Free Second Hand (Tucker Springs) by Marie Sexton, Heidi Cullinan

home.”
    She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
    “Bullshit.”
    She ignored me. “He wants to talk, and I owe it to him to hear him out.”
    “And move back in with him?”
    “I never moved out.”
    That stung, all the more so because it was the truth.
    “So you’re not coming back home?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. I have to talk to him first.”
    “What the fuck does that mean, Stacey? You have to get his permission?”
    “It’s not like that. But if I can work things out with him . . .”
    “And if you can’t?”
    She smiled awkwardly. “Then yes, I’ll come home.”
    I ducked my head and thought about that. It was what I’d wanted since she’d left, and yet, it wasn’t. I’d wanted her to come back because she missed me. Because she loved me. But here she was, telling me that Larry was her first choice.
    I was nothing more than a backup plan. Second choice again.
    “Paul?”
    “I’m going to be late for work,” I said, which was stupid because it was Sunday.
    I didn’t bother waiting for a response. I went in the bathroom and took the hottest shower I could stand. It felt like penance. Punishment for having been a fool.
    When I came back out, she was gone.
    I stood there for a long time, wrapped in a towel as my hair dripped onto my shoulders, the strangeness of the evening and the night and the morning and, well, everything swirling around me. Stacey had come back. Stacey was gone again. Stacey had gone back to Larry.
    I should have been upset. I should have felt devastated.
    I felt . . . tired.
    Without consciously making a decision to do so, I got dressed, grabbed my keys and my wallet, and started walking. After a block I realized I’d forgotten my phone, but I decided I didn’t care. What did I need a phone for? Who did I think I’d call? Who would be calling me? Stacey, because Larry had made her unhappy? Too quick for that, so no. Nick, because Brooke was sick? It was still Sunday. My mother?
    Well, she might. But it would only be to check on me. She had her own life.
    I wondered when I was going to get mine.

When El’s mother called on Sunday morning, he steeled himself for hysterics, assuming she’d figured out what they’d done in the attic. She was sunny, though, which made El relax, but not all the way. “What can I do for you, Mom?”
    “I wanted to know if you had any lamination machines at the shop. I can’t find mine, and I wanted to make the girls some bookmarks out of these great old calendars I found.”
    I found was Mom-code for I dug out of someone else’s garbage. El swallowed a nag about how she shouldn’t do that and said, “No lamination machines today, I’m afraid.”
    “Shoot. Well, I’ll get myself a backup.”
    There was only so much nagging one could swallow. “Mom, you don’t need another lamination machine. You don’t even need one lamination machine. I bet you never even took the first one out of its box.”
    “I did so. I just can’t remember where I left it.”
    He should leave it alone. He knew that. But it was another one of those academic-versus-reality moments. “Tell you what, Mom. You make the bookmarks, bring them to me, and I’ll get them laminated.”
    “Oh, I can’t bother you with that.”
    “It’s not a bother. I have a friend with a lamination machine,” he lied.
    “You do? Can I borrow it?”
    “How about when you finish, you bring me the bookmarks, and I’ll get them laminated for you?” The odds were good she wouldn’t get to that point anyway, but if she did, he’d run them to Staples for her or wherever they did laminating these days.
    “That’s nice of you to help me, sweetheart. I’ll make a bookmark for you too, then.”
    Never mind that El didn’t read books, just newspapers and magazines. “You let me know when you’re ready.”
    The conversation ended shortly after that, but El let himself get wound up over it all the same. He opened the shop like he always did, but within an hour he’d