Free One Shot Away by T. Glen Coughlin

shed.”
    â€œEnough,” says Trish. “We’re done.”
    â€œNot quite,” says Detective Santos. “Flush the joint.”
    Trish opens her mouth an inch and takes a few short breaths. She grabs the joint from the ashtray and strides into the bathroom. The toilet flushes.
    Roxanne’s Volvo idles across the street. Jimmy is flooded with relief. She waited for him. He jogs to the car. Roxanne turns the radio off. “Are you all right?”
    Should he tell her about stealing the lumber to pay an overdue mortgage, about his mother spending money on pot? That he didn’t know his father was a bona fide thief? “I’m okay.” He takes her hand. “Thanks for not leaving.”
    â€œJimmy, I know it can’t be anything terrible, right?” She brings his hand to her lips and kisses it. Her confidence in him is overwhelming. He wipes his eyes on the shoulder of her coat and buries his face in her honey brown hair. All he wants to do is hold her.
    â€œNo, it’s not that bad,” he says.
    â€œWhat did they want?” She’s wide-eyed and serious. “I mean, if you want to tell me.”
    Jimmy considers laying it out to her, describing the night moment by moment, the wet earth, the guard, the police lights. He wants to trust her, but should she know? What would she think of him? “It’s my father. He’s always getting into trouble at work.”
    She bites her bottom lip, waiting for more.
    â€œI don’t even know what it’s really about.” He tries to smile.
    â€œIs that the truth?”
    â€œYeah.”
    She lets go a breath. “Close your eyes.”
    â€œRight now?”
    â€œYes, right now.”
    He hears some rustling, then something is placed on his lap. “Open,” she says.
    It’s his jacket. Above his name in thread script it says “Captain.”
    â€œIt’s perfect, really, thank you.” He didn’t buy her a gift.
    â€œCan I wear it?” she asks.
    â€œOf course.” She climbs over the bucket seat and almost falls on top of him. He feels her warm body. Her weight. The firmness of her breasts on his chest.
    â€œMove the seat back,” she says.
    He finds the control and floats the seat back, until she’s lying on top of him with their noses touching. Their mouths come together. It is the longest kiss. When they come up, the windows are fogged and the streetlight is blinking on and off.

Diggy
    D IGGY COULD HAVE PRACTICED, BUT HIS LIP IS STILL SWOLLEN . So after warmups he settles on the corner of the wrestling mat, his Spanish book on his lap, thankful that he’s not sweating to Greco’s whistle. Diggy fell behind in Spanish III. Señora Rodriguez is relentless on verb tenses. She doesn’t allow anyone to move to a new tense until they master the last one. He’s stuck on the imperfect. He could never memorize or concentrate on anything for very long. Names, dates, and events become tangled in his head like wrestlers in a giant heap. Words and letters leap around the page like frogs. In grammar school, he was tutored in math and English. Diggy once overheard his mother use the term “learning disability” while she was talking to his tutor. Afterward he confronted her. She became flustered and said he was just a slow learner; “You’ll outgrow it, don’t worry.”
    He reads lines in his text: Yo estaba hablando . I was speaking. Estabamos comiendo . We were eating. Estabas leyendo un libro . He closes his textbook. He nods to Jane, who’s lounging in the bleachers across the gym. She nods back. Jane’s been watching him for almost the entire practice. She’s the team’s groupie, sort of an obsessed one-girl wrestling fan club, officially called “manager” by Coach Greco. At matches, she keeps the time clock, the score, and mops blood off the wrestling mat with a rag soaked in Clorox. There were two other