Hate You Not

I give her a grin, and she gives me a glare, and I can feel my cock twitch behind my fly.

“What?” I goad her. “Puppy got your tongue?”

“You’re throwing me off because you’re impulsive and you put the kids at risk, and you undermined me by saying they could do that without asking me first. Not to mention the fact that their parents just died in a car wreck so, you know…”

She swirls her finger around her ear, the way kids in middle school used to do to mime ‘crazy.’ “Also you’re rude. You hurt my friend’s feelings. And you’re insensitive e.g. the autistic children.”

I frown. “Did you just say ‘e.g.’ in a sentence?”

“Don’t you dare insult my grammar right now. Don’t you even think about it.”

“Actually, I think you used it correctly. A lot of people say i.e., but e.g. is probably more appropriate in that sentence.”

“I’m sorry, are you an English teacher?”

I run a hand through my hair. “English was one of my college majors.”

“Oh, I fuckin’ bet it was.” She whirls on her heel and stalks inside. Even the puppies must be able to feel the rage that’s rolling off her. They scamper after her, leaving me alone in the yard.Chapter 9JuneI hate him. More than tights under cutoff shorts and socks with sandals. More than bad highlights and bowl-cut bangs and people who use the word “moist” to describe…well, I guess anything. I hate him more than the line in that Justin Timberlake song where he asks, “how’d they get that pretty little head on that pretty little frame,” like the woman he’s singing about is nothing more than a doll. I hate him more than oatmeal and house flies you can’t kill no matter how big a fly swatter you’ve got. I hate him more than being outside when it’s more than a hundred degrees and so humid your contacts are shriveling off your eyeballs. I think I even hate him more than roaches, and I don’t hate anything as much as those evil, hideous creatures; one fell from the ceiling down onto me once when I was peeing, and I’ve never been the same, nor have my lady parts.

He’s a prick, and that’s the beginning and the end of that sad tale. It’s getting sadder, too, because he ain’t leaving with my kids. Isn’t leaving, I correct myself. Even in my head, I have to do that, because he thinks my way of speaking means I’m stupid—or he would, if he heard me get Southern. I’ve been trying not to around him.

I can’t believe I let him spend even one minute with us today. That was my bad, my mistake. That was me being naive and weak, just trying to please everybody—mostly Oliver and Margot.

I sit on a bar stool in the kitchen and hold my head in my hands. It’s aching. I’ve always had allergies at all times of the year. Winter is no exception. I get up and grab myself a Zyrtec. Then I check on the kids, who are in the bathtub with two blankets, pretending like they’re Pokemons or something.

“Do you want us to get out?” Margot asks me with wide eyes and a cautious face.

I almost smile, because I know her mama wouldn’t let them play in a bathtub. My sister was a germophobe. She used to clean our bathroom twice a week sometimes when she was back in high school, especially if something else in life was making her nervous.

“Nah. You stay in there and play. That tub is clean enough. I’m going in the den to drink some tea and read a magazine.”

I sound so much like my mom when I say that. Makes my throat lock up a little bit.

Instead of doing what Mama would do, I text Leah and Mary Helen—Today sucked. If you see that prick tonight, AVOID.

Then I give my big pups a bone each and spend some time on the laundry room floor playing with the newbies. It feels good to cuddle them. When I think that he only gave them to me so he could take them away—he was so confident two puppies would break me—fury fills my chest and tightens my throat.

After tonight, he will leave. Somehow, I’ll make sure of it.BURKEOne of my friends from MIT hailed from Dallas. One Christmas, he brought a couple of us home with him, and on Christmas Day there was a rodeo. It was nothing like this.

The people here are…rougher. Their accents are thicker, their skin more tanned, as if they spend all day outside plowing fields or something. The women are dressed up in ruffled blouses, legging jeans, and expensive-looking leather boots. They’re carrying designer purses and wearing their hair not just in the classic cowgirl braids—as one might expect—but also curled and in elaborate updos. Their lipstick is red, their fingernails are freshly manicured, and most of them have got on lots of eye makeup. As a group, they’re curvy and vivacious, reminding me a little of the women in Brazil, where I spent a college summer helping install solar panels in an economically depressed neighborhood.