Page 2 of Desert Loyalties

SKYE

The stars are so pretty.

Like seriously, how are they so fuckin’ beautiful? Just hanging up there, sparkling like they don’t have a care in the world. Like they’re not watching the rest of us drowning in the dark, pretending we’re fine.

That’s why I’m still staring up. Why I haven’t moved. Not because of the weight pressing behind my eyes, thick and tight and threatening to spill over. Not because my chest feels like it’s got a vice clamped around it.

Nah. It’s the stars. Just the stars.

I’m sitting on the old swing set behind the clubhouse. It’s tucked behind the shed, half-forgotten. Rusted chains, splintered wood. They used to call it the “family yard,” back when the old timers still brought their kids around, back when this place wasn’t just a frat house and I’d know.

I tried calling my best friend Ben, Bernadette. Left a pretty pathetic voicemail, I doubt she’ll listen to anytime soon. The woman is living her dream, travelling through Europe, now Asia, I think. She’s the ying to my yang. Spontaneous where I’m predictable. Has loving parents to my… well.

When I first got to college, all I had was my car and a few thousand bucks. Most of it vanished the second tuition was due. So when I saw an ad for a single, just a tiny room barely big enough to fit a bed, I jumped on it without thinking twice.

When I showed up, there was already someone there.

This bohemian-looking girl, all mismatched patterns and sun in her smile, was halfway moved in.

I must’ve looked like hell, tired, broke, desperate because she didn’t even hesitate.

She offered to share it with me. Said she needed to save anyway.

Something about a dream trip across the world, chasing art and sunsets.

It took a hell of a lot of manoeuvring, but we made it work.

She had a single mattress on the floor, and I crashed in the ‘extra’ sleeping bag she just happened to have.

I think it had mushrooms on it. Her parents were hippie-nomad types, who lived out of a van and thought crystals could fix heartbreak but they loved their daughter fiercely.

And by extension, somehow, they loved me too.

When they died during our second year, it hit her hard. Ben, short for Bernadette, though no one called her that, folded in on herself in a way I’d never seen. And I did too, in my own way. But it bonded us. We grieved together. Grew together. We became sisters. Chosen, not born.

And now?

Now my sister is out there chasing that dream, traveling alone. Living out of a backpack and sending me blurry photos from hostels in Greece and mountaintops in Peru.

And I’m still here.

Just me. Me and the quiet. Me and the creaking of this old swing on the porch, rocking back and forth as my feet drag shallow trenches in the dirt. No more chaos. No more midnight laughter or incense smoke curling under the door. Just echoes.

Just the silence.

Fitting, I guess. These swings, like me, got left behind when the dream dried up.

I remember being a kid and thinking life had to be better somewhere else.

That maybe one day a man would show up in a truck and say, Hey kid, I’m your dad, and I’m here to take you home.

That maybe love looked like dinners at a real table.

Where lights stayed on when the bills came.

Where birthdays didn’t get swallowed by grief and guilt.

I got a trailer park instead. Screaming through thin walls. Cigarette burns in the carpet. No mom, no dad, just grandparents too drunk to stand by lunch. I learned fast how to heat soup on a stove with one working burner and how to lie to teachers without flinching.

They called me trash before I even knew what it meant. Told me to dream smaller. Be grateful.

I worked hard anyway. Pushed myself, starved myself, gave up sleep just to chase the hope that something better might be waiting.

And maybe it was.

But now?

Now I’m just here. Behind a bar. Wearing fake smiles and short shorts.

Pouring drinks for men who laugh too loud and fuck in the open, but call the women whores.

Good enough to screw but not take home. I made that mistake when I first got here, trying to be someone I’m not.

If it wasn’t for the day I was asked to man the bar, I would’ve been forgotten by them too, not that they see me now. Not really.

They might be the closest thing I have to a family and they don’t even know me, isn’t that sad. Except maybe one of them does. But he won’t say it. And I’m not stupid enough to ask.

So, I swing. Back and forth. Wood creaking. Chains groaning. Eyes locked on the stars like they’ve got answers.

They don’t.

But they’re still so fuckin’ beautiful.

I’m pulled out of my sad fuckin’ reality by him .

“Hey, darlin’. What you doing out here?”

There it is. Darlin’.

He’s the only one who calls me that, any pet name really. To everyone else I’m just Skye. The bartender. The girl who pours the good whiskey and listens. But to him... it’s always darlin’ . And somehow it always lands like a sucker punch to the ribs.

