High Horse

(“Girl Squalor” A.J. Brown)

By A.J. Brown

Before

They’ve been clearing out the laundromat my bedroom window overlooks for a week now. Black garbage bags lined up firing-squad style against a hospital green paintstripe.

From here, I can only see about a foot inside the window. The grey tile inside matches what’s just out front exactly. I’ve been trying to make the laundromat in the Sims for the last three hours, guessing at the inside. There are an awkward number of washing machines, and I can’t place them back to back because the game won’t let them touch. The fucking things turn red every time they hover over where I want them to go. I snap the laptop shut.

This doesn’t even make the top five most pathetic things I’ve done this week.  

The laptop burns against my bare thighs. When I lift it, exposing the red beneath, the fan buzzes against my fingertips. I light a stick of incense first, then a cigarette, try to blow all the smoke out the window. Ainsley hates smoking, but I learned quickly into our arrangement that she can’t tell one kind of smoke from another.

Ainsley is a painter. She’s pretty good, but she has a trust fund so it doesn’t count. These days, modeling is her thing. She wants to break into acting.

We met on Craigslist after Sean and I broke up. Her listing included a professional photo of herself sipping a latte at the kitchen table, doe-brown eyes scrunched at the corners, looking off into the distance, wearing a men’s shirt.

The listing sought someone clean and quiet, who wouldn’t mind her artist’s lifestyle, which turned out to mean tolerating her stumbling in at all hours, a revolving door of medium-ugly to blandly handsome men who don’t flush the toilet, and a habit of letting dishes pile up.

Ainsley is pretty in an old money way. Classic, clean. Her coppery hair is gathered into a claw clip that matches the tortoise of her blue-light glasses exactly.

Her attention is fixed on the flatscreen in its baby pink frame. A glass of rose sweats on the coffee table.

Ainsley only watches TV on Mondays.

“Where is everyone?” Everyone is usually here by now. Everyone is a group of girls who spend their time clamoring over each other to take photos with their lips parted just so for their Instagram stories, making sure Ainsley can be seen in them.

Ainsley is the kid of some producer or gallerist. Being seen with her can open a lot of doors. Ainsley and I aren’t friends, but I can’t help hating them a little. I’ve never heard one of them ask her a question about herself.

“It’s announcement night,” Ainsley says.

“What announcement?”

Cheers erupt from the screen. Ainsley and The Host of the show say, “The next Singleton,” at the same time. She pats the couch beside her. Her phone has been buzzing since I entered the room. Before, probably. She ignores it. Ainsley can make you feel like the only other person in the world.

She smiles. “Come sit.”

I fiddle with the fake wedding ring I wear to hide the tan line my real engagement ring left. “I’m really not into this–“

“I know, you’re soo not like other girls.” She drags out the o’s with an eyeroll to match, but she’s smiling. “Come sit anyway, I won’t tell anyone.”

I do.

Her phone is still buzzing. She slides me her glass of rose, offering me a sip. It’s floral, not like the cheap stuff I usually buy, whose taste reminds me of sorority houses and vomit.

Framed in Ainsley’s baby-pink womb, the host lifts his arm and a curtain descends. He says a name I know, but it’s a common one, and I don’t think anything of it until its owner walks onstage and the world drops out from under me. Because I know him, or I did.

“He’s cute,” Ainsley says, picking up her phone.

I drain the rest of her glass and pour her a new one.

Ben moved away after sixth grade, and I never saw him again. I heard he moved to LA, but people from our town thought everywhere in California was LA. He was all knees and arms then, with a bowl cut and a weird mole next to his upper lip. The mole is all I can look at while he talks. There is a montage that includes a golden retriever and a vintage truck. He has an accent that doesn’t belong to either place.

Ainsley is too busy answering a text to notice when I forgo the pretense of glasses and drink the rest of her rose straight from the bottle.

After a while, she flicks off the TV and goes to bed, saying she’ll tape her audition tomorrow. The last few weeks of watching were research, apparently. Muted music filters into the hallway from her room.

