My mistake burns into my retinas right after I finish jiggling their always-loose doorknob to get it in place. Jasmine's on her knees, Curly's hand tangled in her hair. And one thing I can say for certain: she is definitely not praying.

"God," she says as she scrambles to her feet, wiping her mouth off and leaving a mauve smear of lipstick behind on her wrist, "you didn't figure you should knock first, before you bust into people's houses? Into this house? You're lucky you didn't stroll into a barrel in your face."

I think I would've preferred the barrel.

"This was her idea," Curly says with a grimace, as he yanks his zipper back up so noisily, the sound might as well be the buzz from a chainsaw. "I don't just… snap my fingers in the middle of the kitchen and demand to get serviced, whenever I come home. Promise."

"It's two in the afternoon," I sputter in my own limited defense, like I didn't just essentially B and E, "in the kitchen— and you said I could come pick up the diaper bags you weren't usin' anymore—"

"It's my own husband's dick, and my own kitchen," Jasmine cuts in, trying to smooth down the tangled clump of curls and only making it stick out like an antenna, "you'd think you walked in on me suckin' Luis off—"

"Don't even say that!" I can't help the face I pull; it's taking all of my self-control not to slip right back out the door and bolt to the elevator. I should be more than used to the way she talks at this point— both vocabulary and imagery— but my mama would've made this girl gargle with a bar of Ivory if she heard half of what comes out of her mouth. "I'm sorry, I didn't figure it'd be such a bad time—"

I'm already shrinking further back into the doorframe. With the initial shock and awe fading away, what's starting to embarrass me the most is my own kneejerk prissiness— I'm a married woman, behaving like I've never heard of the act before, or, heaven forbid, performed it. After busting in unannounced like I've got no home training, too—

If I want to have a mental breakdown so badly, maybe I can just cut myself a set of choppy bangs in the bathroom mirror, or tell Wanda Draper that the cornbread she made for the 'starving children of Ethiopia' bake sale had the gritty texture of a mouthful of sand. I didn't have to go this far.

"Well, I guess we ain't kickin' you out now," Jasmine says, with the grim resignation of getting an unexpected dinner guest when you don't have enough food prepared. "Siddown, make yourself at home." She gestures towards the couch, bright purple velour with gold trimming around the edges, and with what I can identify as a Glock lying unattended on one of the cushions. "It's Curly's," she adds helpfully, "just put it on the coffee table, it ain't loaded."

"I don't want to interrupt—" I'm not touching that thing, Tim always says that unless you've emptied the magazine yourself, you never assume a gun—

Not that I can be thinking about him right now, or I'm going to lose it completely. I focus my gaze on an angel Christmas tree topper that's been half-kicked under the TV stand, its headless corpse playing the violin— from Auntie Rose written in loopy cursive on the still-attached tag— and blink hard.

"I think the mood probably ain't comin' back," Curly says, with careful tact. "You left the door unlocked?" he then asks Jasmine as he turns to her, slow realization dawning on his face.

Jasmine tinges pinker around the cheekbones and ears. "We never locked the door at home… I guess I still ain't gotten into the habit. Darry always said we didn't have anything to steal."

Curly finishes fiddling with the deadbolt and heads back over to her, slides an arm around her waist, smirks. She smiles back up at him, with a genuine happiness and warmth she rarely wears. I want to find myself a room. "Awh, well, ain't we got plenty to steal now?"

Like Bonnie and Clyde driving away from the scene of the crime, they lean in for the kiss, the sunset sinking behind them. And that's when I burst into tears.

"What's wrong, honey?"

"No, I'm fine," I squeak at Curly, my face buried in my hands as they hover, close but not quite touching like I've got a protective forcefield around me; I try all the usual tricks to stop crying, take deep breaths, stare up at the ceiling, but nothing's working to pull me out of my sheer misery. My words come out as though from underwater, submerged by a current of my own tears. "It's nothing— Tim's cheating on me."

Jasmine especially is not the 'come here and cry on my shoulder' type, even after I drop that particular grenade. She telegraphs her movements like she's trying to de-escalate with a brown bear on a hiking trail, puts her hands up in front of her as she backs away from me, while I want to clap my own over my mouth— not that that'll take back what I just said. In another second, she's devised a practical solution, once she and Curly stop eyeing each other and communicating something wordless, something that works between them. "You know what you need?" she says as she starts rummaging around in the kitchen cabinets. It's not a question. "A stiff one."

