So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,10

Your family is kind of fucked up,” she said, smoothing her hair. Her breath: his hoppy beer and Italian cream cake.

“That one is called abelia. The hummingbirds and butterflies like it a lot,” he said, pointing at a bush of white star-shaped flowers. “And bottlebrush buckeye,” he said, nodding to the bushes beyond the fence. It was too dark to see but Leigh could feel the rough shrubby beasts slouch in the gloaming.

Leigh closed her eyes and pictured every flower every bush every vine every tree every root every green or brown or white or yellow or red or pink or purple or orange thing snapping and whipping loose and wrapping itself around her, around both of them, suffocating them as they gave their ghosts to the petal-scents and thorns. It’s not that she wanted to die but sometimes she would think, Can’t we just get it over with? It, meaning everything. Everything happening all of the time. She could invent a new cocktail and call it This Exhausting Life.

Two vodka cranberries

Two glasses of champagne

Incalculable humidity

The moon—full, new, or waxing crescent

Wolfgang, cake kisses

The same flippy melon-colored dress, three different summer weddings

ATTN: HEART

Don’t shake

Don’t stir

Just, stop

The wedding DJ was repeating songs now. Back to Van Morrison. She could hear the bass, the occasional birdlike drunken whoop. She didn’t miss the courthouse girls. She and Jill weren’t that close. She hated weddings. Ceremonies, in general. And don’t get her started on funerals.

“I think I saw winged sumac back there where I went to pee,” Leigh said.

“Yep, there’s a bunch back there,” he said, nodding.

Nope. No, she didn’t come with a man. She wondered if he came with someone. She remembered seeing him with a woman, but maybe she was making that up. Everything before was on the other side of the champagne curtain. She brazenly lifted one of her arms to smell underneath. It still smelled like her flowery deodorant. Calendulas. Even in this humidity, even in this heat. Wolfgang was on this side of the curtain and he was looking at her, smiling. Surprisingly agog. He was delightfully half-annoying, half-cute. Thorny enough.

Outstanding—a boy called Wolfgang, a boy on a tennis court.

Irresistible—a boy smart enough to surprise her, a boy who knew the names of the bushes.

Tim Riggins Would’ve Smoked

If we were snowed in at an antlers-on-the-wall bar somewhere. If the colored lights were low, dancing and swooping at our feet. And something like “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” was playing, the sound swimming around us like swirly cartoon smoke, would you stand up and sway with me? Tell me I’m the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen? Hold my hand real close, tucked in between us like a little animal we wanted to keep warm? I can get real quiet and hardly say anything, but when I got a little buzzed I’d talk to you about my shows. About my crush on Raylan Givens in that cowboy hat. And about how Tim Riggins would’ve smoked, damn straight. No way would he not smoke. He’d put that unlit cigarette between his teeth, his hair hanging down in his face; his plaid-flanneled arm would reach out for his brown bottle of Texas-brewed beer and he’d talk about touching God. He’d light the cigarette, fire-orange-sparkle-crackle and hush. You know what I’m talking about. How I can’t stand lies. How if something is even the tiniest bit wrong, I feel like it’s my job to do all I can to fix it. Make it right.

Your mama let you grow up to be a cowboy, I’d tell you, keeping true.

If the rest of the world disappeared in some melty, apocalyptic flash. If we had to live in that bar with those taxidermic timber wolves and red foxes watching us drink and move through candlelight. And after making hot ham and cheese sandwiches over fire in the kitchen and me, standing on the table singing Patsy Cline, would you call me woman and promise not to leave? Tell me you’re not like other men? Hold my chin, kiss my honey mouth, lay me down on the pool table? I can get chatty and anxious after cold coffee, and I’d ask you where you thought everyone else went. Heaven? Hell? No way would they all make it into heaven. No way would they all burn in hell.

What a relief to not be scared to death of you, here alone, I’d tell you. That’s why the only men I give my heart to live in