Free Fix You by Lauren Gilley

down her back. “I’m not Dylan,” he said quietly, “and you’re not Jess.”
                  She settled her head again and let her eyes move over the oh-so-familiar textures of her room. The blue walls. Their clothes on the floor. Willa – hard to go down but dead to the world once she was – asleep on her stomach in her crib, face buried in Zeke’s mane. Not being Dylan and Jess might have been an insult once upon a time, but not now.
                  “And thank God for that,” she breathed, and closed her eyes as he doused the lamp.
     

 
     
     
     
    6
     
                  “ Y ou graduated in 2006?”
                  “I was an entrepreneurship and creativity major,” Jess said with a crisp, professional nod, crossing her legs inside the tight confines of her gray pinstripe skirt.
                  “I see that.” Her interviewer, Brad, was probably five years her junior. He had a cowlick on the side of his head that gel hadn’t been able to tame and that made him seem even younger. His tie wasn’t knotted quite right and there was a crusty spot of what looked like doughnut icing on the lapel of his jacket. He belonged behind the popcorn counter at a movie theater, but yet here he was, brows wiggling like unimpressed caterpillars as he scanned her resume, holding her financial fate in his clammy, little-kid hands. “And then you worked for, let’s see,” he’d watched someone else frown professionally and did an impersonation of it now, “Days Inn. You were a manager?”
                  “Yes, I - ”
                  “And you were there only six months? Is that when your son was born?”
                  Jess ground her molars together; her smile was forced and now frozen, her whole face stiff. She’d had a laundry list of skills and attributes to tie to her six months of managing a hotel, but Brad had jumped straight to the negative. “No,” she said and managed to say it calmly. “It wasn’t, but if I could just say that, while working for Days Inn, I - ”
                  “You wrote” – a smile streaked across Brad’s face that wasn’t a smile at all: a gotcha smirk that was full of how satisfied he was with his own performance –  “that you’re  a ‘dedicated employee,’ so how do you explain quitting after six months and not working since?”
                  “My husband was providing for the household,” she said woodenly. It went back to Dylan because every unpleasant thing in her life went back to him. “I didn’t have to work and I wanted…” It sounded so stupid now. She’d wanted to be a good wife; she’d approached creating their home, shaping their memories, as a fulltime job, morning-to-night, every day of the year. She had been dedicated, but all that dedication had blown up in her face, and how did she even begin to explain that? To this little punk, of all people?
                  “You know,” she squared her shoulders, “you’ve asked about my marital status, my child, have now suggested I’m lazy,” Brad’s eyes got big, “and I’m pretty sure the EEOC will be very interested in all of that when I lodge a complaint against your company.”
                  “You…um, oh.” Brad licked his lips and his fingers went white-knuckled on her resume. “Oh, I didn’t mean... Ma’am, I’m…”
                  Clearly, he knew what the EEOC was, but not that his company was too small to be subject to their regulation. Jess wasn’t going to wait around and explain it to him – she was enjoying his facial twitches too much. She slid gracefully to her feet and left his cubicle, stepping back out into the reception room of his real estate office.
                  “Done so soon?” the receptionist called as Jess passed through.
                  “Yep.” She didn’t