"I shouldn't, I'm still nursing…" I protest as Curly guides me down onto the couch; I feel underneath the cushion for any more unaccounted weaponry, and only come up with some Ho-Ho crumbs. My aunts all say kids ought to be weaned by one year, but Neni's too young for months yet, even if I can feed her mashed carrots and turnips now. "It's not good for the baby."

"One glass won't hurt anything." Jasmine gives me what's meant to be an affectionate nudge to the ribs once she sits down beside me, but it hits hard enough to bruise. "Especially not a Shepard, c'mon. Fact that Mary's liver ain't given up the ghost yet is proof enough."

Her mimosas are ninety percent Veuve Clicquot, with just enough orange juice to turn them cloudy; I'm pretty sure if I tried one of her screwdrivers, I'd pass out from the vodka fumes alone before I got a sip down. Somehow, I still drain half the glass in one go. "So you think Tim can't keep it zipped," Curly starts cautiously, furrowing his brow. "Look, I know he's a jackass, but this don't sound like his particular brand of bein' a jackass—"

"You don't understand." Unfortunately, it doesn't take a lot to get me going, once I tell myself that I've been a bad enough houseguest without rejecting her hospitality in the bargain. I've never gotten into the habit of drinking much, with the memorable exception of Lainey's wedding, where I mixed tequila with sparkling rosé and ended up falling asleep with my cheek on the bathroom tile, wretchedly sick— we don't even really keep it in the house, it removes any incentive for Mary or Ed to come visit. What spews out is a garbled mess, fueled both by weeks of isolated paranoia and a second glass I should've paced; 'I don't even know where he goes at night anymore', 'he was cooking for her right in my kitchen', and, by the bottom of that second as Jasmine's tipped the bottle to pour me a third, my words slurring into each other, "we've got to keep a calendar to even remember to have sex, and I'm never going to run out of those pink heart stickers—"

I'll be humiliated later, I'm sure, but right now isn't later.

"Oh, so Mr. Timothy Shepard ain't gettin' his dick wet often enough, huh, he's gotta look elsewhere," Jasmine drawls with slow menace. "After you almost died havin' his baby, the real trouble is, you just ain't puttin' out enough to keep him satisfied. Shit, when I get a hold of—"

"No, no, it's not like that," I choke out miserably, and then in the name of defending him, I tell her the worst possible thing I could say in a situation that's been careening downhill since I arrived.


When I see Curly waving at me, right in the middle of my construction site, I pray the psychosis came back with a vengeance and I'm imagining it like a mirage in the desert. Because anything— including the total destabilization of my psyche— would be preferable to this being real.

"Hey, loverboy!" he shouts from the bottom of the ladder, cupping his hands around his mouth. His hair's tousled like he just rolled out of bed, and he's in a graying wifebeater that was seeing better days five washes ago, Jesus save me. "Git down here, will you?"

I have no idea what the hell he's talking about, I can't even hear him that clearly, but I can hear the simmering fight in his voice. Let me guess— Luis told him all about how I rejected his generous present, and by the time he got done putting his own personal spin on it, I'd beaned a rock through his windshield myself and was aiming for his skull. "You can't just come over to where I work unannounced, what is wrong with you?" I hiss as soon as my feet touch the ground; I'd drag him off by the elbow if he was five years younger, but the little fucker was a head taller than me by the time I got out of jail and getting broader by the day. "You're a known felon—"

Of course he doesn't understand. Curly's never held a real job in his life, the huevón, apart from the summer he was sixteen and did a two week gig at the Tastee Freez, or when we were kids and I made him take over my bartending shift. Everything always just falls in his lap, like overripe fruit falling from a tree.

"And you're off probation," he says flatly, "don't give me none of that bullshit. We need to talk."

"Are you high?" I squint at him in the blinding sunlight, examine his pupils like I'm an ophthalmologist. "Tryna air out our dirty laundry in front of God and everybody—"

Curly just stares back at me, like he's got no clue where the middle class prissiness came from or what to do with it. The neighbors used to come out to watch Ma whale on Ed with a broomstick handle on the front lawn, right next to our drawers flapping around on the line. "Oh, no," he says with a snort, "you don't get to be ashamed of me right now, I'm the one askin' the questions. Why in the hell—"

One of the other guys clambers down too and shuffles towards us like Curly's about to shoot him point blank, almost twists an ankle coming off the ladder. "Curly, man, I'm so sorry," he says, fidgeting with his wedding band. "There was a bust-up over at the country musical festival last weekend, I didn't get to move—"

Curly claps a hand on his shoulder, cuts off the litany of excuses. "Don't worry 'bout it none," he says, "I'm here on a different kind of family business, you ain't the one in trouble." Then his grip tightens, perceptibly. "So long as you find a way to make up the loss before Sunday, you dig?"

