#whiskeypaper

Violet always had a thing for one of Ella’s brothers, but not John, the one who twinkled for her. He was coarse in a way that reminded her of cows and manure and all the grime under his nails made him look poor and unkempt like he’d turn out drinking himself to sleep and spend his nights in the hayloft instead of tumbling with her. She’d seen enough of that with her uncles and Daddy and the way her Mama and aunts seemed to shuck corn and snap beans with spite, cursing under their breath, ain’t no man any of us is married to worth a damn. Violet would have plenty of tumble. Yes, she would.

“Go off in the world, Violet. Don’t get married young. Go see what’s what,” Aunt Janey said.

Aunt Leitha piped in, “Lord, yes, girl get out while the getting’s good before you wind up pregnant and milking more than cows.”

“I’m never getting married,” Violet said. “I aim to finish high school. When I’m through, I’m going to California.”

“Planning to be in pictures, are you, gal?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, you got that strawberry blond hair they ought to love.”

“Hell, Janey—red hair turns out gray like everything else on screen.”

“Well, I know what I know,” Janey said.

“You talk to that brother of Ella’s?”

“Which one?” Violet asked, running her fingers through her curls.

“That John has a shine for you, don’t he?”

“He watches when me and Ella jump double dutch and lay out in the sun. I don’t like it.”

“Well, I guess you better get used to folks looking if you’re going to be in pictures,” Leitha said.

“You think Bette Davis is shy like that?”

“Y’all don’t understand. It’s only his eyes I don’t like on me,” Violet said. The air was sweet with corn and the wet heat of summer. Tonight, she’d catch fireflies with Ella. They’d already taken two canning jars and filled them with bits of twig and lettuce, some corn silk because surely fireflies needed a soft bed like anyone. They’d lie in Ella’s twin bed while her younger sister whimpered in her crib, and watch the bugs call out for love, talking until they fell asleep.

In the morning, they unscrewed the lids to free them and found them dead. Neither of them knew what to think about that, if the insects’ faded light spoke to their futures. Maybe bug death didn’t mean much, but they worried. Neither spoke.

Henry, the brother Violet thought looked like Gary Cooper, saw them lay the creatures in rose petals.

“Shame,” he said. “Next time you should poke some air holes in the lid.”

“I didn’t think about them needing air.”

“Every living thing needs air, darlin'.”

Ella ran off into the cornfield. The stalks shushed as she swerved back and forth and hooked left like someone was chasing after her, but Violet and the brother who looked like Gary Cooper stayed behind talking about air and light and how the world is hard to figure out. Violet watched his hands, how he folded and refolded a leaf like art. Creases in the green, living thing that ain’t alive for long. He pointed at the moon at the horizon. “It’ll be full by next week’s cookout.”

“Mama and Aunt Janey say full moons make you crazy.”

“They’re telling you tales, little Violet.”

“I’m not little anymore.”

“You are to me. You’re a sprite. You know full moons are good for sprites and fairies, don’t you?”

“Who’s telling tales, now, Mr.?”

“Please call me Henry. You know what full moons are good for, little sprite?”

“Black magic?”

“No, girl. A full moon’s the best time to plant.”

“But the corn’s grown.”

“We got to plant for fall, too.”

“Don’t you get tired of dirt?” she asked, looking at his pressed trousers, greased back hair, and rolled up shirtsleeves.

“Lord, yes.”

“Mama and Aunt Janey say you got drafted–that you’re going to Germany to kick some Nazi ass.”

“Your Mama and Aunt Janey didn’t say it like that, sprite.”

“Well, ain’t that what you’re going to do over there?”

“I suppose that’s part of it.”

“Are you excited to leave Cabarrus County? I can’t wait to leave.”

“What you don’t know, little sprite…I could build skyscrapers.”

“Can I write you when you go to war?”

“I’d love that, sprite. Send me only news about you and Ella. Your fairy ventures. And look out for those who try to trap you. They’ll only make you lonely, put out that light you got glowing in that red hair of yours. Ella says you’re going to California. Write me from California and tell me what those hills smell like cause I’ll bet it’s something better than manure and corn.”

Ella kept running, knocking cornstalks this way and that and by the time she came back Violet was flat out in love with Henry. He stood to roll his pant legs up. He danced a little, just a brief twirl as he kicked his shoes off.

