When We Touch

Coco takes off ahead of us chanting, “Work out… turn to the le

ft! Work out… turn to the right!”

“Is that Supermodel?” My friend snorts.

“Her teacher’s using it to teach them left and right.”

“Shi—oot, all we got was the hokey pokey. I demand a RuPaul do-over!”

We take a few more steps with only the sounds of my energetic preschooler filling the air between us.

“Hey, Em?”

I glance up at the change in her tone. “What is it?”

“How would you feel if… say… I don’t know… Just for instance, if you were to bump into Jackson Cane?”

I stop walking. It’s like I’ve been electrocuted. My heart is flying in my chest, and I automatically touch the painful space. “Of all the things…” I whisper. “Why would you ask me that?”

Green eyes flicker to mine. “Just… he broke your heart when he left, and—”

“No,” I shake my head, needing to keep the history accurate. “He left to go to college. He needed to leave. It broke my heart when he never came back.”

I start walking again, albeit slower, and my hand moves from my chest to my stomach. Now I have heartburn.

Jackson Cane left me holding onto a promise, and after a few months, he just disappeared. He stopped calling, he never wrote, he never answered my calls or letters…

He was gone.

And I was left to pick up the pieces.

The shards.

“So if he were to come back—” Tabby’s voice is slower.

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.”

We’re at the steps leading up to Mom’s front porch, and I’m angry. I can’t believe my best friend would bring this up. She knows his name only hurts me.

“What if he did?” I snap before following my daughter into the house. “I’ve moved on.”

I’m just passing through the door, when I hear Tabby say behind me. “Have you?”

I’m still mad at Tabby a half-hour later when my mother launches into her weekly post-service post-mortem over our usual fried chicken lunch.

“I thought the pastor’s words on lasciviousness were particularly well-timed with all that’s going on in the world today,” she says.

It takes every ounce of willpower to hold my gaze on my chicken and not roll my eyes at her. Like I don’t know this is a direct reference to the penis cake.

“That’s a word I’ve never been able to spell,” Tabby jumps in, saving me. “Lasciviousness… Lascivious. Ness. What does it mean?”

“It means lustful… smutty… obsessed with s-e-x.”

“Oh!” Tabby’s face brightens, and she shoves a huge spoonful of lumpy mashed potatoes into her mouth. “I can spell smutty.”

I choke on my sweet tea and almost laugh, my anger at my best friend forgotten. If anyone can deflect my mother’s obnoxious, judgmental statements, it’s her.