Her new backdrop and ring light are placed and primed in the dining room, where she says the best light is. There are still creases in the backdrop where it was folded up in its package.

I stare at them for a long time before retreating into my squalor den.

When I fall asleep, I dream that the bags lined up outside the laundromat are full of body parts.

---

I read the email three times before I registered the words. I missed my exit, and almost hit three cars and a pedestrian on the way home.

I try to tell myself that people meet in stranger ways.

My parents were married and two months pregnant before they’d known each other for three, and I don’t know two happier people. But my parents are professors, erudite enough to pull off something that stupid and reckless and call it passion.

That was true love, elusive and precious. Not some insipid reality show.

Sean and I met in college, dated for four years, got engaged once we both had decent enough jobs. I moved across the country to support him through grad school, where he dumped me for my best friend.

Nyah was unemployed, a musician. Talented, but not successful. She’d never answered to anyone in her life. Everywhere she went, she left destruction in her wake. She blew up every friendship she’d ever had, dropped out of every school she’d ever attended. I’d heard a rumor that three of her high school teachers quit because of her.

I loved her for all of it. More than I’d ever loved Sean. I loved her for her destruction, for the way she never apologized. Nyah wasn’t mean, she just didn’t take any shit. That was what I thought, anyway. Now I was just another part of the wreckage.

I was thinking of Nyah, of people who go after the things they want, when I turned on my camera and settled against Ainsley’s backdrop. I’d listened to her audition through the door, planned what I wanted to say, and waited until Ainsley left for a gallery opening. My trashcan overflowed with balled up paper covered in crossouts and pen-holes. I don’t remember what I ended up submitting.

I wasn’t expecting to get it. I am not the sort of person who gets things. But there was the email, sitting in my inbox, ejaculating digital confetti every time I opened it.

I’d tried The Right Way, and all it got me was four wasted years, a dumb tan line, and a crappy sublet with a nepo baby. And it’s not like I’m actually meeting Ben for the first time. I’ve known him since Kindergarten.

By the time I turn the key in the lock and a wave of a/c freezes the sweat on my skin, I’ve made up my mind.

Week One

My grandparents have a farm in Wisconsin where they raise cows. I stand in a room full of girls and can’t help but be reminded of a slaughterhouse. We stand shoulder to shoulder, glitzy gowns under fluorescent light. The scent of everyone’s perfume coalesces in a dizzying haze. I think I might be high on it.

The hair and makeup team pass us back and forth. A PA hands me a pair of earrings that remind me of a cattle tag, along with a stern reminder that I’ll have to return them at the end of the night, and I file into line beside Ainsley. When my name is called over a loudspeaker, I cattle-stumble to the gate on newborn legs.

Ainsley squeezes my hand and mouths good luck. She loaned me a dress that costs more than my rent. I googled it. I do my best to smile back before I meet The Host at the door.

He is even more unsettling close up.

He looks me up and down. “Sigourney?”

“Sig,” I say.

His artificially taut brow wrinkles. “Is that Irish?”

“My parents met at a screening of Alien.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. I follow him out of the room, ears ringing in the silence. There are no cameras yet. I wonder if Ben will recognize me.

He’s even more handsome in person, in a suit that looks like it was made for him. Probably it was. His dark hair is brushed away from his face, and the lights have been specifically engineered to catch his eyes, the ring of brown inside the green. The mole next to his mouth and the stains on his front teeth remind me of pocket folders, Captain Crunch, and homework at his kitchen table.

It takes him a second, but when he does recognize me, it wipes the grin right off his face. “Sigourney?”

I wish I’d thought of something clever to say. “It’s just Sig now.”

He repeats, “Just Sig now.” He takes in Ainsley’s dress, whatever the team did to my hair and face. I didn’t have the stomach to look before, which I’m glad of as I watch Ben’s eyes rake over me. He opens his mouth and closes it a few times like he means to say something, but he doesn’t. Neither do I. I can feel myself sweating. Layers of mascara stick my eyelashes together every time I blink. I hope I don’t smell, but probably I do.

