She Lived Hard and Fast and Could Never Love Me

“It’s going to jump a bit,” she said massaging my shoulder. “Going to kick back right in here.”
    “I can handle it,” I said and could feel the morning heat on my face and neck, my skin beginning to pink.
    She helped me tuck the AR-15 into position, arms wrapped around me, then pointed with two fingers across the desert past a small strand of creosote to the target. “Hit the can,” she said and stepped back, smiling. “You think you can?”
    “What happens if I do?”
    “A surprise.”
    I looked down the length of the barrel across the expanse of beige at the can of light beer balanced atop the stake stuck deep in the ground and shot full of holes already. “Thing’s taken a lot of abuse, huh?”
    She scuffed her workboots against the earth and cracked her knuckles and laughed. “I bring all my boyfriends here.”
    I wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not and took my finger off the trigger and lowered the gun. I visored a hand on my forehead to block out the sun, watched as her form evaporated back into being. “Can you hit it?”
    “Quit stalling.”
    “It’s a legitimate question.” Pause. “Can you?”
    “Of course I can but this isn’t about me.”
    “I know.”
    She removed her sunglasses and I could just make out her eyes in the light. “You want to use these?” She handed them over and I put them on and watched her and everything drown in brown-green. “Might make it a bit easier for you.”

She Lived Hard and Fast and Could Never Love Me

    “Thanks.”
    “Now shoot, if you can.”
“I can.”
    She looked over at her dusted sedan parked along the side of the gravel road that disappeared into the humped hills footed at the horizon then back at me. She cracked her knuckles again just to show she could. “You weren’t lying to me, were you? I told you I don’t like liars.”
    I felt the weight of the gun in my hand, the strain in my arm working its way up through my shoulder to my chest. “No. I’ve shot a gun before. Bunch of times. With my uncle.” Pause. “We’d go hunting for squirrels back home.”
    “Squirrels.”
    “Mhm.” I picked up the rifle and lifted it to my shoulder, thought hard about what was at stake, but was distracted by her long tanned legs in my peripheral, the way her shirt clung to her body. I sniffed and squinted into the sight and studied the can again, wondered about her ex-boyfriends and how she fucked and I hoped to god I could get at least one round into the damn thing—that I could fake it just a little bit longer.