PLEASE READ THIS: You can help make a Just Listen film! Yes, you read that correctly. I'm a film student and I'm raising money to finish a short film based on the car wash scene, and I'd love your help. Here's the link (delete spaces, make "dot" a period): indiegogo dot com projects/just-listen-a-short-film/x/1919571

Please please please just go give it a look. Thanks so much!

They sit face to face for the first time in over a month. It's almost like old times, but not quite. Not just because of the glass between them, or because of the big metal telephones they have to speak into. Not just because of the guards behind him listening to them.

Everything is different now.

She hasn't been to see him, not once. Not in forty nine days - she's been counting.

"So?" He asks, sounding bored, impatient. Even in jail, with nothing to do, he manages to sound like a busy man, like he only has so much time for his unofficial-ex-girlfriend. It's a technique he's perfected.

"I need to talk to you," she says. He smirks.

"Well, it's not like I've been particularly difficult to find. I'm not exactly going anywhere." She used to would have rolled her eyes but smiled anyway. Because he was funny and she knew it, but she, too, had perfected the "I have better things to do" technique.

But she doesn't roll her eyes, and she certainly doesn't smile. She glares. He seems to recall her being good at that, too.

"This is serious," she says. "We need to talk." He rolls his eyes. If she's not going to be any fun, he's going to be as difficult as he can be.

"We are talking." She doesn't react, at least, not that he can see. The mask, another of her specialties.

"I . . . why?" Her voice quivers, and for a second, he feels sad. It's not like other girls, when they scream or cry or sound pathetic. They do that all the time. But she never does. Her voice is cool as ice when she's angry, or when she's really angry, she'll even shout. But he's never seen her cry, and he's certainly never heard her voice shake like that.

"Why what?" He asks. He's not fooling her, he knows, but he promised himself he'd be difficult. Just because she's finally going to start acting like a girl is no reason to change that.

"She was my friend," she says simply. "I mean, Emily too, I guess, but . . . Annabel was my only real friend."

He had some snarky, jackass line ready to throw in her face but, yet again, she catches him off guard.

"What are you talking about?" he asks, completely befuddled. "You have tons of friends."

She sighs. "No. No, I didn't. I had girls who hung around me because I could get them things that they wanted. But she . . . I've known her for years. She actually cares about me. Or . . . she did." She exhales in a gust, looks down into her lap, and brushes thick black hair from her face. He notes that it's not perfectly curled, or laying perfectly straight (courtesy of her flat iron), or tied into a perfect smooth ponytail. These are the things that her hair usually does. Now, it's in a messy ponytail over her shoulder, not curled, not straightened, bits and pieces flying everywhere. He doesn't like it - she used to be hot.

"God, I . . . I was horrible to her. She needed me, and I was so so horrible."

"Not exactly my problem. You're the bitch," he says, shrugging.

She shrieks. "Not exactly your problem!? Not only is it your problem, it's your fault!" She stands up, and she's all but abandoned the metal phone. He can hear her anyway. "It's your FUCKING fault!" Other visitors, talking to prisoners on telephones through glass, are staring at her. The guards are hovering, trying to decide if there's a problem or not.

She smooths her hair with her hands and sits back down, picking the phone back up. He waits for her to apologize, to scream again to do something. She doesn't.

"So...?" He prompts.

She doesn't say anything.

He sighs and rolls his eyes.

She speaks in a curt, clipped tone. She's still angry.

"How many?" she asks.

"How many what?" he asks, playing dumb, because he knows what she's asking. The clenching in his stomach, the burning in his chest. He does not want to tell her how many.

"How many girls have you . . . how many times have you done that? At least two. How many others?" He doesn't say anything.

She glares at a spot on the floor, waiting for him to answer. He doesn't want to. He does not want to.

"I don't even know," he whispers. And it's true - it's the truest thing he's ever said to anyone. He doesn't know how many. He doesn't even remember most of their faces. He doesn't remember the sounds of their screams. He doesn't remember the way they feel when he's inside them.

He wonders if they remember.

She rubs at her eye, trying to be subtle. For once, he lets her get away with it without comment. He doesn't want a crying girl. He hates crying girls.

She looks up at him. Meets his eyes, squares her shoulders, lifts her chin. She looks so confident.

"But you had me," she whispers. She sounds so broken.

If only he could make her understand how that never mattered. It never mattered that he could have had her whenever he wanted, because he wanted them. All of the girls who he could never have.

"But, Soph, I didn't want you."

She wants to say something clever. You sure had a funny way of showing it, she'd say. Or maybe, Didn't want me? Of course - now it all makes sense. That'd be why you were making out with me every minute of the day and fucking me every night.

She doesn't say either of those things, though.

She very calmly hangs up the phone, flips him the bird, then stalks off without another glance. She doesn't plan to come back. Ever.

The guards walk him back to his bunk. He knows better than to expect to see her again, and there's no one else who visits. His parents have better things to do.

In her car, driving home, she feels relieved. She'd been dreading it for weeks, knowing it was a necessary conversation. She's not sure what to do with it all finally off her chest. She thinks she should talk to Annabel, but she's scared. Annabel has friends now, she reminds herself.

She climbs out of her car, tromps up the stairs, sits on her bed. Cries.

Because it's all out there now.