Day 1 Winner of Quarto’s 2021 Thunderdome Flash Fiction Contest. View the prompt here.

“You remind me of my dad.”

“Okay? I don’t know what to do with that..” his hand slid from under my waist, his body previously entangled with mine now scrounging for the chinks of space I didn’t know you could find in a Twin XL.

“I’m sorry I don’t know why I said that?”

A salient little misstep and now his eyes were open. How did we get here? We can’t avoid “here.” When our bodies slot together or the laughter comes easy, I forget that “here” – eyes turned up, muscles stiff, legs unslung, and shirt balled up (not in the corner but in his fist) – is never that far away.

I haven’t seen my dad, Gerard Stavros Smith II, in seven years. Who would’ve thought a man with roman numerals could house so much reckless abandon. The first three years of his sentence we visited weekly, but that was before he grabbed Lea’s wrist and called her a slut. I was greedy for an excuse to avoid the crease in his forehead when my mannerisms went south of the gendered border – the signal to keep my distance because, frankly, black and blue blossomed too vividly on my pasty skin.

Griffin knew this. He groaned, arm covering his welling eyes, mumbles caught in the folds of the sheets,
“Why do you always compare me to him?”

Then Griffin was pulling on his pants, and I remembered his shoulders, an expansive throne for a piggy-backing joyride. Griffin unfurled a rolled-up scarf – fake Burberry? classy – and I recalled his scruff, tickling my listless face. And then the cathartic slam; I smiled. They leave the same way: with no expectation of returning home. And I'm at peace, because I’ve been here before.