Free Every Little Thing by Chad Pelley

then another, each person exaggerated or changed a detail, until one version of the story had Cohen’s name, and Cohen’s part in the story, swapped with Lee’s.
    Lee Brown had been a close friend of Allie’s. An atypical friend: he was an elderly, American war vet turned sidewalk vendor. And Cohen couldn’t hear his name now without thinking about the trajectory of it all. He thought about what domino had struck what domino first, to set things in motion: how he wouldn’t have known Lee Brown, if he hadn’t fallen in love with Allie, and how he’d fallen in love with Allie, partly, vaguely, as a reaction to Ryan’s death, and how his brother never would have drowned if his mother hadn’t of insisted on a trip to the cabin, and how she wouldn’t have insisted on the trip to the cabin if his family hadn’t gotten plagued by a genetic heart disorder. And even that trickled back decades, to how his grandfather’s DNA took on ARVC, against its will, almost a hundred years ago. Because his father choose to marry a Candice Heffernan instead of a million other women. Screwy genes and all.
    But if he stacked those dominos back up and knocked them back down in the reverse order, it’s the same series of events that had led him to Allie. Minus Lee. And how Lee fit into Allie’s life was simple happenstance.
    Three mornings after the night Cohen had helped Allie paint her room, he met Lee for the first time. There was a knock on his bedroom window. His room was below ground, and his window was behind his headboard, so he had to look at the window upside down; his body awkwardly held in a backwards-crab posture. It was Allie, awake, showered, wearing a black skirt and a bright purple tank top. The sun barely up.
    He’d notice something new about her every time he saw her. The way she blinked slower than most. The way some words caught in her mouth; an over-lingering on the letter F. Fffine. Fffuck.
    She was knelt at the window, her legs pressed together, and she plunked a framed photo against the glass. “Look! For you, for helping me paint the other night!” She said, “It’s the one with the goat, in the abandoned house,” as if he couldn’t see for himself. “You said you liked that one, right?” She nodded her head, widened eyes. “Right?”
    â€œYes, thanks.”He laughed as he looked at his alarm clock.
    â€œSo...like...you knock on people’s windows before eight in the morning, hey?”
    â€œWell. Not everyone’s. I have to know the person.”
    â€œAnd what if that person valued sleeping in on Saturdays or sleeping naked?”
    â€œWell, yeah. Okay. I never thought of that. But you’re not naked, are you? And you’re under a comforter. And I don’t judge.” A wink, a shy smile. “I’ll put the goat picture down by your back door, where you smoke. I have some errands to run. Sort of. I’ll be back by one or two, if...if you want to do something this afternoon? It’s nice out. I don’t really know anyone else around here to call, but you’ll do, for now, until I meet some other people!”She laughed at herself so easily. It was a different kind of laugh, less graceful than when she laughed at someone else. She was like Ryan that way. And they both had dart-hole dimples in their cheeks when they smirked at their own wisecracks.
    â€œYeah. Yeah, okay.”
    â€œNice! Okay. I’ll meet you out front. Two o’clock sharp?”
    He laughed at her in a way that said Yes , and she waved before spinning and walking away; her skirt tornado-ing around her legs. A flash of orange panties.
    â€œAllie!”
    She was back at the window. “Yeah?”
    â€œWhere...where are you off to at eight in the morning? And do you want some company?”
    She smiled. “Sure.”
    â€œGive me twenty minutes to shower and