If I heard him call him jefe on his way back up, my ears better be deceiving me. Curly waves him off with a fake smile like a mom watching her kid walk into his kindergarten classroom, and once he's out of sight, that's when he decks me. "Pendejo, why are you cheating on your wife?" he demands while I'm still doubled over, feeling around the gum with my tongue to see if he's knocked a tooth loose.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't even try to play dumb right now, she told me everything." He gives me a rueful, disappointed shake of his head, while I start to short circuit like a toaster that's had a bucket of water poured on it. "Tim, when that woman agreed to marry you, you was battin' so far out of your league, you was up against a Yankees pitcher," he adds, slowly and deliberately. "Shit, you got a smokeshow at home—"

"Excuse me?"

"Hot, goes to Sunday and Wednesday Mass, puts up with your godawful personality and how you snore like a truck shiftin' on the highway with a smile, and you got her foldin' your underwear while you're fuckin' chicks in some bar restroom? You think you can do better than your baby girl's mama?" He looks like he'd punch me again, if he didn't need to keep me conscious in order to listen to him. "Man, you're my brother and I have to be on your side, but you got no idea how hard you make that sometimes."

I press a finger into my temple so hard, I make myself see stars, like I can somehow press down into my brain and reset it. All right, I need to gather more intel and assess this situation from there, the way I usually do. "She… everything… what?"

Curly, of all people, has no business looking at me like I'm too slow to pick up what he's putting down. "Gabi was at my place earlier, like I said, don't even try to deny what I already know," and just why the hell would she be there in the first place? Of her own volition? "You become a real night owl lately, huh, just slap your paycheck down on the table and head right back out again? While your piece of ass is sprayin' her perfume on, gettin' ready for you?"

I'm impressed by the sheer amount of detail, not to mention vitriol, he's put into the story he's spun in his head. There's plenty of cheap shots I can take— like him regularly dropping his kid off at that same table without a glance backwards— but my smart mouth fails me and only ends up spitting out the truth. I'm still that shocked. "I don't know how much clearer I can make this, but whatever you think's goin' on, it ain't."

"You ain't sellin' no drugs— if you was sellin' anything, I'd know about it," he says with perfect self-assurance, "and what else would you be doin' out on them streets, takin' moonlit strolls? Besides—"

This is the moment where I slide firmly, once and for all, from 'lapsed Catholic' into 'dedicated atheist' territory. Because if there was any kind of merciful God up there? He would've just smited me where I stood, right after I had to hear my kid brother say the phrase 'bedroom problems' in reference to me. Or describe the exact problem he did.

"That's none of your fucking business," and my mouth's a steel trap snapping down on both syllables of fucking. I almost want to believe he put a James Bond-style spy camera up in that bedroom, before I can buy that Gabi, who after years of radiation-like exposure to the extended Shepard-Curtis-Ramirez family still rarely uses terms cruder than 'making love', decided to tell Curly all the gory details about my erectile dysfunction. Mostly, though, I want the earth's surface to form a sinkhole and swiftly carry me under, so I don't have to come up with any other response to this.

And I'm not the one who gets to be pissed here, sure, but anger and betrayal slice through me like a hot knife through butter all the same. Less out of embarrassment— though, believe me, that's vying for first place— and more because out of everyone in the world, she's about the only person who's ever insisted she could see good in me. Used to, anyway.

"You think this is how I want to spend my day, talkin' about your junk?" Curly snaps me out of it with a hand gesture that's both impatient and rude. "Work with me here, what's the problem? 'Cause she's under the impression that you have to imagine Bonnie's face with your eyes screwed shut in order to keep it up for her."