I doubt Sean and Nyah are watching. They don’t watch TV, and the only streaming service Sean has is Criterion. I picture them anyway, watching Ben and I stand in stiff silence. I think of Ainsley’s everyone and suddenly it’s far too hot. As soon as I’m out of camera-view, I pull at the dress. It’s too loose in the chest and too tight in the stomach. The audacious slit up the thigh is riding dangerously high, past sexy into public indecency.

The pulse of the mansion beyond the door hits me and the ground tilts for a moment. I take a steadying breath as twin peals of laughter, Ben’s and the next girl’s, erupt behind me. I resist the urge to rub my sticky eyelashes with the heels of my hands.

When I push the doors open, Ainsley is already inside, surrounded by a group of women who look like movie stars. Outside the slaughter-line and holding delicate champagne glasses, I don’t recognize anyone other than her.

“So what did you think of Ben,” someone asks as I sit beside Ainsley. She drags out the n so his name sounds like Bennnn. No last name, like they know him.

Not Ben G. from grade school, Bennnnnn.

Ainsley tosses her copper hair over one shoulder, revealing the delicate straps of her cream silk dress. She is dressed more simply than the rest, but she is unquestionably the most beautiful woman in the room. I can tell I’m not the only one thinking it by the way a few others click their tongues and slide their eyes in her direction. They clearly mean to go for derision but it only makes Ainsley’s carefree grin look more radiant by comparison.

I don’t have time to answer before The Host returns with a flushed and self-conscious looking Ben.

They take turns saying something I don’t hear above the rushing in my ears. I make eye contact with the boom guy who offers me a small smile. Ainsley laughs at something Ben says as manicured applause fills the room and spills out of the open windows. And then it’s over.

The operators step away from their cameras. The lights dampen to a sickly yellow. Shoulders drop, and there are nervous laughs and hands run through hair, the delicate sound of bobby pins hitting tile.

I look for the boom guy but he’s already gone.

---

I have the dream again, the one where the laundry bags are full of body parts. Only this time, instead of looking at the bags through my window, I am in one. I push against the plastic, gagging on the reek of dismembered bodies but it only stretches. The only light comes from a narrow opening at the top. I reach for it, and meet skin. Clammy and dark. I turn my head and am met with Nyah’s blank eyes and gaping mouth.

Ainsley gathers my hair away from my face as I retch again.

When Sean and I broke up, I couldn’t hold down food for a month. When he told me about him and Nyah, my head was already in the toilet.

“Did you have too many of those cocktails?” Ainsley hands me a glass of water. I can’t bring myself to take a sip yet. If I open my mouth, I’ll throw up again. I nod my head.

I didn’t drink at all last night, but I don’t want to tell Ainsley about the dream. I haven’t told her about Nyah and Sean either. That was humiliating enough without my perfect roommate whose only reference point for heartbreak is probably this show knowing about it. And I doubt she’d thought twice about the bags, if she’d noticed them at all.

Ainsley clicks her tongue and hands me some aspirin. I take it anyway. Resting my head on the toilet seat, I watch her bustle around the bathroom, a flurry of smells and brushes. Her movements are practiced, precise. She fluffs her hair and unplugs her curling iron.

Apparently, the accent I’d noticed is part of a whole cowboy thing Ben’s adopted. He’d written darlin’ on the card that told us we’d all be horseback riding today. I wonder where a person rides horses in Los Angeles, or if he knows how. A part of me is glad I brought barn clothes, not that I have much else. I had to get rid of most of my clothes when I left Sean’s. I’d only been able to take what I could fit in my Civic.

Ainsley has a new wardrobe she bought for the show, which I guess is why I barely saw her the whole week I was packing. She snips the tag off a pair of cowgirl boots that perfectly match her cropped blouse. Cream must be the common denominator, since both are the same color as the dress she wore last night. Smart. Cream evokes the altar without being too bridal. White would have seemed presumptuous.

“We have to meet The Host in 20,” Ainsley says, offering me a hand. I take it and stand up, gripping the edge of the counter.

