Every Kiss a War

By Leesa Cross-Smith

The twenty-seven stories in Leesa Cross-Smith's debut short story collection Every Kiss a War are set to the sounds of “frogs and crickets out back, steam-pulsing like a machine” and “a sad country song that hasn't been written yet.” Men and women love and leave over cigarettes and shots of kitchen table whiskey. She takes us down Kentucky roads in the back of a pickup truck to both truculent and delicate women and rough, rambling men edged with gentleness. A finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award, this collection is a ravishing war of characters laid bare as they look for the glow and fight to stay in the light. As affecting as they are sexy and romantic, these stories burn with sweetness like firecrackers and honey as you throw them back and holler for another round.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631200038

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Skee Ball, Indiana

We got lost every time we crossed the Ohio. I said it was because they had different kinds of highways in Indiana. Highways, beginning and ending out of nowhere. The roads turn into highways and the highways turn into roads! Suddenly! They do! I said, taking my hands off of the wheel so I could wiggle them all around. My cheap, thin bracelets jingled down my wrists.

That’s not the reason, Rory. It’s because you’re a dumbass, Deladis said, smiling and patting me on my bare brown thigh. We were on the right road now, driving and driving through the grey and green. Two Kentucky girls in a little black hand-me-down five-speed Honda hatchback. We were listening to the BFF mix we’d made specifically for the drive over. It started with Rihanna, had some Justin Timberlake, Heartless Bastards and Vampire Weekend in the middle and ended with Beyoncé, The Avett Brothers and Taylor Swift. I turned the volume down.

Aw, be nice to me. I just had an abortion, I said. I stuck my bottom lip out, made my eyes all big.

That was like, six months ago. You can’t use that anymore.

I can use it for as long as I want, I said.

Shut up. I love you, Deladis said back. She offered me the last puff of her nasty little bidi cigarette and tossed it when I shook my head no.

My mom signed for it, but still kicked me out for having an abortion. She promised to let me move back in when I learned my lesson but I didn’t know which lesson I was supposed to be learning. And when I asked her, she threw her favorite Fiestaware cereal bowl on the floor and left the water running as she cleaned it up.

I was sobbing when I went to my bedroom to pack up my stuff, broken sounds escaping my mouth. Now I was living with my best friend, Deladis Carpenter, and her mom, Jo; the three of us sharing clothes and makeup like sisters. My mom had me when she was seventeen, Deladis said when I revealed I was pregnant. I hadn’t known if Deladis meant it as encouragement or not. I didn’t ask. When Tom Petty sang about Indiana girls on them Indiana nights in Mary Jane’s Last Dance, I always thought he was probably singing about seventeen-year-old Jo Carpenter with her long, bony legs and her foxy red hair. Jo Carpenter, stuck to my heart like a temporary mom tattoo.

I don’t want to be a mom when I’m seventeen, I told Brent. He wasn’t my boyfriend when he got me pregnant, he wasn’t my anything. We made out sometimes and one time we had sex at his friend’s Halloween party. Every boy came as a food. Brent was a piece of pizza. I was Pippi Long-stocking with stripey tights, wire in my braids and little curly ribbons tied on the end of them. Deladis and I were dressed the same; she hooked up with a carrot. Lookit you boys, begging to be devoured, I said. Yeah. Come ‘ere. Eat me, Brent said with his smoky Miller Lite breath. He was grinning and kinda sexy, hulking over me like a horny dog all squinty-eyed and happy.

Brent slumped against the bathroom door when I told him I wasn’t going to have the baby. I could practically see the white smoke of relief pouring from his blushing ears. He kept tugging at his hair and apologizing. I told him I wasn’t mad at him because I wasn’t. I was flickering. I felt out of my body. Depersonalization. I learned the word from Google.