He might as well have wrapped a fist around my throat and squeezed, for all the oxygen that's flowing to my brain right now; same sense of panic, same sense of disorientation. Bonnie? I've officially gone down the rabbit hole, can't find any handholds to break my fall. "I just ain't that interested no more, period," I say shortly, which is about the worst thing I could've come up with due to its dangerous proximity to the truth. "You try workin' day and night at this kind of gig—"

Now I'm back to lying.

"You ain't… interested? In sex? The hell do you find more interesting?" He looks at me the same way you'd look at the alien of the week on Star Trek. "Tim, every day, I swear you tell me somethin' that makes me glad I'm dumb." He actually starts to scratch his head as he puzzles me out, like that time he was in third grade and wouldn't quit bringing home lice. Ma ended up shaving him bald. "I mean… you're twenty-four, man, talkin' like a senior citizen. You must want to fuck something."

"I'll tell you what you can go f—"

"Look, if it's guys, we are here for you—"

"First you show up here accusing me of cheating, now you're callin' me a fag? Anything else you wanna throw out there, while you're at it?" My chest tightens. "You might think you're some big candyman now, but I spent our whole lives kickin' your ass—"

"Don't say fag like some toothless redneck," he says, a deep scowl beginning to spread across his face— he cannot be serious. He pulling out that pissy little expression on our uncles and cousins, too? He'll be cutting off half their vocabularies at the knee. "It's the seventies, get with the program, homosexuals are cool now. Ponyboy sent me a magazine from Frisco about—"

"I don't care what's in the goddamned magazine, you are barkin' up the wrong tree— hell, you are in the wrong forest altogether—"

"I want to help you, you stupid asshole—"

"If you're about to start unzippin' me, you know, I think I'm gonna pass—"

"Yeah, okay, Tim, I get it," he says with an ugly snort, turning away from me as my cranking motion stops mid-stroke, "you don't need nothin' from nobody, forgot your life's guidin' philosophy for a second there. Or how much you sure do love jerkin' yourself off."

I exhale hard through my nose like a cartoon bull. I can tell a complete stranger what's happening to me, but this is different, a prospect a million times more daunting and humiliating. "Why the fuck is your wife cryin' on my couch about how y'all's marriage is in the shitter?" he snaps. "That's what's really gettin' to me about all this, how miserable are you makin' this woman, that she needs to use me as a go-between?"

We both know the infinite number of ways I'm capable of making anybody miserable, if I really put my mind to it. I spit, blood mingling with saliva on the dusty ground, but it's not out of disgust towards him. "I ain't steppin' out," I say again, a broken, unbelievable record, "I got another job I do sometimes at night, you can tell her that," like we're kids playing a game of telephone, but I can't just abandon this shift and am already pushing my luck as is. Good thing this joint is such a disaster, with paychecks that don't always come on time, drunk guys falling from the rooftops, and a foreman who takes off for PO meetings halfway through the day with no coverage— I'm not even the first guy to get called an ain't-shit cheater here, though it's usually at the top of his old lady's lungs. "Ain't even drinkin' all the money up."

I should feel bad icing him out like this when his intentions are good, like he's Luis, but how much of a separation even is there between the two of them these days? Besides, Curly loves spreading chisme around, using it both as currency and entertainment— there's no way I'm about to become the butt of the family joke, he gets drunk or loaded enough. "You're a fuckin' coward." He cocks his head to the side after he lands the sucker punch; rage flows through me like lava, sudden and hot, threatens to bubble over. "I don't know what you're up to—"

"What you don't know could fill a set of encyclopedias—"

"Whether you're messin' around with other broads, or sellin' again, or just workin' yourself to death... you're runnin' away. Pushin' everyone away." He sounds almost sad, resigned. Like he's got me all figured out, and the worst part is, he's tugging at the thread that'll undo the whole tapestry. "You don't get to kick people like dogs to see if they'll come back. It don't work like that."

I hit him hard across the face; the open-handed slap keeps him rooted in place, but a sluice of blood drips out of his nose and stains the front of his shirt. I'm badly out of practice, and it doesn't make me feel any better, once he's wiped it off with a coke-snorting sniff on his bare arm. "Go home," he says thickly, through a film of crimson snot, "to your fucking wife. While she's still there waitin' for you to come back, anyway."


He's home late again, but this time I expected it; I'm sprawled on the couch, dozing off in front of The Waltons and their bucolic, far-away family life, and worrying a bloody hangnail between my teeth when the front door creaks open. "Where have you been?" I ask on cue, a baby doll with its string pulled, my voice both squeaky and croaky as I shrug off the afghan I'd draped across myself. I catch a glimpse of the clock in the light from the TV, signing off with the National Anthem; it's past midnight, I'd managed to fall asleep. That's a fair bit more audacious than he usually gets.