For four years, Violet carried his dance, his leaf folding, how he held his fingers pointed at the horizon, in the cocoon of her belly. She wrote him of dancing with Ella at the USO. The big bands, the brass and strings, the attention from big men and short, the time one of them got too fresh with his sister and she punched him in the stomach, how she still hoped for what she thought would be the jasmine smell of southern California, but how she hoped, more than anything, he would come home safe, come home soon, come home her Henry. She never knew he couldn’t read her letters, that he’d run his fingers over the script and dream of her tall tales, of perfume, of her grown up, her hair curled down to her shoulders by now, of roundness, of home, of corn silk and the way she made him twirl once.

::

About the Author: Beth Gilstrap is the author of  I Am Barbarella: Stories (2015) from Twelve Winters Press and No Man’s Wild Laura (forthcoming 2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. Her work has appeared in Quiddity, Ambit, The Minnesota Review, Literary Orphans, and Synaesthesia Magazine, among others. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and enough rescue pets to make life interesting.

Story Song: "Carnival" by Shovels & Rope

“Seriously, what would you give?” Grizz trotted back to our huddle out in left field. He had leaned out since high school started, but still stood a head taller than the rest of us.

Back when we were eleven we had each been dumped at Creekside Park for the summer’s first Little League practice by exhausted parents in wood paneled station wagons. But Grizz had emerged from the woods alone, in a camo jacket, lumbering into the outfield like Big Foot, brown hair bushy and parted down the middle. A ratty, too-small baseball glove had dangled from the crook of one of his fingers. I think Feebs had been the first one to say it – “Look, guys! Here comes Grizzly Adams!” – and the nickname stuck. Now we just called him Grizz. He had been a legend from the first moment we saw him.

“Like where? Miami?” Zee asked. His name was long and Polish. It started with Z- and ended with -czak.

“Sure,” Grizz said. “Anywhere in Florida, probably. That, or Texas, from what I hear.”

Zee crouched into position, hand and glove on each thigh. “When do they start practicing outdoors?” His breath rolled out in thin wisps. He clenched his throwing hand against his sweats to keep it warm.

“It’s fucking year round,” Grizz said. “Imagine how good we’d be.”

The ping sounded and the ball sailed off Coach’s bat toward left-center. Zee took off in a loping jog, circling its flight path so he could catch it with his momentum going forward. He stuck his glove up over his head and the ball popped into it. Then he took a quick crow hop and drove it on a line toward the shortstop, waiting to cut if off in shallow left. Zee trotted back to the rest of us, leaping over a stubborn patch of snow-ice that still hadn’t melted. We had been chipping away at it with our cleats all practice.

“Year round? That’s bullshit,” Feebs said as he spat out another sunflower shell. Freeing sunflower seeds from their shells was the closest we could get to chewing tobacco without our mothers killing us.

I stepped forward into the same hunched waiting position, breathed heat on the fingers of my throwing hand, thought about practicing year round. We didn’t start until Spring and even then we spent the first few weeks in the gym, running suicides and four corners drills. The pitchers thumped down hard on slanted mounds built from plywood, leaving the rest of us to wait in a line outside the netted batting cage. We held our breath when we took our turns, eyeing the rotation of the dimpled rubber balls Tim Francis had figured out how to spin into the Jugs machine so they launched out straight at our heads.

My ping sounded. The ball came straight at me, worst kind to judge. First step back, the little voice in my head said, and I rotated my hips, stepping back with my right foot. “In,” Feebs muttered in the same way he’d help me from right in a real game. I saw it now, too. I charged in and caught the fly on a dead run, then stepped into my throw toward Tim Francis. Aim for the cutoff man’s head, the voice told me. With Tim Francis, that was easy. But Jonesy, straddling the bag at second behind him, shouted, “Through!” and Tim ducked at the last moment. The ball sailed over his head and one-hopped to second where Jonesy snagged it and spun, lowering his glove in front of the bag as if about to tag out some hotshot from Northview High trying to leg out a double. But no one was there except for the cold wind, kicking up loose infield dirt as it gusted again.

Jonesy relayed the ball in to the catcher who flipped it back to Coach. “Seriously,” Grizz repeated. “What would you give to move down somewhere warm and play year round?”

No one answered Grizz. We waited for the infielders to return to their positions. Feebs spit out another shell. Zee played with the Velcro on his glove. I spiked the heel of my cleat into that dwindling patch of snow-ice. The wind gusted once more and we huddled closer together. Closer, I figured, than those guys in Miami or any of them ballplayers in Texas ever would be to each other.

