One Small Thing by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

young—to die.” She left her hand on him and felt the blood and warmth under his skin. She wanted all of him naked against her in bed, pushing her stomach against his butt, her arm across his shoulders. She was so tired. It was eleven-thirty. All she could think about was taking her Clomid and finsishing the clean up so she could go to bed.
     
    “No, I never talked about her. I didn’t want to.”
     
    “Why did the social worker call you? Why is social services involved? Seems kind of weird.” Avery looked toward the kitchen. There were a few pots to clean and the coffee pot to rinse. She should also go ahead and reset the sprinkler system, having turned it off for today so it wouldn’t go off and startle unsuspecting kids. And the lights. She had to turn off the front porch lights.
     
    “Because. . . .”
     
    “What, Dan?”
     
    He shifted and moved toward her, grabbing her right arm. She almost pushed away, and then stared at him, feeling her body rev up with nerves again.
     
    “Because Randi had a son.”
     
    “Oh.” She watched his face, saw how the muscles in his lips and under his eyes were trying to tell her something. “Oh. Oh.”
     
    Dan scooted closer. “I don’t know what it means yet. I’ve got to call this Midori Nolan back. I don’t know exactly why she called to tell me, but you have to know. I was with Randi for all of high school and until I went to Cal.”
     
    Avery pulled her arm out of his hand, feeling his imprint even as she placed it in her lap. “I don’t understand.”
     
    “She was my girlfriend for a very long time. There was some mention of me in her papers. I’m involved somehow.” Dan nodded, as if his movement would convince her. What did he think she was? A child?
     
    “All of high school? Before Cal?”
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “That’s only a year before you met me.” She stared at him, feeling everything in her face gaping, mouth, eyes, ears. “You’ve never said a word about her! You’ve never told me one thing. You were with her for what, eight years and you never mentioned it?”
     
    “I didn’t want to talk about it. We had a good relationship at first—you know, normal high school stuff, dances and dates, but later it changed.”
     
    “Changed how?” Avery asked, wishing she hadn’t as his face shifted, his shoulders fell forward. For a second, he looked like his dad. Just like Bill.
     
    “Bad. My life, well, it was out of control. We got into some stuff.”
     
    “What kind of stuff, Dan? For Christ’s sake, just tell me.” Avery tapped her foot against the coffee table.
     
    “After high school we moved into an apartment, and I started working at Lemore’s Hardware, and then I got fired—“
     
    “I thought you went to school. Sacramento Valley College.”
     
    “Not right away. Randi’s parents had kicked her out, and we decided to move in together. My parents—“
     
    Avery shook her head. “Yeah, they must have loved that. They wouldn’t even let us sleep together at their house when we were engaged.”
     
    “Right.” Dan put his head in his hands, and Avery bit her cheek, feeling the soft, pink skin pulse with pain. “So we’re living together, and we were—we were drinking. First it was pot. And then coke. And then we didn’t do much else but drugs. So, I got into some things I shouldn’t have. I did some things that I wish I hadn’t. I took—I stole from my parents.”
     
    “You stole from Bill and Marian.”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    Avery looked at Dan as if he were the Bay Area report in the San Francisco Chronicle , her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out the motive for a crime. “For the drugs? You stole from your parents to buy drugs?”
     
    Dan nodded, resting his head in his hands. She watched his breathing, the rise of his ribs, the tense muscles under his shirt. She almost reached out to touch him, not to comfort him, but to determine if he was still the same man she knew, the man without this