He smiles. It's not a particularly pleasant smile. "With my mistress." He kneels down to unlace his boots, takes his time with the double knots. "Well, I mean, one of them, anyway. 'S gettin' real hard to keep track, I've started havin' to color-code my calendar and everything."

When he looks up at me again, I realize why he's been avoiding eye contact, and it's not because of a guilty conscience— the left side of his face is swollen, the twilight purple-blue of fresh bruising, with a black shadow at the center. "What happened to you?" I demand, more worried about that, for the moment, than rising to the bait. I sit back down on my hand to keep from getting him a bag of frozen peas. I'm not going to fetch and carry for him. "Did you get jumped?"

"Yeah, by my kid brother, he was real pissed to hear that you're sat at home with my baby while I'm out entertainin'." Oh, no, I specifically told him— "I mean, I can't even blame him, I'd want to knock me out too. 'Cept the problem is, I didn't do it."

I part my dry lips, the corner of my mouth cracking, but he cuts me off before I can speak. "You think I'm fuckin' around on you." He laughs, mirthlessly, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that only makes him look like he's defending his torso. "You think I'm… me. Fuckin' around."

He's so offended he's sputtering, flushed wine red along his cheekbones, his eyes bright and hard; against all reason, his fury calms me like the first drink did. Partly because the outraged conviction in his voice is impossible to deny, and partly because as horrible as it is, I'm glad I can still make him angry, that he's got enough invested in us to even care. He likes to pass himself off as cold or indifferent, untouchable, but I know better. Know just how hot he can burn. "I have no idea what to think, just what you expect me to." My own anger laps at the surface of my mouth and bursts free, and it's almost a welcome visitor, after so many days spent shrouded in a numb fog. "You stay out all night, you feed me the flimsiest excuses in the world when you bother to come back, like I'm not even worth the effort of a good one—"

"Out working to pay them neverending bills, you expect me to bring home a signed note from my foreman every day, like I'm a kid who's been cuttin' school—"

"You had that woman eating scrambled eggs at my kitchen table, and I'm supposed to just take that with a smile?"

His jaw slackens a little, like he's struggling to process the sheer depths of my foolishness. "God in heaven," he finally says, staring up at the spiderweb crack in the ceiling. "That woman drops by for twenty minutes, talkin' my ear off about what's been goin' on with Soda, and you think I'm out layin' pipe because I fixed some eggs in a pan for her? Same broad I dropped like a bad habit for sleepin' around in the first place?"

The faint curl of contempt coming off of his voice, like the residual smoke from a stubbed-out cigarette, is unmistakable. "At least give me enough credit for my brains, if I don't get none for my fidelity," he adds, a jabbing aside. "You really reckon I have so little sense, if I was screwin' her, I'd bring her back to the house for you to take a good look?"

Of all the possible things I could change about him, the way he likes to twist the knife and prove he's the smartest person in any given room, it's close to the top of the list. I'm just delighted that what's really bothering him, about all this, is the implication that he'd be a bad cheater if he put his mind to it. "You don't get to talk to me like I'm some Ramirez bitch." I sound like Jasmine, the kind of woman who wrangles gangbangers every day and wrings the respect right out of them; maybe I need to channel her for once. "Who do you think I am, Carmen, hangin' off your uncle's arm and laughin' at all his jokes that don't land because he promised her a real Gucci purse for Christmas? I'm your wife, and I'm your child's mama— even if it's not her, it doesn't take Nancy Drew to figure out you've been up to something—"

"And your solution to that problem was tellin' my brother that I can't keep it up?"

Oh, Curly wanted to discuss that too, huh.

"I was drinking, I shouldn't have..." A promising start right there; my face hot like scarlet fever, now I'm the one dodging eye contact, knocked off my self-righteous pedestal. I still can't believe I said that out loud. It looks like he can't either. "I'm sorry you're embarrassed, but—"

"We've blown straight past embarrassed— I wanted to be struck down where I stood like them kids makin' fun of Elisha in the Bible. Did I mention he showed up at my job high as a kite?"