Maybe If I’d left yesterday, I could have been the mysterious girl from Ben’s past who slipped into the night. Or better yet, they could have forgotten about me entirely. I guess that’s still a possibility, if they decide not to use my footage. Except I didn’t leave, and unless I pull it together in the next twenty minutes I’ll be the hungover-looking girl in barn clothes. If nothing more interesting happens, that might actually be novel enough to merit some screen time.

I turn on the water as soon as Ainsley leaves the room. Remnants of last night’s eye makeup skidmark into lipstick that looks more like a nosebleed. I feel like human grease. In the eye of the ornate mirror, I look like it too. I strip off my t-shirt and boxers I stole from Sean. Steam curls in the air.

I scrub myself until my skin peels. I do not feel clean.

Week Four

I wonder when I started thinking of my room in Ainsley’s apartment as home. It’s hardly even a room. Before Ainsley listed it for some extra cash, it was a closet.

This room is even smaller. My side has filled up quickly, even though I underpacked. We’ve collected trinkets from all of our silly outings: horseshoes, a pair of embossed wine glasses from the winery, a colosseum keychain from the week we pretended to be in Rome. Ainsley keeps each week’s forget-me-nots, tokens of Ben’s continued interest that mean we get to stay, in a vase. Combined, we have eight.

Our room is on the first floor of the house. Standing at the window, I am a doll in its box. Each of the ground floor windows has a window box overflowing with little white flowers, the kind that grow everywhere in the valley. Normally this is my favorite smell, but these are starting to rot. The sickly sweetness wafts in on the night air, mingling with smoke.

The other girls are already at the cocktail party. I hear clinking glasses and high-pitched laughter outside the door. I peel off my shirt. By the sound of things, the party won’t be winding down anytime soon. I pull another cigarette from the carton and light a stick of incense. I close my eyes and exhale, sliding a hand into my underwear.

When I open my eyes, the boom guy is staring at me through the window, openmouthed. We look at one another for a moment before his own hand moves south. We are still looking at each other when I reach up my other hand and pinch my nipple, roll it between my fingers. I can come just from this, but I’m putting on a show. I roll my hips into my hand and open my mouth.

My cigarette falls into the windowbox.

---

Ainsley returned from her solo date earlier covered in paint and holding a forget-me-not. She’s showered at least twice since, but there’s still some in her hair, just in the back. It’s the first thing I notice when I stumble onto the patio.

Her hair shimmers in the warm light. Candles and strands of exposed bulbs are strewn across pergola beams and clustered on side tables beside plush furniture that looks ridiculous outside. A pile of forget-me-nots rests on a table framed by a picture window that looks into the warm light of the den.

At some point during the evening, Ainsley stole Ben’s cowboy hat. She tips the brim toward him. Probably neither of them know what it means. Except he gives her a look that makes me think maybe he does. I am surprised by jealousy that curls, hot and vicious, inside me.

I’m not the only one who hasn’t approached Ben. A few talk to one another, giggling and nervous. Some hover near him. I sit beside a woman who could be a painting. Her dark skin is almost purple in the moonlight. Delicate braids fall to her waist, interspersed with wire wraps that match her gold eyeshadow. Her diaphanous white dress catches the evening breeze and floats around her like mist. She balances her elbows on her knees and nibbles her thumbnail. She catches me staring and straightens, offering a smile that is clearly an apology.

“My son scraped his knee on the playground today,” she says. “The school called me here. I’ve never been away from him this long.” Her name is Brianna, but she goes by Bri. Her son is five, maybe? I picture a little boy with tight curls and a toothless grin.

“What’s his name?” I should know that. I think she’s told me.

“Sean,” she says.

I almost spit out the sip of champagne I’ve just taken. I manage to swallow it, but can’t stop myself from coughing. I haven’t thought of Sean– my Sean– since the first night when I had the dream about Nyah.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” I say with bubbles still stuck in my throat.

In first grade, Ben hit his head on the slide at the park. A cut sliced down the back of his ear and ran blood down his neck. They had to call his mom. I don’t know why I am thinking of this. Bri sniffles, and laughs. “Of course he is. It’s just hard.” She drains her glass. I offer her mine. “I can only imagine.”

