Free Swimming Sweet Arrow by Maureen Gibbon

that look when they grew too fast, or when they wrestled and always had to make weight.
    “You going to party with us?” I asked.
    He leaned back against the kitchen counter, slouching against the wood, his arms crossed over his chest. He mostly looked down instead of looking at us, but when he did look up, when he did meet my eyes, I learned two things about him: that he wanted to be there talking to us or listening to us talk, and that he was nothing like Ray.
    “Naw,” he said. “If I have one, I’ll want another.”
    “Why can’t you have one and another if you want it?” I said.
    “Got to work.”
    “He’s working eleven to seven this week,” June said for him. When she spoke for him, he looked over at her, not turning his head but tilting it, pointing to her with his chin and lifting his eyes to her. That fast, I knew he spent a lot of time looking at June and listening to her. I knew that because—I don’t know how to say this another way—when he looked at her and listened to her, he used his mouth as well as his eyes.
    “Have the rest of mine,” I said, and swirled my own glass. “I promise I won’t let you have any more.”
    “All right,” he said. And I watched him unfold himself from against the counter, and I watched him bring the glass up to his mouth, his fingers over the top edge of the glass. He didn’t look at June again, but by then it didn’t matter. I’d already seen.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    “Listen to him. It’s his whiskey,” June said, and he smiled at that.
    Luke left by the back door—way too early to go to work, but maybe he didn’t want to be seen by me any longer. I waited a little while, but I knew better than anybody what I’d seen. I said to June, “What, are you fucking the brother, too?”
    I listened to the clock tick and watched June stare at the Jim Beam. Then I listened to her say, of all things, “Not yet. But I will.”
    “June,” I said, and made her name about three syllables long.
    “Now you know who I love.”
    That shut me up for a good long moment. Instead of trying to say anything, I let myself look at her in the kitchen of that run-down house on the mountain. I was surprised that she said she loved Luke, because in my mind, I thought it was just fucking. Ray was the one who gave her a ring, and Ray was the one she was supposed to be living with. I figured if she was wanting to fuck Luke, it was for the same reason I’d wanted to fuck Frank Pardee: curiosity, danger.
    “You’re the only one who knows,” she said.
    “You and Luke know.”
    “I mean Ray doesn’t know. That’s what I’m asking you, not to say.”
    That was the first time I thought about my role in all of it. If I knew about Luke and didn’t tell Ray, I would be lying, and if I told Del none of it, I would also be lying. Ray was his friend.
    “What the fuck,” I said. “I can’t even believe it. What about Ray?”
    “I love him. I love them both.”
    Her voice sounded sweet. I didn’t know if it was the whiskey talking or if she really thought it was that simple.
    “You just got done telling me you had to get used to how much Ray liked you,” I said. “Now you say you love him.”
    “I do love him. He’s the reason I met Luke.”
    “Oh, Jesus. You just mean you can’t have one without the other.”
    “Something like that. Don’t be mad at me, Vangie. I wanted to tell you the truth.”
    We sat there not talking. I knew I had no right to say anything to her, not given what I had done with Frank Pardee. I tried to separate June’s actions from my own, though, because it was her life she was speaking about, and not mine at all.
    “When did it start?” I said. “When did you start up with him?”
    “I don’t know. Almost as soon as I moved in. It took us a long time to even kiss.”
    “How long is a long time?”
    “Weeks. More than a month. All we did at first was talk. It’s almost as easy to talk to him as to you. I even told him things about Kevin.