Free How I Came to Sparkle Again by Kaya McLaren Page B

“At some point, she might need a little meaningless rebound sex, Lisa. It’s not your place to judge that.”
    Lisa looked at Jill. “I’ll buy you a vibrator.”
    Jill blushed.
    Inside, Eric’s bed was raised high enough for some boxes and a dog bed to fit underneath. On the dog bed slept an old chocolate Lab, gray around his nose and chin.
    “That’s Ale,” Tom said.
    Near the dog was a little refrigerator that doubled as a step up to the bed.
    Tom’s room was on the other side. For a place that apparently saw so much action, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it.
    They passed the bathroom, which, like the kitchen, was surprisingly clean but, unlike the kitchen, smelled like good-smelling men. On top of the toilet sat a little basket of potpourri. Lisa looked at it and made a face. “Okay, which one of you is gay?” she asked.
    “You were throwing it out and we wanted our bathroom to smell good,” Tom said.
    “You’re kidding, right?” Lisa asked.
    “Why would I kid? We’re all crazy about the way you smell. We would walk to the ends of the earth just to smell you. This stuff kind of smells like you, don’t you think?”
    Lisa sniffed the basket. “I think it smells like ass and that’s why I threw it out.”
    Tom sniffed it and made a turned-on face.
    At the end of the hall, Tom said, “Jason’s old room. Hans lives there now.” Lisa patted Tom’s shoulder to comfort him. He clearly still missed the days when Jason lived there.
    Jill looked in. Hans’s bedroom looked like the aftermath of an explosion, with clothes strewn everywhere.
    And to the right was Travis’s room. It was hopelessly ugly. There was nothing that could be done with dark fake wood paneling or the burnt-orange shag carpet, which undoubtedly housed a microbiological world Jill shuddered to consider. Travis had also hung a large mirror over his old, stained, and visibly sunken bed.
    Lisa said, “Oh, Jilly Bean, no. No woman should live like this. There’s got to be something else in Sparkle.”
    Tom said, “Lisa, look, she’s got a mirror here that you and I only dream about.”
    “Jesus, Tom,” Lisa said. “Don’t you think that’s a little insensitive given her circumstances?”
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and seemed to really mean it.
    “It’s all right,” Jill said. She looked around the room. “Hey, it’s cheap, functional, and close to you,” she said to Lisa.
    “Man, I wish my remodel was done. It won’t be much longer. I’ll have you out of here in two months.”
    “Carpenters don’t work on powder days,” Tom reminded her.
    “I’ll have you out of here in six months,” Lisa corrected herself. “In the meantime, you can borrow sheets and blankets.” She looked at the mattress and made a face. “I’ve got a space heater, too.”
    “Thanks,” Jill said, and followed Lisa back to her place.
    They returned to the Kennel an hour later with three Hefty bags full of things Jill needed and Lisa could spare. Lisa helped her make the bed, and Jill was so tired, she crawled right in.
    Lisa sat on the other side and then lay down, too.
    “Jilly?” Lisa rolled over to face her. “Do you want to talk about anything that happened? I mean, I don’t want to pry, but I care, and I’m here if you want to talk.”
    Jill’s eyes began to water, but she held the tears back. She shook her head gently. “Thanks.”
    “It’s okay to cry in front of me, you know. You’re the only one who thinks you’re supposed to look like you’re fine all the time. But I think it’s normal to have messy, loud, sloppy feelings.”
    Jill pursed her lips and nodded.
    “Well, I’m here,” she said, and Jill nodded again.
    When Lisa got up and went home, Jill stared at herself in the mirror on the ceiling. What she saw was a discarded woman in her mid-thirties on a nasty, stained mattress in a dumpy trailer.
    She remembered the day David said he had a surprise for her. He’d blindfolded her, guided her