VenCo(16)

“Sexy,” she said under her breath, then laughed. It was ridiculous, but she meant it.

Swinging her bags on the way home, she took her time, pausing to read the graffiti on the side of a mailbox (LAND BACK) and to watch the girls on the BMX take turns jumping off a small ramp.

She was fishing her keys out of her pocket when her phone buzzed—a text from Malcolm:

Backyard hang at Stacy’s tonight. Meet me at the store at 6?



She typed back a thumbs-up and went inside. Things were different today—somehow brighter, clearer. Maybe today was the day she told Malcolm how she felt.



This party is great. Stacy’s a real peach, Lucky thought, sitting on the floral-patterned couch someone had dragged outside. A real fucking peach. Lucky was a little drunk—not a lot, just the beginning part of drunk where you want to laugh and take up space.

“Hey, why are you all by yourself?” Malcolm plopped down beside her on the couch.

“Just watching this parade of humanity.” Her stomach was filled with butterflies and J?germeister. Here he is, tell him!

“I like a good parade,” he said, throwing his long arm over the back of the couch. “Anyone interesting?”

She surveyed the crowd and pointed to a woman in heavy platform boots with a dozen metal buckles on each. “That girl’s calf muscles must be jacked.”

Malcolm nodded. “I do admire her stamina.”

“I mean, plus she looks hot in those, so there’s that.”

“She does indeed.” He moved on. “What about that guy, old-school flip-glasses guy?”

He used his chin to indicate a thin man with a mullet and a pair of round spectacles with a sunglasses attachment. He was demonstrating his double-jointed arms for two extremely perplexed women.

“That man is a champion of the pick-up game,” she agreed. “I mean, no one’s used that double-jointed trick since that movie . . .”

Malcolm sat forward, excited now that they were on films. “I loved that one! I mean, it was lowbrow and punching in the featherweight division, but it knew what it was and it did it well.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lucky drawled. Fucking film students. “I just thought it was fun . . . but sure, lowbrow and self-aware. Also cool.”

He gave her a slight push, and she exaggerated the shove, tipping over. He yanked her upright and kept his arm over her shoulder. “Okay, who would you take home?”

She wanted to answer honestly. She had some drinks in her and was in a good mood. She thought about it, she really did. And then he ruined it.

“That guy right there, he’s totally your type.” He pointed with his beer bottle to a gangly weirdo hanging like a monkey from a low branch, scattering the Instagrammers from their photo area like little birds. “You should take him home. Come on, I’ll be your wingman.”

Suddenly the weight of his arm was suffocating. She shrugged it off and stood.

Anger or disappointment or the new balls she had grown since yesterday after crawling through a fucking hole in the wall made her do it. “I would take you.”

She raised a hand to her mouth to stop the words. They came out anyway.

“I pick you.” She was horrified but couldn’t stop herself. “And maybe, just maybe, you should pick me back.”

He looked at her with a confusion that morphed into pity. When he didn’t answer right away, when he looked at her that way, she felt like she might throw up. Instead, she ran across the lawn and along the side of the house.

She hoped he would follow her. She even slowed down in the narrow space between town houses. Why wouldn’t he follow her? Even as a friend?

“Fuck it,” she said out loud. “And fuck you!” she shouted over her shoulder. She made her way to the front yard, sat on the stoop, and called herself an Uber.

Sliding through the city in the back seat of a Mazda with a mercifully silent driver and a headache behind her eyes, Lucky dozed off, her cheek, held by her forearm, propped up on the window.

“You’re here. Lady . . . you have reached your destination.”

Lucky jerked awake in the back seat of the Uber. The driver was looking at her in the rearview mirror, impatiently waiting for her to leave so he could catch his next fare.

“Shit, sorry.” She grabbed her bag and opened the door. She paused before shutting it. “Uh, five stars. And I’ll add a tip. Sorry about that. Long day.” He gave her a thumbs-up, and she closed the door behind her.

She took a deep breath on the sidewalk and pulled her phone out of her pocket to give the promised rating. She had two missed messages.

I’m an asshole. Sorry for being a bad friend.



She sighed. He just had to make sure he got the f-word in there. “Fucking Malcolm.”

We need to talk.



She didn’t answer him. Instead, she sat on the curb in front of her darkened house. The street was so still now. A small breeze scattered newly shorn grass across the pavement. A wind chime tinkled from a porch across the way, and a skinny black cat slid in and around the spikes of a fence as if he were showboating at an agility competition. All around her, life was happening behind so many windows. She watched an old man eating from a coffee mug. Two girls, maybe the ones on the BMX earlier, pored over a magazine in a window seat, stopping to dissect the images and laugh. A young woman wrapped in a kimono practiced flute in her bedroom, elbows raised so high, any music teacher would be proud. And after a few minutes, a kind of anticipation settled into Lucky’s joints.