Heteroflexible

“Ooph, already?” my ma squeaks, her face collapsing.

I blink. “What do you mean?”

“Darlin’, Bobby, you just got here and you’re already makin’ plans to spend your whole dang summer at the Strong’s?”

Her voice is so dejected, it breaks my heart in an instant. “No, Ma,” I throw back softly, my eyebrows pulling together. “I was only askin’ about tonight, not the ‘whole dang summer’.”

“Just like last summer, and one night turns into one week, and one week into a whole month, and suddenly you’re goin’ back to the university the next morning and I’ll feel like I haven’t even seen you at all.” She sighs and slaps her apron, flour dancing in swirls from her hands like magic smoke, then turns and heads back into the kitchen. “Well, you just do you, Bobby. You just do you, I’m not gonna stand in your way. You’re a big boy now.”

I frown after her. “Now why you gotta go actin’ like I’ve come home and killed the cat?”

“Didn’t you spend enough time with that Strong boy by now? He had you all to himself this whole school year at the university.”

“Hey, hey, we came back for Christmas,” I remind her.

“And you spent ninety percent of your time over at that ranch just the same,” she sings over her shoulder, defeated, as she rolls out a ball of dough on the counter. “They even stole you away for New Year’s Eve. Your father and I spent it here, alone.”

“But Pa said that’s what you wanted to do!” I protest.

“Because he knows how attached you are to that Strong boy. We aren’t gonna stand in your way when you get that look on your face.” She starts cutting the dough into strips.

I’m trying to follow her actions with my eyes, and her words with my ears, but I have no idea what she’s doing and less of an idea of what she’s saying. “Look on my face …?”

“I didn’t get to cleanin’ up your room yet, and I’m covered in flour, so it’s gonna be a bit of a mess with my craft things. Do you have all your college stuff?” She eyes me over her shoulder. “You don’t got a bag or suitcase or nothin’ with you.”

“It’s …” Aw, jeez, here we go. “I left my things in Jimmy’s truck.”

Her hands stop. Her eyes stay on me. “And where is Jimmy’s truck?”

I sigh. “Still in the driveway.”

Her eyes flatten. “So you want to go to the Strong ranch right now and can’t even stay for supper or nothin’?”

“Nadine is … whippin’ up something.” I feel so awful. “But I can cancel. I can just go grab my things outta his truck and—”

“That woman can’t cook worth a lick of anything.” Even in her faint, delicate voice, my ma carries quite a bite. “Y’know she’s got that Jacky-Ann doin’ her cookin’, or some of Billy’s creations stashed in her fridge. It isn’t she who’s whippin’ up a thing.”

If my ma’s got a sore spot at all, it’s a big-haired, tall, skinny, hot-pink-fingernail-painted, and melon-boobed one called Nadine Strong—Jimmy’s ma. It’s an odd dynamic, that my pa and Jimmy’s pa, Paul Strong, get along so well—having been best buddies themselves back in high school—and the wives hate each other. Something to do with a school bake-off gone wrong. I don’t know.

“Well, whoever’s cookin’ it,” I go on, feeling like I’m walking a minefield here, “I can cancel. I can help you cook your, uh …” I look for a word to describe what she’s doing.

She turns away from the counter and crosses her arms. “Your father’s favorite. Apple pie.”

He and I have had talks about her apple pie. His insistence that it’s his favorite is more a thing he says to spare her feelings. Bless her, I figured the ruse would’ve been outed by now. “Well, I can cancel my thing with Jimmy, if you’d rather I—”

“Oh, what’s the bother, anyway? I’m gonna be busy with this and the fried foods and the brisket for an hour more or so.” She gives me a little brushing-away gesture. “Go and have fun. I’ll see you later tonight or … tomorrow or …” She sighs and turns back to the counter. “… whenever you decide you can pencil me in.”

I frown at her back, wringing my hands with frustration. I glance at the kitchen window, imagining Jimmy getting impatient in his truck, leg kicked up, getting sweatier and sweatier by the minute in his tight gray tank top and Wranglers.

I clench shut my eyes. Fuck. “I’ll stay, Ma,” I decide. “Jimmy’s got all summer to hang with me. He and the Strong ranch can miss me a little longer.”

At once, my ma’s face explodes into something akin to utter elation as she spins around to face me. This woman’s just won the son-coming-home-from-college lottery. “Really?”