Chapter 7: The Look

After the dishes, the house split the way houses split when two different kinds of evening want to happen at once. Sue and Carrie steered me toward the living room and a movie that had been chosen for the crime of being light. Kevin and Andrew stayed at the table with beer and the leftover business of a son who had come home from another city to discuss school, the band, and his future—the ex-girlfriend I had already seen on a phone screen and did not need described again.

The movie played. I could not have told you the plot if someone had offered me money. Sue and Carrie used the runtime the way they used most tools: to get at the thing underneath. Justin was an idiot. Justin had made a mistake. I should not let a parking-lot speech take a wrecking ball to a person who was worth more than he had ever known how to hold. They said I was better than he deserved. They said it more than once, with variations, as if repetition might get the sentence past the part of me still standing next to his car.