::

About the Author: Chris Negron graduated from Yale University in 1993. His short fiction has previously appeared in The Grand Central Review and Torrid Literature Journal. He has received multiple writing honors from the Atlanta Writers Club as well as the Literary Award of Merit from the Dawson Country Arts Council.

Story Song: "Old Dirt Hill" by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds

Thursday

The pawn shop clerk offers me $25 for my son’s gaming system. I’ve never been much of a negotiator or much of anything that requires verbalization. I accept the deal knowing he’s judging me, mocking me internally. No matter, pride is just a word, a notion that falters at the altar of desperation.

My newfound wealth knows the route to Columbus Raceway, I'm there in fifteen minutes. I’m home. Same table, same cigarettes, same hope percolating. A chestnut thoroughbred, a longshot named Alamo Joe, has the right odds for a big payoff and he's a natural frontrunner on a sloppy track. If only he can outrun his breeding, the genetics of his underwhelming sire. But he stumbles out of the gate and never recovers, finishing eighteen lengths behind the heavily-bet chalk, a regal stallion called Mi Cielo. My betting slip floats to the carpet like a degenerate feather. I’m bathed in blue-collar, euphoric noise. Gamblers are silent, tungsten husks unless they win, then they must scream their handicapping prowess to the masses. I bolt, my entire existence dissolving.

Friday

The mexican store on Barrett Avenue offers fifty cents on the dollar for your food stamp card, a fair offer for the morally bankrupt. The lady behind the counter has eyes like mahogany snow globes and straight hair as black as a pressed cup of café noir. I want to ask her if she can fold me up and place me in her purse next to the tissues and wintergreen breath mints. Take me with you, mi cielo.

At the track, it’s the same tired song. Three races and twelve Camels later, I’m busted. A photo finish. A head bob. Laser Boy couldn’t stick his neck in front at the wire. He lacked fortitude and grit. Perseverance. Thoughts of buying the ex a sparkling gift have evaporated.

Saturday

The plasma center is teeming with poverty, addiction and lowered heads. We are not here to help our fellow man. We are here for the $30 they pay to drain us of some vital substance we know nothing about. I clench and unclench my fist like a pugilistic tweaker during the procedure then collect my bounty.

The jockey falls off. It's beyond laughable but expected. Silver Bird was cruising toward victory, a lost cause with the heart of an icebreaker cutting a groove in the dirt; equine smoke devouring the colorful silks of his rivals. Until Miguel Blanco bounced off of the horse as if he were a bag of mulch. I drove away, my eyes fixed on the gas needle the entire way home.

Sunday

I add a squeeze of maple syrup to my coffee and call my boy, tell him I can't see him this weekend. A bout of the flu. He says he understands, tells me we can hunt velociraptors in the basement jungle next time. He still believes.

On the porch, I watch Lance mow his lawn. We used to work together at the steel plant. His wife and daughter volunteer at the local food pantry. I owe him $500 but he doesn’t badger me for it: Anything for a friend in need. I want to ask him to baptize me in his sea of goodness. Make me whole again. Let me borrow some sugar until the first of the month.

Monday

In the basement of a stone church, they pass around a copper bowl. Seems odd to me to pressure gamblers to toss in a few dollars, since gamblers usually have selfish, decaying billfolds. I focus on the powdered donut in front of me, letting the donation bowl slide past like a melancholic beggar. Hi, I'm Josh, a gambling addict. They welcome me with pale arms and polyurethane smiles. They tell me I came to the right place, the right meeting. I absorb their tales of depravity, nodding along in the affirmative as tragedy upon tragedy is vomited from their minds. I choose not to speak, unwilling to reveal myself, unwilling to illuminate my frailty and nothingness. I consume weak coffee, gas station sweets, and paralyzing shame before taking off.

First of the month

Catalina smiles at me. My mouth doesn't curl upwards often, but her flash of white is like a radiant screwdriver loosening my fortified, red armor. I return her volley with a slippery grin. Make me feel again, bonita. Por favor. She hands me the cash and I drift out of her atmosphere and head off to chase the dime. I'm feeling lucky. Today will be my redemption, my ascension from a pauper's stool to the throne of vindication. In the sport of kings, we all seek the crisp, green crown and an escape from everything and everyone. We are drifters and malcontents who still believe in fairy tales.

