So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,9

us, the grass was summer-soft beneath our bare feet. I approached the blinding goldbright throne of a God I’d made low, small; I prayed for efflorescence.

A Tennis Court

Down there, they always peed outside. Hush-slipped their dress hems from their knees to their waists and squatted. Alabama girls. Alabama roses. What a pretty name: Alabama Rose, Leigh thought. The words swung down behind her eyes as she pulled her underwear back up where it belonged. Georgia Rose. That name was in the song they were just dancing to. The song playing in the reception tent. It was a song by one of those foreign boy bands, their mouths and faces lemony and light. One of the boys had hair the color of the inside of an apple, all lit up and glowy. She liked the curly-haired one best because he looked like a little prince.

Michael looked like a little prince too. The girls walked back to the tent and saw him. The groom. He had his wedding suit coat hooked on one finger over his shoulder. He was dancing to another song now, something she’d never heard. The girls resembled an outrageous, drooping hydrangea bush standing there bunched up together, smelling like sweet cocktails and fruit; they’d had peach cranberry lime strawberry cherry pineapple with vodka gin bourbon ice and sticky lipglosses to match. Michael had a brother named Wolfgang and their parents had a tennis court because anytime you named your kid Wolfgang, the baby came with a tennis court. Wolfgang looked more like a Daniel or a John. Michael looked like the Wolfgang and because of it, the entire family was upside down. None of them made sense. The mother wore too much yellow, the father talked way too loud, the brothers didn’t look enough alike and they also had a sister who was far too young, like she’d taken a crooked turn, wandered into the wrong family. But she was decent enough so they kept her, not knowing what else to do. They had so much money, nothing mattered anyway.

Michael and Jill were the newlyweds. Leigh and Jill worked together at the courthouse. Of course Jill had invited the courthouse girls and there they were, standing and sitting and drinking and eating and dancing when they weren’t peeing. Alabama girls. Alabama Roses.

Wolfgang’s brown-sugar eyes stuck to Leigh’s and he asked her to dance. She said okay and he said not here…on the tennis court. She said okay again and finished her champagne, motioned to the courthouse girls. They were supposed to keep an eye on one another. Fine. Done. Okay. She was keeping an eye on herself.

She followed Wolfgang’s stalwart body. He’d been a college quarterback. Or maybe it was baseball. Leigh couldn’t remember, didn’t care. They were kissing on the dark tennis court, the smooth pleasant warmth of it heating up the backs of her thighs, her calves. She slipped off her shoes, little honey-colored heels covered in flowers. Everything was flowers. Midsummer in the South was an explosion of flowers. Bonanza!

“You didn’t come with anyone?” he asked.

“I came with my girlfriends,” she said.

“I meant, a man,” he said, moderately annoyed. It made her like him more. It was a treat to annoy a man so easily.

He kissed her earlobe, the milky pearl stuck in it.

“Do you play tennis?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“You played in college?”

He nodded against her neck. It wasn’t football. It wasn’t baseball. It was tennis. She thought of her old crush on Pete Sampras, her current crush on Roger Federer—his wristbands, his responsible eyebrows, his celebratory hands in the air. She’d always had an affinity for tennis players. Notoriously and gorgeously tall, preppy and competitive.

“What’s that bush called?” she asked him, pointing.

“Are you serious?”

She pushed him away, gently. Like peeling off a sticker.

“That one. It’s so pretty,” she said.

“Crape myrtle,” he said easily, turning.

“I know those are gardenias,” she said, pointing to the other side where the creamy blooms spread lustily, almost inappropriately wide. Insolent. Forget Alabama Roses. Alabama Gardenias were her new heroes.

“Wow. You’re something else,” Wolfgang said.

“Your name is Wolfgang,” Leigh said. The bubbly champagne laugh had snuck up on her. A bright poppy hiccup leapt from her mouth.

“You’re drunk,” he said, rolling off her. He sat with his hands clasped, his knees resting against the inside of his elbows. She liked it when a boy sat like that. A man, a boy, a dude, a guy.

“You look more like a John. Or a Michael. You should be Michael, Michael should be Wolfgang.