1. He put his hand on my breast telling me that I am going to like it.
Jeremy whispered he can tell by the feel of it in the palm of his hand and I did and didn’t want him to stay or leave, so caught up in himself, in my blouse, I wanted him to but I didn’t want to go any further, and I found it hard to say much of anything because his hands crawled up and down my face and chest and I wondered if he knew I had any legs, cottage cheese thighs that make me hate myself after a shower, with his hardness against them then, I wondered if he knew how hard my hands would get at grabbing each side of my thighs, the raw pink turning white, but wanting to keep him here, wanting him to remember the rest of my body, whispering to the rest of my body instead of my ears with his hands through my hair like daddy’s little girl, instead he rubbed and pushed himself against me, against the car door and it had been months since I saw him, it had been months since I saw him like this, at the airport, luggage strewn in the trunk when he grabbed me, spun me around before I opened the door, I didn’t think twice about it, I didn’t think twice, his hands all over me from the waist up or how perfect my tits were, gouging them as if he was looking for them, and I think I heard a plane landing or taking off, I couldn’t hear much of anything but I knew something happened because I suddenly felt his hand snake between the fabric and the skin and before I knew it we were against the headboard of the bed straight from the back seat of the car parked in the back lot of the motel only minutes away, minutes away from his coming, and he wouldn’t even look at me below the waist, his face buried between my shoulder and the beaten pillow while I stared at the joint between the ceiling and the wall remembering the girl who gave us the key to the room without blinking, without looking, and the glossy page she turned, the magazine she was holding, and I thought then all of things how boring and terrible she must think my thighs must be, since she wouldn’t even look at me and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

2. She insists it’s those skirts that I wear, while eating a taco.
Really, Jenna said between mouthfuls, how does she fit so much food in that little mouth of hers, I don’t know why you put yourself through that torture. I have the opposite problem, nothing seems to hug my hips, no one either. You know that man’s a predator, you know that don’t you? You don’t think he really loves you, do you? I’ve seem him look at me, she said, bringing her head across the table over the opened wax paper and fallen bits of lettuce, tomato, beef and sour cream, last year he even bumped into me at the Christmas party by the copy machine with his groin out to there and he and I both knew it was on purpose. She leaned back and crushed the rest of the corn shell between small impossibly white shiny teeth. Not that I would mind, mind you, but finders keepers and I have to admit, she added, I don’t like sloppy seconds, she looked me dead in the eye with eyes all lit up, nor do I cut throats, and my eyes never left her face, I didn’t even question it, going around it in circles after circle, from inside to out, eyes to nose to eyebrows to forehead to lips to hairline to ears to earring to pointed chin. Around and around her words spiraled off her tongue as she licked her finger one final time before we left, making our way through a huddle of swarming teenagers, boys pushing into girls and I wondered if they were rubbing their crotches against each other on purpose or if it was because the lines were simply too long and the cashiers too slow.

3. He’s a lovely man, my mother says, while ironing my father’s shirt.
God rest his soul if he could see the beautiful woman you’ve become. I lingered over the shelves of figurines against the furthest wall from her, the heat and the steam, the board and my dead father’s shirt. She stood there ironing although it’s been years and she still jumps at the slightest footfall from the porch, pitches up in the middle of the night she tells me and calls me, he almost came home tonight dear, she’d say, he almost did, he’ll come around, I’m sure he will when he realizes that we still love him, that he belongs here at home, and I rest my head against the uppermost shelf and turned to watch her forearms extend and contract, watched her hand smooth out the wrinkles of the cloth and press the iron across and when she lifted it up it gasps for air and the shirt smokes, I feel the pressing urge to smoke although I haven’t for some time, but I felt a little rebellious and I hated my mother and I wanted to break curfew tonight even though I no longer lived here, I stretched my neck and stared back at the empty smiling faces of the figurines that I used to play with because she wouldn’t buy me any toys, but I never touched the one of the little boy and girl kissing, I sat in front of it instead, stupid child that I was hoping that they would soon come up for air, and the iron gasped again and my mother set it on the edge with one hand while daintily picking up the shirt with her other and I noticed the brown spots blemishing across her arm suddenly and I found that I couldn’t breathe so I started to leave as she reminded me on my way out, don’t forget to call your father, you never call him he says.

4. I know why he won’t change the channel.
He said I didn’t know what I was talking about, that he didn’t know what I was talking but he wasn’t even talking to me, his eyes fixed on the screen while he drew me tighter, while he drew his hand around the other side of my waist and I told him I don’t want to watch this anymore and he frowned still staring, why not, you picked this movie out, and he started to unfasten my bra and the television set was moaning as two women in Bound start to moan and he fumbled around with my nipple in the same concentric circles one actress moved her hands over the other, I felt the weight of my thighs separated by his leg, the gasp of the iron, the crunching sound of stale corn shells on Jeremy’s breath, and I know what he did to me, what he was doing to me, and I felt raw and fleshy and I take up too much room in my bed, I heard myself telling him, you can stay but that movie has to go, nervous giggling and he stuck out his bottom lip looking at me for the first time ever so briefly before he snuggled his chin between my breasts and turned me around, away from the tv set, one eye still on it, and his tongue was suddenly in my mouth before something coarse and wet tumbled out of it, and I tried push him off because I felt so damn cold around the surface of my skin, and his leg was like an iron pressing up the hem of my skirt and I gasped as the women in the movie were gasping and I lost myself in that sound just beyond the bed springs, just around the corner where a car suddenly hit the curb just that side of the open gutter and the hubcap rattled across the pavement.

5. My father says Sundays are for children.
I looked at Jeremy as he stuttered and made a big show of it, or for me and for it, as he stared out the window during brunch, and fiddled with his utensils, paying careful attention to not let his eyes wander as our waitress bent over the table to serve our meal and I knew that it was over before it even began, before he even began, before we even came here, and he doesn’t really touch his food in the beginning, hands folded into each other, elbows bent sternly straight up the edge of the table, firm mouth pressed against the fold, holding his eyes closed, made little shakes with his head as if this was terribly new to him, that he had never expected it to be like this, to end like this, for us to have ended up like this, and I tilted my head as if I was listening to him but I only heard my mother and father laughing back when I was a child and I told him that Sunday’s were cats for some ridiculous reason I could not remember while Jeremy minced though his words actually began to chew them or were they home fires, and my father tickled me and my mother started to tickle us both and he said through his thick mustache as he kissed my mother’s head, no, you got it wrong, Sundays are for children as Jeremy got up hesitantly, abruptly, I think he might have asked me a question but he wasn’t really looking for me, I think he was looking for our waitress or the check and I know that there’s a difference between the two, but I watched instead a young couple walk in that weren’t as pretty or as perfect as they’re made out to be on the covers of magazines, and the boy didn’t know where to put his hands and she didn’t know when to look at him when he’s looking at her, and they were both so painfully awkward that it was gentle, he pulled her chair out for her, almost pulling it out from under her and I smiled so hard that my teeth show and Jeremy asked again, what’s so funny, what’s so damn funny?