::

About the Author: Chris Milam lives in solitude in Hamilton, Ohio. He's a voracious reader, baseball junkie, and a consumer of too-sweet coffee. His stories have appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Maudlin House, Firewords Quarterly, Dogzplot and elsewhere. Find him @Blukris.

Story Song: "Sour and Vicious Man" by Compulsive Gamblers

I’ve heard my father’s one-hit wonder exactly twice since I’ve been on the road, both times while deep in the desert, in dead spots where one station comes in clear if I’m lucky, and the open highway is mine. The words are his but not the voice, and yet I hear the singer’s twang as his, pretend that I can remember my songwriter father’s soft croon, imagine that he didn’t die in a plane crash after holding his fleshy baby girl only once on a short trip to LA.

The royalty checks don’t amount to much, but my mother sends them along, assuring me that my father would have wanted it that way. A week ago, I heard his voice in my head more urgently than ever, telling me to go. My mother, too, thought a cross-country trip would do the trick for me and Matt. She didn’t know that we were over, had been for a long while and were just waiting for the right time to tell everyone. We’d already packed up our West Hollywood apartment, making sad, drunk dates out of it with take-out and too much wine. I dropped Matt off at his brother’s in the Valley and didn’t go in—said goodbye to him like I always do, with a quick peck on his flushed cheek.

I descend Nine Mile Hill into Albuquerque and watch the Sandia Mountains turn watermelon pink, true to their name, at dusk. Before I reach the city, I pull off the highway at a saloon with a lit-up sign in the window, red letters beckoning cocktails in all caps. Something feels natural about walking alone into a mostly empty bar just outside of town, like each time I’m unearthing the cowboy haunts of my father’s world. Quick glances bounce onto me and then off, though one man’s lingers and I’m at once aware of my tight jeans with the holes and my mother’s jet black hair reaching down to the curve of my sacrum. It was her hair, my mother says, that my father fell in love with, on a street corner in East LA. She sold him sweet navel oranges at her parents’ stand, and he spoke to her in broken English, assuming that she was naive, uneducated, alien.

I sit at the bar and order a drink from a man in a faded yellow t-shirt that says New Mexico: It ain’t new and it ain’t Mexico. I imagine the man smiling with a toothy grin in a souvenir shop, finding this cheeky. The misnomer reminds me of my own city of angels, how sometimes the name seems absurd and nonsensical, even ironic—because I see nothing ethereal in its mess of freeways, its relentless concrete, its building-sized digital ads. And I certainly don’t see anyone being saved.

The whiskey goes down in one fiery gulp, and I get up. A jukebox, in the corner. I’ve got to flip through, no matter who I’m with, no matter what cast off corner of the country I’m in. My fingers press down on the chunky square plastic buttons, and the song pages, thick like diner menus, flap over one by one. There, on the last page. I press the S, and then the 8. The first notes play, and I hear my father’s words for a third time since I’ve left home. I close my eyes, feel a warmth in my belly, and see endless sand dunes shadowed with the murky purples of a fading twilight. I think about not coming back west, about driving forever on this lonely desert highway, about lightning having to hurdle down from the gods for me to stop.

::

About the Author: Kristin Ito is a writer and editor living on California's Central Coast. Her work has appeared in Oblong and Broad!

Story Song: "Desert Call" by Holly Miranda

It could have been any old summer night. It was cooler outside, the heat and humidity finally giving way to some relief; you almost felt a slight chill on your bare arms after being drenched in sunshine all day. The air smelled like sprinkler water and fresh-cut grass. We were driving around, going past each of our friends’ houses and looking to see if their cars were parked out front. That’s what we did before cell phones existed; it’s how you found out where the party was.

You were driving; I can still picture your hands on the steering wheel, with the pile of friendship bracelets you wore bunched up on your right wrist. Your car always smelled like peaches because of the lotion you wore that you bought at the mall. We both wore denim cut-offs, mine not as daringly short as yours. I’d always slip my feet out of my Havaianas and put them on the dashboard until you screamed at me to stop.

Back then, you liked my brother even though you had a boyfriend. It both fascinated and disgusted me, the way you could play off their affections with flippancy of a seal bouncing a rubber ball on its nose. Back then, our circle of friends was everything, and you had the power in your hands to change the balance of our whole world.

