One Good Thing Read Free

place their son at a high-level job.
    I didn’t say that. It sounded a little bitter. Okay, a lot bitter.
    “Why don’t you apply at SLQ?” he asked. “I could put in a good word for you with human resources.”
    I shook my head. “What would I do? I’m probably not even qualified for anything.”
    “There are a few lower-level jobs. Some that require a high school diploma and no experience. You could see if one of those has an opening.”
    “I’ll think about it.” I sighed. “I shouldn’t have majored in art—how does that translate to a career?”
    “It doesn’t.” He grinned. “But you knew that; that’s not why you picked it.”
    No, I picked it because I’d never felt as perfectly right as I did when I was in front of a canvas. But now my easel stood in the dark corner of a closet, behind the clothes in the back that I didn’t wear. Every time I reached for my paintbrushes a twisting, consuming fear clutched at my chest.
    I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him I hadn’t painted a thing since graduation, but a shrill beep cut me off.
    I watched Drew pull out his phone again, his fingers flying over the screen. I suddenly felt a gulf between us, starker and deeper than I’d realized. I remembered how it had been before—we’d started dating our senior year of college. Drew and I had sat next to each other in biology. I didn’t usually approach new people, but he’d started a conversation with me one day.
    And though I had only a handful of friends, Drew had become one of them pretty quickly. We’d joked about our professor, who gave really long, dry lectures and whose specialty was a rare lizard in the Southwest. We’d talked about our favorite movies and music and discovered how much we had in common.
    I shouldn’t have been surprised when Drew asked me out on a date, but I was. At the time I hadn’t realized he felt something for me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted a relationship anyway, but I liked Drew, liked being around him, and I didn’t want to lose that, so I said yes.
    And for a few short months things had been good—for someone who’d reached twenty-two without dating anyone, it had been a whirlwind of new experiences—late nights and tentative gestures and walking around campus with his arm slung over my shoulder.
    I missed it. I missed him.
    When had everything changed?
    “Hey,” I said, “we should do something this week. Will you be busy?”
    “Probably,” he said. He paused to thank the teenage employee who brought us our food before turning back to me. “But I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? What should we do?”
    I didn’t like the way he said that.
Neglecting me
. Like I was some sort of puppy he had to show affection to every now and then. I brushed it off, picking up my fork and spearing a tomato. “Alyssa has a date tomorrow night. You could come over and we could, I don’t know, order takeout and watch a movie, or do whatever. It’ll be fun.”
    “Tomorrow night?” He frowned. “I don’t know if that’s—” but then he looked up from his phone. I didn’t want to know what he read in my expression—loneliness, desperation? His frown eased into a smile. “Yeah, I’ll make time for it.”
    “Good,” I said, forcing a smile. As I leaned forward and took a sip of tea, I searched around for something to talk about before he whipped out his phone again. “I went to that Halloween contest with Alyssa.”
    He groaned good-naturedly. “Where you dress up your pet?”
    “Yeah that one. It wasn’t horrible. And Princess won second place.”
    “She won a prize for that?”
    “A ribbon. First place got a gift basket with pet products, I think.”
    Drew laughed. “I can’t believe you actually went.” He took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed.
    I didn’t have anything else to do
. But that wasn’t what I said; I didn’t want him to think I was guilt-tripping him. Instead my shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I’m getting into the Halloween