Joe brings us sandwiches of cured ham on Portuguese bread. He takes us for a cruise at lunch hour in his mom’s green Grand Am. He tells us he just likes the way the losers watch him as he slows down by smoker’s corner—two hot chicks in the front seat eating blue plums he snuck fresh outta the fridge just a half hour before picking us up.

Joe’s twenty and has dark hair across his forearms. I’ve studied it carefully as he places his veiny hand on your thigh as he drives the car. Hair like that means business. Hair like that is up front and coarse for a reason. Joe is all there. He’d bring you flowers if you just mentioned it one day.

You don’t care about Joe because you’re not thinking of going away. I don’t care for Joe either because—because. I just like Joe ‘cause he’s so New York. He says sheer hose with strap heels are what’s missing from this town and I agree. He appreciates my acid mouth, says it makes a woman’s lips naturally red. And mine’s bleedin.’

Joe knows the swell of your boobs and each mole that sleeps there like the Lord’s prayer backwards. You claim he’s gonna give you a big surprise in a little box on graduation day and you won’t take it. You say you can’t take him too seriously, that he’s just a mama’s boy.

But Joe is more close to the real thing than you think. He’s big because he’s European and thinks it’s necessary to spend eight hundred dollars on a pair of shoes. Likes a woman to get all fancied up and be strong and loud. He may write stupid things in my yearbook like, “I never met a woman like you,” and I know he means it.

Mary Anne Griffiths is a poet and fiction writer living in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. She shares space with a spouse, a tortie and tuxie and is presently working towards her debut collection of poetry and microfiction. Her work can be found in Dark Winter Lit Mag, Bright Flash Literary Review, Macrame Literary Journal, The Lothlorien and Your Sudden Flash.