I felt that way a lot. When Brent told me he had a girlfriend who went to another high school. When I saw two lines. When the kind, old woman outside touched my hand and said the name Jesus and told me not to abort the baby. When I sat in the creaky black chair next to my mom at the abortion clinic. When it was so quiet in there during the procedure. When I took my L.L. Bean backpack and small pink suitcase to Deladis’ house and Jo said I could live there for the rest of the school year and all summer if I needed.

She said my mom would change her mind soon. We had one more week of school until summer. One more year of high school until college.

I got this. I know some guys who can get us in, Deladis said once we found the bar.

You always know some guys who can get us in, I said back.

Jealous! Deladis said, shaking her head. There they are! She pointed as two tall twenty-something guys walked towards us. Everyone said Hey. Deladis introduced me as My Best Friend Rory, like she always did. If I was a lesbian, she’d be my girlfriend, she said. It was her way of proving I was her favorite friend and although I already knew it, it still felt good to be loved like that. It felt like stepping out of the cool shade into sun. I had to teach myself to receive it, to let it warm my face.

The guys were Marcus and Colin. They’re only twenty-one, Deladis said when the guys walked up to talk to the bouncer. They’re not like fucking creeps.

Welcome to Skee Ball, Indiana, ladies of legal age, the bouncer said to us with a wink as he stamped our hands. I offered a polite thank you and watched Colin put his hand in the back pocket of Deladis’ cut-offs. Deladis was right. I was jealous. But not because I thought Colin was cute or anything. I was jealous just because.

Skee Ball, Indiana, was what they called the skee ball tournament. There was a big droopy banner tacked over the doorway leading to the game room. It said WELCOME TO SKEE BALL INDIANA! in multi-colored marker with a giant glittery exclamation mark at the end. I wondered who made it. Like, who took all the time to make something so pretty for something like a skee ball tournament. I figured it was a girl. It was something I would probably do if I worked in a place like that.

His friend won the whole thing last year, Deladis said, motioning to Colin. Colin nodded his head, sipped his beer. Deladis sipped hers too. Colin was always touching her and Deladis pulled all of her hair up off of her neck. I pulled my long, sloppy fishtail braid over my shoulder, untangled the stray hairs looping my hoop earrings. Everyone was sweating and sweating. Marcus asked me if I wanted something to drink and I said Cherry Coke please because I was the designated driver. I got my wallet out of my purse. I didn’t want Marcus to buy it for me. When guys bought things for girls they expected the girls to pay them back with sex. My mom taught me that.

Don’t worry about it, Marcus said, putting his hand on my wallet and gently pushing down.

No, really. I have money, I said, remembering the five dollar bill I had in my shorts. But Marcus had already walked away. I looked down at my red Converse while I waited for him to come back.

Deladis drank her beers and I drank my two free Cherry Cokes while we watched Colin’s friend play skee ball. He was really good and I wondered how he got so good at something like that. Like, maybe he had a machine at home or hung out at the bar all day and night or worked someplace where they had a machine. Like one of those places where they had birthday parties for kids. He was pretty douchey but so was Colin. His friend was wearing a pencil-yellow terrycloth sweatband around his forehead and orange ones around each wrist. He made devil’s horns with his hands every time he got a lot of points off of one roll. I felt like I was in a weird music video for a song I didn’t like.

Marcus was really nice though. Told me he worked at the bowling alley next door. We made small talk about how skee ball was just like bowling. Kinda the same, except not at all, we decided. He was as thin as a wand, wore trendy black glasses and a pair of brown Clark Wallabees with no socks. Black guys don’t dress like that in Kentucky, I told him. I meant it as a compliment. I told him that too.

Marcus asked me if I wanted to go outside and smoke. I said Yes. Told Deladis we’d be right back. Walking out, I saw the purple-flicker heat lightning of an approaching storm, the dust-colored moths flittering around the streetlamp. Marcus was talking about how his mom was really sick and probably gonna die soon and how he couldn’t really talk to Colin about it because Colin wasn’t one of those people who understood other people. Like, he couldn’t identify with anyone else. He couldn’t get outside of himself. Marcus said that Colin was his best friend even though he wasn’t a good listener. I paid close attention to everything he was saying because I didn’t want anyone to ever say that about me.