We didn’t know anything different or any better. College still loomed in the future, less of a certainty, existing only as a pile of applications that we kept shoving off to deal with later despite the nagging of our parents. Mike, your boyfriend, was also my friend and I didn’t want to see him get hurt by you. Or maybe I did, secretly, because he’d been obsessed with you since freshman year and he should know the truth about what you were really like. My brother, Emmett, was a year older and pretended to roll his eyes over our girl talk when we took over conversation at the dinner table. But later, I’d catch him staring at you while you helped our mom wash the dishes. You stayed over for dinner so often.

As we drove around, scanning sleepy suburban streets for a bounty of teenager-owned shitbox cars parked in front of any particular house, I wondered whose car you were looking for the most. You were leaned back in the driver’s seat, flipping your long blond hair over one tank-top-bare shoulder, eyes scanning the curbs. You and your damn hair that you got highlighted every 6 weeks; you spent more money on your hair than I did on anything.

Eventually, we saw Mike’s car in front of Kevin McKittrick’s house. For a brief second, you almost looked disappointed. A shadow slipped over your face, just for a heartbeat, so fast that I thought I might have imagined it. You parked your car and slid out of the driver’s side, slow and languid like a pampered house cat.

“C’mon, let’s go in,” you said to me, one hip cocked out and your keys dangling from your hand. I’d recognize that stance anywhere, even in the minimal moonlight.

We walked together up the driveway to the house, bare tanned legs moving in unison. Everything was ahead of us: the night and its possibilities, the juggled boyfriends, the college applications. It was like one of those folded paper fortunetellers we used to make together at sleepovers, where each option was tucked away, waiting to be unfolded. You never knew what you’d end up with; we used to shriek in delight or mock horror depending on what results we got. Mansion, apartment, shack, house. Movie star, teacher, bum. Mike, Emmett, someone you’ve yet to meet.

On those long, lazy summer nights, I thought we’d always be friends. I didn’t know yet that we’d go to different schools, do a shitty job of keeping in touch while we lived on opposite sides of the country. Facebook didn’t exist yet, and we couldn’t drive past each other’s houses anymore. You went out west to a school in a state with cacti instead of trees, and I did the opposite, hunkering down in a tiny New England college town with a terrible climate and reputation for partying. You got married a few years after graduation, which I heard about from Casey Gilligan when I ran into her at a bar once when I was home for Thanksgiving. You were a high school teacher, which surprised me; you barely went to class when we were in school, opting to not return after open lunch and head to the mall instead. I became a journalist, continuing my lifetime role of the outside observer. Then one day, I saw your face on the AP wire: TUCSON AREA HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER ARRESTED FOR AFFAIR WITH STUDENT. You still had the blond highlights; I could tell even in the terrible low-res photo of you leaving the courthouse with mascara stains running down your cheeks. The boy, name withheld, was in your Language Arts class.

I wondered if you were trying to recapture the feeling of those summer nights, of walking into a house with a bunch of cars parked out front and seeing who was there inside. Maybe you missed the feeling of having all of those possibilities out in front of you, of not knowing what you’d get when you opened up the paper flap of a fortune teller. Maybe you weren’t happy with the results you got the first time around. I’ll never know for sure, unless I reach out and try to talk to you in prison. But for now, I’m just sitting back, watching, like I always have.

::

About the Author: Kim Nelson is a writer, performer, and retired roller derby skater from Chicago. She is a regular contributor and co-editor at Drinkers with Writing Problems. Follow her on Twitter @ponytailup.

Story Song: "Doll Parts" by Hole

Logan drove his Yukon as if steel through the chest were not a possible outcome. Even when the prospect of a gruesome death had been offered up (it had several times in dummy drunk driving demos on campus), he had felt exceptional, like mourning a death was a consequence he could never suffer. In fact, in his twenty-one years of life, he had not yet mourned a death, so he pursued his goals bumper-to-bumper, even in open highway, a feather-haired buck in aviators reflected in rearview mirrors, all prohibitions fictions. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, tailgating an old Nissan that flashed its blinker and waited for an opening in the less agitated lane. He was on his way to this-girl-he’d-been-seeing’s apartment; she had texted him that she had a surprise for him.

Probably meaning oral. Or sex. Or homemade cookies. Or a Yeti cooler from her dad’s outdoor shop. Possibly everything. He loved everything.

