So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,70

to her. So close. She spread her legs a bit and he stood in between them. Her stomach, a rabbit. She could feel his breath on her face.

“Any of this,” she whispered.

“Any of what?” he whispered back.

The shower was still running—a storm from another room. Rain behind the door.

“Don’t tell him any of this,” he said, nodding to the bathroom.

“Any of what?”

He rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. Smushed it to one side, then the other. Did it again. Harder. Smeared her lipstick.

“I don’t tell anyone anything,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Me either,” he said, putting his beer on the counter next to her. The dripping cool of it, wet relief against her thigh.

The shower was still running—a tempest—the shower was still running when Kent slipped his thumb into her mouth.

“Who even are you?” he asked and pulled his thumb out, put his hand on the back of her head. She tilted—a crescent moon. She was all lit up like Ursa Major, the great she-bear. He kissed her neck.

Dolly looked up at the ceiling before closing her eyes again. God will hate me for this. God hates sin, but God can’t hate me. She wanted Jed to walk out of the bathroom and catch them. She wanted Vale to come to the back door and press her hands against the screen in order to see them better. She wanted Loretta Lynn to sit at her kitchen table with a guitar and write a three-chord song about this.

Poor Jed turned the shower off. She heard him step out and walk down the hallway to get dressed. He was humming something he made up, nothing she recognized. What was happening was so shocking and fresh, it had her craving something to root her. Something comforting. Familiar. But no. Kent smelled like water and her body was water. There they were being water together. His mouth, a tributary. He kept kissing her. Hummed on her neck. A duet. This buzzing chorus. She was sticky-summer-dizzy and letting herself be awful. Downright lousy.

You Got Me

Lowell called me woman. Woman, when’s the last time you had your oil changed? Woman, have you seen my hat? I called him Low.

Low had a cowboy heart. I would’ve married him simply for how his body slicked over when he played pool. The clacking of those pool balls was the soundtrack to our relationship. And how he’d say rack ’em and somehow make it the dirtiest, sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

We knew each other, hung out before. This was different. This time we spent four consecutive, frothy, slippery days together. Late nights hushed into early mornings without either of us noticing. Woman, I’m fixin’ to go to the gas station, he’d said, putting his hat on. It was Saturday afternoon. He never came back. I didn’t call.

Saturday night.

Sunday.

I didn’t go to his favorite bar because I knew he’d be there—slicking over, shooting pool. Saying rack ’em to some girl who wasn’t me.

Monday.

Tuesday.

I thought about calling him but didn’t. I went to work and came home. I had dinner with a man I didn’t like. A man who said terribly generic things like: I love music. I swear I about had to stop myself from dying right there at the table—from rolling my eyes back as far as they would go, from letting my body slam down as hard as it could and crash-clinking the silverware to the floor.

Wednesday.

Thursday.

I drove past Low’s house, saw his truck out front. I didn’t slow down. My whole body hurt. I prayed for rain—a purple-blue tempest, lightning slicing sky.

Friday.

I went to The Willow because he’d be there. I got a beer and leaned against the doorway. Watched him. I listened for a screeching feedback sound when he locked eyes with me, like we shouldn’t be that close to each other anymore and even the walls of that bar knew it. The fuzzy Hooker’s green felt of that pool table knew it. I mouthed fuck you slowly, sipped his favorite beer. His face flashed, he raised his eyebrows and put his pool stick down. Told his friends he’d be just a sec.

“Woman, did you cuss me?” he asked, leaning.

“You walked out on me before anything got good and started.”

“You’re mad I left first? You didn’t call me,” he said, shrugging slow. His friends kept shooting pool. I tilted to watch them and didn’t feel anything.

“You didn’t want to be called,” I said.

“Well you got me now, woman.”

Low took my beer and finished it. I listened for the hooves of his cowboy heart galloping toward me and I heard them. Or maybe it was a dump truck rumbling by, or a train, or the thickening thunder of that storm I was praying for.

What I’m saying: I beat him in a game of pool and let him take me home. What I’m saying: I let him take everything.