She drains my glass too. A PA offers us two more. They like to get us drunk on this show. At least three fights have started because the girls involved had a few too many.

I search the room for the boom guy, but it’s someone different. They must have changed shifts.

I don’t think the crew are supposed to talk to us, let alone do what we did. I wonder if he thinks I’m a freak. I wonder if I think he is.

I hope I didn’t get him fired. I didn’t get to tell him I liked it. I don’t even know his name.

After we finished, I threw Sean’s old boxers through the window so he could clean himself up and I could get ready. When I buried my cigarette in the windowbox, my hand hit something hard in the dirt, and I pulled out some little rodent bone. A hip, maybe? It’s still sitting on my nightstand.

At the end of the night, Bri and I both have forget-me-nots, earning us nasty looks from the hoverers as soon as the cameras cut.

Ainsley, who has definitely had too many glasses of champagne, drapes her arm around my waist on our way back to our room. She smells incredible.

“Sig you’re s’beautiful,” she slurs.

“Okay, Ainsley.”

She pulls away, fixing her flushed little face into a pout. “I mean it. And I don’think you know’it.”

I wonder if she really thinks this, or if this is like the time I told Sean I wanted to break up with him because I was blacked out at a New Year’s party. He and Nyah looked just a little too cozy clinking glasses by the fire.

“Thanks, Ainsley,” I say.

Something sparks in her eyes, and before I know it, she has me pressed against the wall and her lips are on mine. It’s less of a kiss and more an exchange of breath. When she pulls away and runs full-tilt to the bathroom to throw up, I am still holding my arms up as if in surrender.

Week Seven

I am starting to hate Ben. Who is he to reject these women?

A girl with a PhD sobbed until she gagged over the kitchen sink when Ben didn’t invite her on a group outing to a winery. I wanted to tell her the wine wasn’t even good. It would have been a lie though, so maybe it was just as well that she wasn’t here when we woke up the next morning.

It’s easier to get to know the other girls, now that there are so few of us. Two are nurses, including Bri. One went to Harvard. She’s a human rights lawyer. Then Ainsley and me, competing for the attention of a faux-cowboy.

What’s really bleak is that when Ainsley sauntered into the kitchen this morning and read, “Sig, let’s take a walk down memory lane,” off a piece of heavy cardstock embossed with gold, my heart jumped into my throat.

I am still passing the card between my fingers.

“Your hair is insane,” Bri says, wrapping a strand around Ainsley’s curling iron.

“There’s so much of it,” Ainsley agrees around a mouthful of bobby pins. “Close your eyes.”. Ainsley pats cold things and powdered things on my face to make me look glowy, but natural.

Bri made us friendship bracelets. Her son taught her how. There’s one from him above the one that matches mine on her wrist. It’s frayed and dirty, the bright blues and greens sun-bleached and grayed. She never takes it off.

All of these women are too good for Ben, but especially her. Part of me is tempted to tell her about the time he pissed his pants in third grade during a standardized test. It was the first year we’d had to take them, and he didn’t know if he was allowed to ask to use the bathroom.

---

Apparently “memory lane” is covered in shit.

After Ainsley and Bri decided I was ready and I got the OK from the makeup team and a wink from the boom guy that made my face hot, I was dropped off at a winding dirt road that slowly turned to straight manure. I trudged through the muck to a stable with three horses where I met Ben. One of the horses is his, an American Quarter named Pop-Tart.

“I was surprised to see you,” he says. Our mics were taken off for the ride.

“You asked for me,” I remind him.

He shakes his head. “Not today, smartass. The first night.” Something flutters in my stomach. “I’m sorry I didn’t say more,” he says, “that I haven’t said more.” Ben’s arms and legs are wrapped around me. I can feel his heart beating like something caged against my shoulder blade. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Why were you surprised?” I say, as if there aren’t a million reasons.

“I thought you were engaged.” He smells like leather and sweat.

“How did you know that?”

“I follow you on Instagram,” he says.

