Last Call for Junior Mints

Fiction

He was a cop. After eight days of living together, Janice knew better than to say “How was work, honey?”

After eight-plus years of marriage, she knew if Brock wanted to talk about work he’d talk about it.

The time he and KeJuan helped deliver a baby she heard it on the radio before he had a chance to tell her, but he told her. In detail. 

He was on midnights now: more mayhem, more stress, lots of fentanyl corpses, and way more domestic violence. Brock generally didn’t talk about it, and that was fine with Janice.

Her greeting was usually a simple “hello,” with a kiss on the forehead because his lips got brutally chapped in the winter and Brock refused to put any kind of balm on them.

Janice spread cream cheese on half a bagel she had overtoasted when she heard Brock walk through the door.