Lana plucked a grilled cheese sandwich out of the pan and noticed she had burned one side. She dropped it onto a plate with the burned side down and carried it over to Mark at the kitchen table.
“Here you go, babe.”
She studied his receding hairline and thought about the night she first met him. He was prowling a Serbian nightclub, looking for an easy one-night stand, and there she was.
A picture of her father hung on the wall next to the table. His short salt-and-pepper hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and gentle features betrayed the years of hunger he suffered as a little boy. He had made a name for himself as a biochemist and had hoped Lana would follow in his footsteps. When it became clear to him that she never would, he simply wanted her to survive her powerful impulses. Just before she left, he told her, “What doesn’t happen on the surface is fine. Don’t worry about what others can’t see in you.”
Mark was about to spend three weeks in Shreveport with his construction crew, getting wasted in the clubs late at night. Lana expected him to send her flurries of garbled, disturbing texts. She would respond cautiously, assuming he would never change. He was ruled by ungovernable instincts that dictated the terms of their relationship all too often. What Mark called issues, Lana called problems. There was a difference. Anything that couldn’t be reconciled with reason was a problem. At this point, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to be an American citizen anymore. She just wanted him to eat his half-burned grilled cheese sandwich and leave. She’d figure out the rest another day.
“You’ll be good, right?” he asked.
“I promise, baby,” she said. “You’re my man.”
“Always?”
“Always and forever.”
Once he was finally gone, she stared out the window for a few minutes and watched the tide come in. Then she pulled a marijuana gummy bear from the pocket of her workout shorts. She wiggled it gently between her index finger and thumb and smiled. Her body heat had made it warm and spongy. She popped it into her mouth, then poured herself a vodka press and took a few sips, keeping the gummy bear stowed safely under her tongue the whole time.
If she was going to be a human ornament, then she would do it to her own satisfaction. She headed downstairs to work out, wondering who would hold her in his arms that night. She quivered at the thought. He would be handsome, no doubt, and strong. She couldn’t wait to hear what he would tell her.
