kept shutting and she slouched more and more. He gently angled her toward himself, but was careful not to touch her. Only idiots and assholes did that sort of thing. Alex had higher concerns, like working his butt off at a job he so desperately wanted to leave. Boy, that would fuck 'em up, without him around. Lilith would just have to come around to all he did for her in time. It wasn't like they hadn't had a break before. Maybe it was time for another. A man had needs, after all.

Lilith awoke to the sound of the television blasting some sitcom at four in the morning. Some guys had tricked a coworker into believing a female coworker wanted to sleep with him, and were laughing raucously about him "letting her down" gently.

There were six new empty beer bottles on the coffee table.

"What the hell are you watching?" Lilith griped. She was groggy but angry.

Alex looked over his shoulder as he turned the volume down low. He giggled as he stumbled over to her and banged his shin on the coffee table. "Ow ow ow. I'm sorry, babe. I'll keep it down."

Now she wouldn't get to sleep. She turned her back on him, laying across his couch, staring at the back of it. Her backpack wasn't far away. After a few minutes of trying to force herself to sleep, she gave up and pulled out her handheld console. Alex noticed this, so he turned the volume back up a little bit. Fuck the neighbors.

"Hey, babe," he said when he started to get angry at her turning her back on him. "I'm so drunk."

She deigned to glance over her shoulder at him, but said nothing. She'd probably hit her quota for the evening anyway.

He leaned down and kissed her ear. She stiffened at first, and then he kissed down her neck.

"I can't," she whined. "I'm exhausted." She pushed blindly at his shoulder.

Alex stumbled over the coffee table and fell flat on his ass with a huge thud. Now _that_was pushy. She turned over with a start, sitting up and shutting her game. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

He got up and knew it was the perfect time to look angry. She was an immovable wall, and about as truly "sorry" as one. "I just stumbled," he spat. He roamed the living room as she watched in horror. He deliberately head-butted a wall in frustration. He tried to turn around to tell her to forget all about it, but in his high-on-life stupor, he stumbled into the TV and it fell off the wall to the floor with a smash. The screen blipped angrily, then displayed an ugly kaleidoscope pattern over its cracked surface.

That TV cost him two months' wages.

"Well, I don't have anything else to break, so I guess you're gonna wanna go home now!" Alex shouted.

Lilith trembled, emitting a soft noise.

"What? What's that? Just spit it out!" Alex smashed the bottle in his hand against the wall, breaking the glass and denting the wall in the process. He held a jagged cusp of brown in his hand like he was revving up for a bar fight.

"You can't drive. You're drunk," she said.

Wow. He'd forgotten he was drunk. He tossed the remainder of the bottle into the corner and slumped down onto his ass. "I'll drive you home in the morning," was the last thing he said before he stumbled into his bedroom and turned out the light.