Logan answered his phone and accelerated his Yukon into open highway. His best friend, Hinton, said, We’re going to Roundabout tonight for two-for-ones. We’re going to get shitty—shitty-fuck-faced-totally-fucked shitty. Logan said, I might be late. Logan said, On my way to this-girl-I’ve-been-seeing’s place, you know the one I’ve told you about. She texted me to come over for a surprise. Fucking yeah, dude. Bring her with you when you’re done. Maybe. I might want to get after some other girls tonight, said Logan. I’m feeling it. Logan got stuck behind another cluster of traffic. Fucking people, he said. Fucking just drive your fucking car. It’s not fucking hard.

Logan drove his Yukon as if he had no children in the back seat, and because of this-girl-he’d-been-seeing’s surprise that she was pregnant with his child and getting an abortion, he would not have children in the back seat for the foreseeable future. Logan sat on the edge of this-girl-he’d-been-seeing, McKenzie’s, bed and stared at a stiff red nail polish stain on the carpet. McKenzie, he said, I know we’re just—we’ve just been—but—

McKenzie said, I don’t want it. McKenzie said, I’ve already thought about it. Logan said, But, maybe, don’t we have something here? McKenzie said, What? Logan said, But, like, the other night when we were watching Netflix in your bed, don’t you think that was something? McKenzie said, Like something what? Do you mean love?

Logan said no, but he meant yes. He said a lot. Logan said he guessed it was for the best. If you don’t want a kid from me, he said, then I guess we’ll pretend like it never happened. What if I said I loved you? You’re not listening to me. If you don’t want to start a life with me, then whatever. You didn’t feel something watching Netflix? Wasn’t that something? I want the baby. I think we should have the baby, don’t you? I can’t believe you don’t. I can’t believe you don’t love me. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I think we should still see each other. Maybe we should take a break. Even though you’re doing this, I think we can make this work. I think I felt something watching Netflix. Logan’s lips quivered. Logan cried. Logan couldn’t pick up his hanging head. He couldn’t keep from staring at the red stain on the carpet. He thought if he stayed on the edge of the bed long enough, he would hear what he wanted to hear. He was hurting and not used to hurting. He was not used to having no say.

McKenzie sat next to Logan at the edge of her bed and placed a hand on his thigh. McKenzie was calm. She was only sorry for telling him it was a surprise. She told him she was scared and didn’t want to scare him away before the news.

Logan said, You shouldn’t have done that. I know, and I’m sorry, McKenzie said. Logan lifted his head and thought McKenzie was beautiful in the way his mother was. He thought she was really smart and maybe that was what he liked most about her. He had never told her he thought she was smart. It had never occurred to him to tell her that. It would be lost on her now.

She suddenly seemed much older than him.

Her hand was on his khaki shorts, and he wished the tip of her finger would move to his skin. Then he realized this was also a breakup. Or were they ever together? He was too embarrassed to ask. He thought he might cry harder at the answer. Can I stay here tonight? Logan said.

No. Just no? No, Logan. Will we see each other anymore? I don’t think we’re on the same page.

Everything about Roundabout was loud. Everyone was happy and yelling and carrying two drinks. Hinton said, Decided not to bring that girl, huh?

McKenzie, Logan said. What about her? Hinton said, pointing toward the back of a girl at the bar.

Logan wanted to tell Hinton about McKenzie and how smart she was and how he loved her but didn’t know it until today, and how she was getting an abortion and didn’t want him to drive her and didn’t want to see him anymore. He wanted to cry in front of his best friend, and he wanted his best friend to hug him and tell him he was sorry and drive them home where they could talk and drink and where he didn’t have to be alone. Hinton, Logan said, and he stared at his best friend, hoping his best friend could see everything inside him and act accordingly. But Hinton didn’t see it. Instead, Hinton pushed harder. Hinton said, nodding toward the girl at the bar, If you don’t want her, then I’m going to talk to her. Do you want her? Man, this is the life, Logan, he said, looking around the bar. Have everything. Have it all.

::

About the Author: Joe Lucido is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where he serves as prose editor for Black Warrior Review. His stories appear or are forthcoming in Whiskey Island, Booth, Word Riot, decomP, SmokeLong Quarterly, and others. He grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, MO. He occasionally tweets nonsense (@JosephLucido).

Story Song: "I Don’t Want You Anymore" by Luke Roberts