All the Acorns on the Forest Floor by Kim Hooper

Author:Kim Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

She uncorked the bottle of chardonnay he’d given her. She didn’t know why she’d saved it all this time. Or she did know why, but she was too ashamed of the reasons, of how she’d imagined they would share it, get so sloppy drunk that they’d stumble to the bedroom, fall to the floor, and get naked next to the closet. He’d yank her wool-lined winter jacket from its hanger, insist she lie on it. Because in her fantasies, her comfort was his utmost concern.

Near the end of the bottle, there was a knock at the door. When he called for her—“Alyssa, are you there?”—she scolded her drunken mind for playing this cruel trick. He knocked again, and she found herself turning the knob to let him in.

He was standing there in the same jeans and faded Pink Floyd T-shirt he had been wearing earlier. A dish towel, spotted with blood, was wrapped around his hand.

“What happened?” she asked. Her words sounded as if they were coming from a megaphone three feet behind her. She would be hungover tomorrow. She instinctively took his wound into her hand.

“I was slicing open the bag of soil with a steak knife and, I don’t know, Gemma was asking me where I’d been, and I got nervous or something. Nearly took the top off my index finger.” He gave her the same smile he gave her when he led her to the back of those warehouses. “I told her I’d take myself to the hospital. My fault, you know. I’m the clumsy idiot.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“Come with me. We’ll get a drink or something. Go out for once. I told her it could be hours at the hospital.”

“Well, it could.”

“It’s not that bad, the cut. I made it seem worse than it is,” he said. He was right. It wasn’t that bad. “Let’s just go to the drug store. We’ll pick up some gauze, some bandages. You can make it look professional. Then we can go to that bar downtown.”

Our bar, Alyssa thought. He would get the table in the back, order two vodka sodas. Under the table, his hand would find her thigh, his fingers would walk inside her, and their stoic faces would never let on. He would tell her to meet him in the bathroom, because he knew their bar had a single bathroom that locked to the outside world. There was always a line. He would hoist her up on the sink, pull her into him. Her backbone would scrape against the faucet. He would leave. She would leave two minutes later. Because he cared what strangers thought. They would finish their drinks, and he would drive her home, thank her for coming with him. She would send him on his way, after applying his bandages of course.

“I can’t,” she said. Denying him sobered her up faster than a cold shower.

“You can’t?” He looked confused.

“Not tonight,” she said, because she wasn’t ready to tell him, or herself, that she didn’t want to see him again.

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