August Moon Read Free

women living with seasonally employed mouth-breathers.
    “Maybe you could just be single for a while?”
    She snorted and took a long pull off the vodka. “You got any more liquor?”
    I did. It was for emergencies only, but if not now, then when? I got up and strode to the rear of the double-wide, fishing the bottle of tequila out from under the bathroom sink. I cracked it and shivered at the spicy kerosene smell. The bottle felt hot and heavy in my hand, and I recognized I was riding the buzz cusp, that point where you’re sober enough to know you should go to bed right now and drunk enough not to care. I glided back to the kitchen and mixed us both a tequila on ice with a squirt of lime juice.
    “How long had you and Gary been dating?” I asked, handing Kennie her drink.
    “I’ve known him since high school. He worshipped the ground I walked on.”
    The liquor I was drinking like Kool-Aid made me generous. “Well, of course he does.”
    “Did. He did. Now he’s all godly.”
    “Bastard.”
    She clinked my glass. “I suppose you don’t have to worry about none of this, being a lesbian and all.”
    I coughed, sending burning tequila through my nose. “Huh?”
    “Oh, is it supposed to be a secret? Then you really should start wearing makeup, honey. And curling that fieldworker hair of yours. Else, you might as well wear a sign that says you don’t want a man.”
    I ran my fingers through my hair and self-consciously wound it into a bun at the nape of my neck. Holding my hands up that high made me feel dizzy. “I don’t want a man, but not for the reason you think. They’re unreliable. The whole lot of them.”
    Kennie nodded sympathetically. “Like your dad? The murderer?”
    Christ. No wonder Kennie didn’t have any girlfriends. She didn’t know how to hang. For the record, my dad was guilty of manslaughter and not murder, but it hurt everyone involved just the same. When he was alive, he nearly drank himself to death, and when that proved too slow, he’d drink and drive. One night, he crashed into another car, killing himself and the mother and baby boy in the other vehicle. I was sixteen when it happened and people started calling me Manslaughter Mark’s girl. Not to my face, of course, but I had heard the whispers and sometimes thought I still did. Suddenly, the tequila tasted sour in my mouth, and my stomach felt oily.
    “I’m tired, Kennie. I think I wanna go to bed.”
    “That’s fine, honey chile. I’ll just crash on your couch.” She made the “sh” on “crash” long and snaky.
    “What?”
    “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m as quiet as a dead man.”
    Oof. That hit too close to home. “Can’t you sleep in your car?”
    “No can do, sugar. I biked here. I’m going to look so hot by the end of this month that Gary Wohnt will forget all about God.”
    “Biking home right now would be great exercise.”
    But Kennie wasn’t listening. She pingponged over to the sectional couch with the rust-colored, cabin-in-the-woods pattern, where she fell face down into the nappy cloth. She twitched and wriggled a little before she began snoring so vociferously that it came out her ears. I sighed, stumbled over, and lifted her head to the side so she wouldn’t suffocate. My hands were sticky blue with her eye shadow when I pulled them away. I capped the tequila, returned it to its hiding place in the bathroom, and shoved the empty vodka bottle to the bottom of the garbage so it couldn’t judge me in the morning.
    Soft tears slid down my face as I cleaned. Without Kennie to distract me, I was left with my dark and slippery thoughts, which came surfing back on the tequila and vodka. Johnny hadn’t shown up, and he wasn’t ever going to. I had been an idiot to get my hopes up, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to make that mistake again. It was long past time that I realized I wasn’t going to find love here, or anywhere. I was an independent woman, á la Kate Jackson, circa Charlie’s Angels . I