“Why didn’t I know that?” I’m lying. I absolutely knew that.

“You never noticed me,” he says.

“That’s not true,” I say. In fifth grade, I spent the entire spring fling hiding in the bathroom when he said he didn’t want to slow dance with me. I knew he followed me, but I never thought anything of it. There is a difference between following and actually looking, an even bigger difference between looking and caring.

“Honestly, I thought this was the kind of thing you’d think is stupid,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair and guiding Pop-Tart into a trot.

“It is,” I say, “And I do.” I lay a hand on his thigh. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

He laughs, and kisses me, lips brief and warm against my cheek.

By the time we return to the stable, a family of barn cats has taken up residence in Pop-Tart’s stall. They scatter and climb up her legs onto her back as Ben leads her in and refills her water. The camera crew already packed up and left for the night. He’s more relaxed without them. His shoulders are looser and his smiles come easier.

He holds an orange kitten out to me. “You could call this guy Jonesy.”

I snort. “Did The Host tell you I was named after Alien?”

He laughs. “No, you did.” The kitten fits in one of my hands. “The first day of school. I’d never heard of it. I annoyed my parents for years until they finally let me watch it.”

The kitten crawls up my arm and falls asleep in the collar of my jacket. Ben hands me an apple to feed Pop-Tart, whose lips are velvety against my palm. She snorts and nudges my hand when she’s finished before looking for a place to lie down where she won’t squish any rogue kittens. The little orange one purrs against my neck.

“What’d you think?”

Ben is gathering hay. “Of what?”

“Alien.”

He splits the tie holding the bale with a knife he pulls from his pocket and grins. “Scared the shit out of me. I didn’t sleep for a week.” He picks up a chunk of hay and places it in Pop-Tart’s stall.

“Do you know what it means when a cowboy offers a girl his hat?” I ask.

“What?” Ben says.

“Nevermind.”

“Speaking of scaring the shit out of you,” I pull the bone from my pocket, careful not to jostle my little companion. “I found this in the windowbox outside my room.”

I used to show him bones I found all the time when we were kids. He’d scream or run away and I’d laugh.

He doesn’t do either. His face turns carefully blank.

“Do not show this to anyone.”

 “Why not?”

Something like fear glimmers in his eyes. “Promise me.”

I do.

We share a cigarette on the way back through the muck.

Week Seven

Bri went home after last night’s forget-me-not ceremony.

She didn’t say goodbye, or leave a note like she promised she would. Her friendship bracelet was all that remained in her room, little flecks of browning red smeared across the insides, bleeding through the fibers.

I thought about taking it, hiding it, to have a piece of her, if nothing else.

This week, we’re meeting Ben’s family, which means we actually have to travel. No more backdrops and actors. When we meet The Host at the airport, he looks like he’s had a fresh shot of whatever pulls his skin taut across his cheekbones. The cameras didn’t bother to meet us here, so I doubt it’s makeup. When he smiles, it seems sharper than usual.

Some of the crew is here, though, including the Boom Guy. He doesn’t acknowledge me, which stings a little. The Host’s suit isn’t so much as wrinkled. I wonder if he changed into it when he got here, or if someone brought it for him. He takes a drink from a travel mug. When he draws it away, his lips are rust-red, just for a moment, before he licks them clean. Ainsley doesn’t seem to notice. She’s still half-asleep. Her head rests on my shoulder.

The little bone in my pocket lines up perfectly with my index finger, down to the little divet for the joint.

“I have to go back.” Eyes snap to me. I swear The Host’s glitter with something like hunger.

“I left something important,” I say. “I can get myself on a later flight, if that’s easier.”

Ainsley gives me a searching look. She saw me meticulously empty my side of the room into my duffel earlier, but she doesn’t say anything.

“There’s no need for that,” says The Host, “Our flight is chartered.” His smile is all bared teeth. He sends a PA off and within minutes, I am in a limo, fingers fraying my friendship bracelet.

The smell of rot hangs in the air at the mansion. Rot, and something that reminds me of formaldehyde. I do not go back to Ainsley’s and my room, but straight to Bri’s. The bracelets are gone from her nightstand, the bed stripped. The whole room reeks of bleach. Plastic is stretched over every surface.