"He wasn't doin' any cocaine back at the apartment—"

"Then he was snortin' it off the steering wheel as he rounded the corner… or something lighter, dexedrine, maybe. I cannot have him doin' that shit on my work site, causin' scenes—"

"When did this become my fault, all of a sudden?"

"Probably when you decided to give Curly a bird's eye view of our bedroom? What did you think would happen after that?"

This is so… well, there's no better word for it. Embarrassing. Grimacing and avoiding the subject with all the awkwardness of a pair of virgins on our wedding night, who'd been sat down for a rudimentary 'talk' by the priest the day before. I'm not in the right here, at least not on this, but that doesn't stop me from ramming forward like a snowplow through concrete anyway. "If you'd said two words to me about it yourself, instead of leavin' me to guess—"

"You don't even let me look at you, I'm sorry, maybe I need a little more visual stimulation—"

It's nasty like a hit to the teeth, mostly because he's right— again— but I'm not letting him turn this back around on me and my nonexistent self-esteem. "You're no kind of liar, don't even start—"

"Oh, I dunno, you seem to think I'm a real successful one—"

"I knew somethin' was wrong, really wrong, but I didn't push it because I never do, not when it counts—"

"You wantin' to take a pickaxe to my skull like you're excavatin' it, does not mean I have to—"

"What all do I want, exactly, what have I ever demanded from you? That you come home at night, do anything to take care of your own daughter, stop avoiding me like I have some kind of contagious disease? Just because your family—"

I cut myself off, can't finish the sentence, but it's too late to take back what's already flown out and I'm not sure I even want to. Not when it hurts to feel like yet another leech sucking at his blood supply, that he can't manage to shake off his arm. "No, say it, about my family." He cocks his head ever so slightly, mocking in his calmness, but his jaw's strung tight. He grinds his teeth, but he tossed out his mouth guard after a week. "I think I already have a pretty good idea, though."

We weren't yelling, exactly, but voices were getting raised— he's hushed like he's whispering in a movie theater now. I turn to our wedding picture on the mantle, the only time I've seen him smile on camera. When I open my mouth again, no sound comes out. "Gabriela…" He pinches the bridge of his nose, hard, and looks away; he almost never refers to me by my full name, and it's jarring now. "I ain't cheatin' on you. Not with one broad, not with fifty. How in the hell do you expect me to prove a negative?"

"Tell me where you've been." The answer springs immediate to me; I find my voice again as easily as I lost it. "Tell me why I shouldn't go with the most obvious explanation here."

There is another possibility, of course. The one I'm starting to believe— you can't fake this kind of sincerity. I'd just prefer if he was catting around with half the female population of East Tulsa, than to have that be the truth.

It's his turn to be quiet for too long. He's trying to come up with a believable story on the spot, and he's choking on it; at least I can be grateful he hasn't learned how to lie to my face smoothly yet. "I told you." I lace my fingers together so tightly, I swear they might break, if I apply any more pressure; the diamond on my wedding ring digs into my skin, hard enough to leave an indent behind. "I'm not going to be a gangbanger's mistress." I make sure to put emphasis on both words. "You go all in, or you don't get anything." And I let that threat hang in the air like a sword suspended over his head.

I don't expect him to reach for his boots and shucked jacket again, though maybe I should've. He feels threatened enough, he bolts. "Wait, where do you think you're goin' now?" I sputter, like I'm his mother and he's supposed to be grounded for the weekend, and there's a car horn honking outside my door. What am I fixing to tell him next, that we're not done having this conversation?

"Out," he tosses carelessly over his shoulder. "Don't wait up."

The string of cuss words that spews out of me is something no romance heroine would ever say, even if she had the barrel of a gun up to her head or a mouth full of, well, shit. Then again, you better believe if one of them was stuck with Tim instead of sweet-talking, fine-mannered Lord Hathaway, they might just start needing a broader vocabulary, too.

Not that he's going to let me get the last word in, though, he stops in the doorway before he leaves. Rakes his eyes up and down— the milk-stained shirt, lumpy bra, splotchy complexion— with want so blatant it burns a hole through me. "If I had any energy left for fucking between my first, second, and third jobs—" he points right at me, enunciating every syllable— "believe me, any at all, don't worry. I'd be fucking you."

The way he slams the door without a care in the world wakes Neni up with a piercing squall, which makes me want to kill him all over again. It's not just anger, though, that strikes in the pit of my stomach like a lit match.