Content Note: Sexual Situations
The screen door scream-squealed when it opened.
If a recognizable voice hadn’t called “Joey?” it would have scared the shit out of Joe Pleischman.
He knew the door made noise, he just wasn’t expecting anyone to open it.
Startled him good anyway and he reached for the rum in the freezer.
“In the kitchen,” he answered as though Francine deserved an explanation of his whereabouts.
“Hiiiiiii,” she said, seeing Joe before he saw her.
The greeting had more to it than a greeting. Somewhere in that long I sound Joe heard I’m so happy to see you. It also told him that Francine had a floaty buzz on.
Joe turned, rum bottle still in hand, was going to offer some to Francine, but she was holding a six-pack of hard seltzer in her prosthetic hand, the forearm of which contained a vine of purple flowers she had painted on herself with her left hand.
“What’s going on, Frankie?”
It was a simple greeting, with an edge.
He shoved the bottle back into the glaciers of the undefrosted freezer.
Why did you just walk into my house at 10:15 on a Thursday night?
Francine was blushing. Maybe her face was flushed from the walk. At least Joe hoped she walked. He hadn’t heard a car door close.
She set the seltzers on the counter and shuffled quickly toward Joe.
Her breasts hit Joe’s gut first, then she wrapped her arms around the small of his back, the cold metal of her prosthetic hitting the faded Roadrunner leaning on a TNT detonator tattoo he had gotten the day he got kicked out of the Air Force.
She gently started to sniffle into his shirt.
“Thank you,” she said, the you becoming a blubber.
Joe could physically feel Francine trying to hold the shuddering sob back. She wasn’t faking it.
Joe said “For what?” though he was certain he knew.
“I know it’s supposed to be a secret, but…”
Francine took a fistful and a hookful of Joe’s shirt and cried against his chest.
It was the money.
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