The other girls’ rooms are the same. Bleached and meat-packed. Only Ainsley’s and mine is preserved, a shadowbox diorama of half-dead forget-me-nots.

I packed everything except for the wine glass, which I was worried about breaking. I shatter it over the bathroom sink with the heel of the pocket knife I pull from the top drawer of my nightstand. I slide some of the more impressive shards and the knife into my carry on. No security on a chartered flight.

I need to bring back something valuable enough to warrant coming back here for it. I start opening closets, looking for something someone left behind that looks expensive or sentimental enough not to raise suspicion.

A rust stain covers the ceiling of most of the closets, dripping down the walls. Beneath the stains, the ceilings are patched. The smell of rot becomes stronger the further back I go, to the rooms of the girls who left early on. By the time I leave with someone’s earrings, I am choking on it.

I throw up before getting back in the limo.

Week Eight

I had the dream again. This time it was Bri’s body in the bags. The Host and Ben stood over her, mouths bloody, while I strained against the plastic. The last week is Honeymoon Suites, which means Ben gets to fuck us if he wants, and if we want. He smelled like Ainsley and only lasted two minutes.

His chest rises and falls evenly under my cheek. His flaccid cock rests against my thigh.

I know what I have to do, but I want to live in the suspension of this moment a little bit longer. I hope he doesn’t wake up, but on the chance he does, I have a plan for that too.

He holds me tighter. I think I could love him.

It’s just Ainsley and I. We’re both staying at the bed and breakfast in Ben’s–and my– hometown. I’m surprised he claimed this place instead of LA, though I suppose it fits the whole cowboy thing. His family never lived on a farm, though. We both lived much closer to town than where we are now.

I wonder if it would be his real family I’d meet, or paid actors. I wonder what they’d think of seeing me, if they’d even remember me. It doesn’t matter, I guess. Ben snores lightly. Carefully, carefully I reach across him for the shard of wine glass I stashed in the drawer. There are no cameras here. I finger the edge. Blood runs into my palm.

I am thinking of how when he was five, his ears stuck out. His teeth grew in uneven and a little yellow. He stirs and pulls me against his neck. I am running out of time.

I think of Bri and the bodies in the bags, of Ainsley asleep downstairs, and drag the glass across Ben’s throat.

After

I try to tell it as I remember it.

“Sig was always a little unusual.”

A hush falls over the audience. I can feel my hair sticking to the back of my neck under the heat of the studio lights. I brush it away.

“Define unusual,” The Host says, saccharine fake concern stretching his plastic brow. I want to claw the look off his stupid over-botoxed face.

“Just different.”

“But you never suspected–”

“Of course not.”

“What happened that day?” A whisper rustles through the crowd. People and eyes shift.

“She came to my room covered in blood, mumbling something about bodies in bags and a creek that led to a train station.” Murmurs from the audience. “She looked terrified,” I add. “I really think she saw something, or thought she did.”

“Now, Ainsley, you must know about the rumors surrounding the two of you.”

I do, but I am not going to make this easy for him, or for them. These vultures waiting to devour whatever pieces of Sig are left.

“I don’t, what are they?”

The Host shifts in his seat. “There are some whispers of you two being… involved.” Something in me twists. “We’re roommates.” The vulture-crowd titters. “We met on Craigslist.”

I loved Sig the moment I saw her. She was messy and weird and smoked inside, which was gross, but I pretended not to notice because it seemed like she was going through something. I let my apartment reek of crappy incense and stale smoke and tried to pretend it was enough. Maybe I didn’t notice a lot of things.

I try not to think about kissing her.

“That’s all?” he asks.

“That’s all,” I say.

---

Aiden “A.J.” Brown is a Chicago-born, LA-based writer, multimedia artist, and Aquarius rising. Their work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Dream Boy Book Club, Hobart, Heaven Magazine, and Swamp Spit among others. Their book, The Apple House is available now via Naked Cat Publishing.