Free Pile of Bones by Bailey Cunningham Page B

other.
    Dad might even believe me if I said I was going to live in a made-up city. We used to build cities out of sofa cushions.
    He remembered storming the love seats and leather sectionals, then fleeing to the bunk bed section, which provided the best cover. His father would chase him, brandishing a fluorescent light tube like a bastard sword.
I’ll never yield the Papasan chairs! Not even under torture!
And they would run in ever-expanding circles, around the legion of recliners and glass-topped tables that formed the boundaries of their kingdom. Even now, when Andrew found himself in strangers’ living rooms for the first time, he always wanted to arrange their furniture into a citadel. They were rarely amenable to it.
    He brought the plate of Triscuits back to the living room. Shelby was viciously circling something on an exam. Carl saw his wineglass and nodded in approval. The next hour was a frenzy of eating and underlining. They managed to reduce their piles. Carl was only marking historical précis, which required fewer comments. After the third essay, Andrew stopped trying to explain what a caesura was. Gradually, marking-and-drinking became just drinking.
    “I want to write a song for my exes,” Carl said, half-reclining on the couch.
    “To apologize?” Shelby asked.
    “No. I’m a great boyfriend. The song would celebrate their best qualities. Like, my ex Trish worked at Cinnabon, so I’d sing about how she always brought home icing in little containers. You could stay up all night after huffing one of those.”
    “Access to icing was her best quality?”
    “Definitely one of them.”
    “My exes don’t need a paean. They need a curse—something I could plug all their names into at once, to save time.”
    “Really? There must have been a few good ones.”
    Shelby refilled her wineglass. “Brent cheated on me, and stole my Costco membership, for some weird reason. Simon gave me mono. Extreme Kim broke into my car just so she could reposition all of the mirrors. Who does that?”
    “Did you dump her?”
    “Sort of. I wasn’t firm enough about it, though. She still thought we were dating when she saw me dancing with Stacey, who was just a friend. Things got ugly—hence, the breaking and entering that occurred later.”
    “You have to be firm about these things,” Carl said. “I have a speech.”
    “That’s cold.”
    “Not at all. It works. I cover all the essential points and, by the end, we both know that it’s over. There’s no ambiguity.”
    “I never really know when it’s over.” She sighed. “There’s always that moment, where you look at the other person and think, ‘Maybe we can turn this around.’”
    “You never really turn it around, though. You just end up exposing an uglier angle.” He shook his head. “Better to make a clean break.”
    “With footnotes.”
    “Endnotes.” He looked at Andrew. “What about you, buddy? How do you end things?”
    I don’t begin them,
he thought.
    The truth was that most of his relationships had been short-term. He’d meet someone for coffee. They’d tell him what a good listener he was, not realizing that he was too nervous to talk. Coffee would devolve into quick sex, and then he’d find himself back on the bus, slightly disheveled and amazed that he’d been naked with another human only a few moments ago. He remembered their apartments, theirbowls and teakettles, the hospitality of their animals, even as their names faded. He remembered their smiles and the shock of being in their hands, the odd trust that you could feel with a stranger.
    But mostly, he remembered waiting for the bus afterward. For a moment, he’d expect to see the lot of them walking down the street. He’d give them a questioning look.
Did I forget something?
They’d all kiss him.
    Come back. Let’s watch
Firefly.
Let’s crawl into bed and read over each other’s shoulders. Let’s compare all of our favorite things, and then make a whole new list. We can