"Four years," Alex said and then amended that with an, "Almost. That's how long I've been here. Kyle's been here almost as long. You..." He swallowed. "You showed up about a year later. And then disappeared about seven months ago." There was a tightness around Alex's mouth that spoke to how lost he'd felt after that. And it had been hard because his best friend, the person he would have gone to in order to talk, had lost his best friend in losing Michael.

"Everything around here is about sex," he said. "Though that's not hard to figure out. What is harder to remember is that you can't always trust what you eat or drink. And sometimes even that isn't enough to..."

He grimaced. "It can get messy. Very messy. Sometimes it's buying a friend hot chocolate only to suddenly find yourself sleeping with said friend and sometimes it's following someone to a haunted ship out in the ocean and dying, only to wake up three days later on the beach. Things happen here. They usually don't make sense."