So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,69

wife Vale is coming by a little later after she drops the kids at her sister’s,” he said.

Kent reminded her of Jed and that’s what was sexy about him. They were both in pressed Oxford shirts and dress pants but she preferred to think of them smoking in dirty Carhartts, bending down and stretching up, fixing broken things. She preferred thinking of Jed as the tobacco farm country boy he was, not the man he’d become. They’d been in love since college, but that didn’t keep her from wondering how Kent touched his wife. Vale. Dolly had never met Vale and tried to picture what kind of woman Kent would be married to. She knew they had three young sons. Just like that. One two three. Dolly and Jed had a ten-year-old girl, a six-year-old boy, and one amethyst-colored betta fish trapped in a glass bowl next to the junk mail on the counter.

Dolly loved Jed and his friend was sexy, that was all. So what. She’d made a cheesy chicken casserole because that’s what she was making anyway and didn’t change it when Jed called on his way home. Their kids were at sleepovers. Dolly was a little drunk already, on her second glass of wine. She’d just pulled the casserole out of the oven. Kent leaned against the counter. Jed clinked around in the fridge for beers.

“Your sons…what are their names?” she asked Kent and forgot as soon as he said them. There was an M at the beginning of one of them, a Y at the end of another, and one of the names dripped from his mouth and spilled on the floor—never made it to her ears.

The kitchen was torrid. July in the South was ungodly. She fanned herself. The rattle of the amber locusts out back? Apocalyptic. Jed opened Kent’s beer and his own and stood next to her, looked over. He pushed away and led Kent to the garage, to show him things.

They were gone. Dolly texted her sister.

what if I left Jed and took the kids and came and stayed with you?

Her sister wrote her back quickly.

WHAT?!

i said WHAT IF. calm down.

Is something going on?!? CALL ME.

i’m fine. i’ll call you later. busy right now.

Dolly deleted the messages and turned her phone off.

Kent came back to the kitchen without Jed. Told her Jed had gone to the bathroom.

“How long have y’all lived here?” he asked, looking around.

“I hate small talk. I asked you your boys’ names earlier but to be honest, I didn’t even listen. I still don’t know them. Even if you put a gun in my mouth and threatened to blow my brains out of the back of my head, I couldn’t tell you,” she said, finishing her wine.

“All right. That’s all right,” Kent said. A tender cowboy.

“I know it may seem like I’m being rude but it’s our house, right?” she said. A tetchy cowgirl.

“Absolutely.”

“Jed’s taking a shower?” she asked, knowing it already. She heard the water turn on. It annoyed her how he always took a shower when he came home from work, no matter what. He took one in the morning, he took one in the evening. He had no smell. “I’m being rude. He’s being rude. Why did you want to come over here again?”

“You come off like a bitch, but no worries…I think you’re interesting,” Kent said, drinking. Dolly poured more wine, hopped up on the counter.

“Okay, so do you think I’m pretty? I think you’re sexy…handsome. Isn’t this a betrayal to tell you that in my husband’s home? Isn’t this the worst possible thing I can do?” she asked. He stood closer to her and she touched his tie. Slipped it between her fingers as she drank. Her nose inside the glass like that made her feel underwater. Like she was the one in a fishbowl. She blew tiny bubbles into her wine before putting it down.

“You’re pretty.”

“Thank you.”

“Even prettier than you think you are,” he said.

“Fuck off. I think I’m pretty.”

“Sure you do.” And he winked.

“Everyone lies all the time. No one on this Earth wants to tell or hear the truth anymore,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears and she drank again. Finished her glass in a gulp. Drunk drunk drunk. “Don’t tell your wife about this. Most people can’t handle…anything.” She undid the knots, shoved off a little boat of anger in her heart. Climbed inside, hoisted the sails. Didn’t look back.

“Tell her what?” he asked. He was standing so close