I’m always outside of myself, I said, like I have to remind myself to climb back in. My bottom lip started to quiver and I got that panicky feeling I always got whenever I cried in public.

Marcus took my jangly wrist and we stepped into the alley, away from the front door.

Fuck, he said, leaning against the brick wall. His voice was low and he was blinking a lot. He was crying too. Crying and smoking. I threw my cigarette down and stepped on it. I didn’t feel like smoking anymore. Maybe I’d quit. I wanted to tell Marcus or Deladis or Brent or anybody that I could’ve been a good mom. That I still could be. Someday. Maybe. I missed my mama so much and wondered what she was doing. If she was still awake. If she waited for my phone calls the same way I waited for hers.

This is crazy. What’s wrong with us? I said after a moment. I shook my head. Pressed my fingertips to my hot cheeks and started laughing.

Yeah. What’s not wrong with us? Marcus smiled and sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The thunder arrived. Gentle and spreading slow, echoing across the Skee Ball, Indiana, night like a big empty stomach growling.

And It Can Never Be Too Dark or Too Bright

He says you remind him of a gypsy so you start wearing even more red, more bracelets that tinkle together making bright sounds you’ve since gotten used to. You tell him he looks French, and he says he’s not and he’s not the only man you’re dating, and you don’t know if he knows. The two of you never talk about it. You talk about almost everything, but not that. And you only go to the artsy movie theatre, never the regular one.

But the other man carries your lip gloss in his pocket so you don’t have to take your purse inside. He puts it in the same pocket as his little black tube of Chapstick and you like thinking about the plastic tubes tapping together in his dark jeans as he walks beside you. His legs are a lot longer and you take two steps for his one. And something about him smells like cinnamon but you know it’s not anything he wears on purpose. It’s a memory of something you cannot place, a dark and smart smell making him your favorite of the two. Sometimes. Sometimes, it does. He’s more affectionate in public. He throws his arm around you and says your name more often. He kisses with urgency. He kisses like a dying man. He kisses like he worships women. Your mouth is his church.

You call him Tennessee when you talk about him with your sister and friends. He’s from Nashville. You call the other one Kentucky because he grew up here too. You heard something like that in a country song once and always remembered it. Women calling men not by their real names, but by where they’re from. Kentucky you call, James, when you’re talking to him. It’s his last name, not his first. You don’t know why you do it but it keeps your relationship more casual than it should be. It keeps the both of you forever on the fringes of whatever it is, as if neither one of you wants to come into the middle of this room you’ve made with each other. But the shades are drawn in this room. It’s so dark and warm in there and you like his breath on the back of your neck. It’s as warm as the air in the room.

Tennessee wears glasses and you’re glad he doesn’t take them off when you make out. You like to decide when it’s time to take them off. You dated a guy once who used to take his glasses off and it always seemed too forward. Like he anticipated too much. You thought of telling him that once but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He never hurt yours. He was too kind and too quiet.

Tennessee listens to Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan in his car. Sometimes, Johnny Cash. He asks you to help him go to the grocery and he says it’s because he never has anything good to eat. He compliments your pantry and asks what gluten flour is. He asks what textured vegetable protein is. He never tasted natural peanut butter until he put one of your spoons into the cold jar. You made tempeh ruebens with Russian dressing for dinner one night and after he ate the last bite he leaned back in his chair and told you he would always remember that sandwich. He asked you to make them again the next week. He says I learn something new every time I come over here. You suspect he says things like that only to flatter you. He doesn’t seem to have that falseness in him but it’s hard to accept things as they actually are when they’re pretty and good. And that’s part of the reason you keep Kentucky around.

Kentucky puts Crimson and Clover on the record player because he actually still