the madison review
somewhere. I touch the grain of the wood in his doorframe. “Well, uh,” he says. “Let me get it for you. Come on in.” He holds open the screen door and it slaps closed behind me, then drifts ajar on flimsy hinges. A crossbreeze whirls from the kitchen windows. He disappears upstairs and now I am twelve years old, ditching school in my first boyfriend’s house while his parents are at work, sick with anticipation and panic. “Here you go.” There’s nothing in the damn purse. “Thanks,” I say. Cole leans against the banister. He looks like he wants to say something. I turn the purse upside down. “You know about this?” I ask him. “No, but I’m not surprised.” “And here I was going to share the nicotine gum with you.” He laughs this time and I smile again without knowing it. I am not paying attention. “I got to go to work,” I tell him, and walk out quickly. Halfway across his front yard I stop. He is standing just inside the screen door. “Let’s get a beer tomorrow,” I say. “Okay,” he says. “How about Rockland Tap on one sixty-one? You know it?” “I do. Eight-thirty?” “I’ll be there,” he says. “See you, Shannon.” I text Paige. Yep. Next shift’s a long one. Cheryl’s on the warpath. She’s trying to quit smoking, I guess, which I would never advise for someone like her. “Six hundred dollar TV,” she says. “He must think I can pluck money out of thin air.” “Mmhmm.” I dry off plates that just came out of the dishwasher and stack them on the cooks’ counter. There’s a family beaming at a toddler in a party hat at table nine. I smile with them and I wish I was their server. Then there’s a table of boys who must have gone out mudding on four-wheelers today. They make dirty jokes and spill Mountain Dew all over the place. One of them’s kind of cute. “I know we’ll never make ends meet,” Cheryl says. “I can accept that. But why does it always have to be because of such stupid crap?” “Well,” I tell her, still smiling, “life sucks.” She puts down the order she was about to carry over and leans against the counter. “I’m just tired of making concessions. I’ve been settling my whole life.” She picks up her order again, then stops. “It’s like Jeff.” 13