Sheila sat at the small round kitchen table and stared down at the coffee and cream directly in front of her. She had started a special diet and exercise regimen a few weeks ago, one that only she knew about. She was supposed to eat just lean meat and vegetables. She hated black coffee, but […]
Don walked into the living room with a basketball in his hands. His son Greg was playing Assassin’s Creed. “Let’s go shoot some hoops,” Don said. Greg just kept staring at the screen. “Dad, I’m in the middle of something.” “There’s no remote control button to life, son. C’mon, let’s go. Daylight’s burning. You need some exercise.” “I’m
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It was one of those strange little bursts of insight better left unmentioned. Cody and Don were at dinner in a nice little Italian restaurant. She reached across the table, ran her index finger across the top of his hand, and finally said, “I love you, Don.” He flinched slightly at the word love and glanced
Nate walked halfway down a narrow alley and opened a dumpster next to the back door of a pizza parlor. He pushed open the lid and stroked his beard. A near-empty bottle of McCormick vodka sat at an angle on top of the heap with its label up. He pulled it out of the garbage, finished
1 As the Vicious Pixies began their last song of the night, Abby prowled from one edge of the stage to the other, lost in the opening notes of an unhinged variant of “A Tisket A Tasket.” The keyboardist played a sparkly sequence of notes on a xylophone while a backup singer ran her fingers
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The 2/75th Ranger Battalion was running a low-level night jump in 36-knot winds, Larry Swenson’s last. Once the mission was done, he would leave the Army and take a long road trip, settling into whichever town along the way felt right. Maybe he would go back to school. Maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t know for sure,