I don’t answer. Not right away. Maybe not out of spite, but because I just don’t have it in me tonight. Usually I’d throw something back; snarky, sharp, maybe with a smirk just to rile him up; but not now. Not when everything feels like it’s unravelling.

“You ignoring me now?” he asks, voice casual, but there’s a crack in it. Like it bothers him.

I still don’t look at him. Just keep swinging. Not high, not fast. Just slow enough to feel the creak of the chains and the cold bite of the night air on my skin.

“What do you want, Mandrake?” I ask, flat. Dead tone. No sugar, no heat.

He pauses. I hear the shift of his boots in the dirt behind me. He’s close, but not too close. Like he’s testing the air between us.

“Everything okay, Skye?”

I snap before I even mean to. The words tear right out.

“Why do you care? Why now , Mandrake?”

I finally stand up and look at him. Damn if it doesn’t feel like the ground should’ve cracked open beneath us. He’s just standing there; cut from stone, eyes like a thunderstorm, jaw tight like he wasn’t expecting me to come at him like that.

But I’m tired. So, fuckin’ tired of being invisible until it suits him.

“You’ve had a year,” I say, voice shaking but still hard. “A year of walking past me like I don’t matter. A year of scaring off any guy who so much as looks at me, like I’m some kind of possession, but you won’t do anything about it.”

I finally stand up from the swing, hands curled into fists, breath coming fast now. His eyes are locked on mine, stormy and unreadable, but I keep going because I’ve already cracked wide open and there’s no stuffing this back down.

“You don’t talk to me unless you’re insulting me. You don’t touch me. You don’t even look at me if anyone else is around. So, what the hell do you want, Mandrake?”

His mouth opens like he’s going to speak, but I don’t give him the chance.

“You think I don’t know what I am to you? What I’ll never be?” My voice drops, bitter. “I’m used goods, right? Not clean enough. Not untouched enough. Not good enough.”

That makes something flicker across his face, something sharp and violent. But I don’t care.

“So can you just... please... leave me the fuck alone?”

Silence.

Not even the creak of the swing between us. Just wind, dust, and the reality of everything I’ve never said until now.

And then I turn, ready to walk back inside like I didn’t just tear myself in half in front of him.

But he grabs my wrist.

Not hard. Not like a threat.

Just enough to stop me. Just enough to make me feel his skin on mine, rough and warm and real .

I freeze. Not because I’m scared, but because it’s the first time he’s touched me like this. Not in passing. Not a brush of fingers over a glass I’m handing off. Not some accidental graze that leaves my skin burning for hours.

This is deliberate.

“Don’t,” he says. Voice low. Rough. Like he’s chewing glass just to get the word out. “Don’t say that shit about yourself.”

I still don’t look at him. I don’t want to look at him. Because if I do, I’ll fall into that storm in his eyes, and I’m barely holding it together as it is.

“You think I haven’t noticed?” he goes on, softer now, but still with that edge like he’s fighting something inside himself. “Every damn day. You behind that bar. You pretending you’re fine. You laughing like it don’t cost you something.”

My throat tightens.

“You’re not… used goods,” he says, like it physically hurts him to say the words. “You’re Skye . You’re the only thing in this place that still feels clean.”

I finally look up at him, and the pain on my face is not just mine anymore. It’s his too.

He steps in closer, still holding my wrist, still watching me like I matter. “I didn’t stay away because I didn’t want you,” he says. “I stayed away 'cause I knew if I touched you, really touched you, I’d never let go.”

The swing groans behind him, the stars still glitter overhead, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel invisible.

I feel seen .

“Skye!” someone yells from the back door. “We need you in here, these hooligans are about to jump behind the bar!”

I blink, the sound cutting through the thick, breathless quiet between us. My heart's still hammering in my chest, loud enough I’m sure he can hear it. I swallow hard.

“Coming,” I call back, though it barely sounds like me.

Mandrake doesn’t move. Not right away. One of his hands is still wrapped gently around my wrist, grounding me. The other lifts slowly and deliberately until his fingers brush against my cheek.

Rough palm. Callused fingertips. Like a whisper he traces along my jaw, then ghosts his thumb across my lower lip. Barely there. Just enough to make me forget how to breathe.

His eyes don’t leave mine. Not for a second.

“Go,” he whispers.

But it doesn’t feel like a dismissal. It feels like a promise.

And I walk back toward the door with his touch still lingering on my skin, like it belongs there.