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CHAPTER 4

HAVOC

Ibroke my word to my sister on a Friday night. By Saturday morning I’d broken it twice more.

Ava-Rose took Brynn’s call lying naked on my chest in my bed. I listened to her say she was fine, she was tired, and no, I hadn’t been bothering her. She had her fingers spread on my stomach while she said it.

When she hung up, she lay quiet for a while.

“I hate lying to her,” she said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I’ve lied to cops and judges and a parole officer. I never kept a thing from Brynn in my life till tonight.” I pushed her hair off her face. “I’ll tell her myself, soon as things calm down.”

“And if she tells you to stop?”

I thought about stopping. I had Ava-Rose warm and bare on top of me, and her mouth was still swollen from mine.

“Then she’ll have to be mad at me,” I said. “I’m not giving you back.”

I’d spent seven nights on that couch. I never intended to sleep on it again.

Brynn came out to the house on Sunday with a dish of enchiladas.

I should’ve seen it coming. My sister feeds people when she’s worried. She walked into my kitchen, put the dish in my oven and sat down at my table, across from the two of us.

“Your house is depressing,” Brynn told me. “Ava, how are you living like this?”

“He makes eggs,” Ava-Rose said.

“He what?”

I had to sit at that table and pass my sister the hot sauce and keep my eyes off the woman sitting next to me. I’d had her in my shower two hours before.

I didn’t last through the first plate.

Ava-Rose’s knee was right there under the table. I put my hand on it. She jumped, and covered it by reaching for her water. I slid my hand up under the hem of her dress and left it on the inside of her thigh, high up, where her skin was hot and soft. I rubbed my thumb back and forth.

“So Doc Ames says this dog ate a whole rope toy,” Brynn was saying. “The whole thing, Ava. He had to go in after it.”

“That’s awful,” Ava-Rose said. Her voice came out high. She’d gone pink all the way down her neck.

“You feeling okay?”

“It’s the hot sauce.”

“You love hot sauce.”

“It’s a lot of hot sauce.”

I moved my thumb higher. Ava-Rose kicked me in the ankle under the table, hard, and smiled at my sister.

Brynn stayed two hours. She hugged Ava-Rose at the door for a long time. Then she hugged me, which happens about once a year, and said into my shirt, “Thank you for looking after her.”

I stood on the porch and watched her taillights go down my road.