Love Stories in This Town Read Online Free PDF

surgery was fine, and you asked when you could have a margarita.”
    “What did she say?” Greg and I asked in unison.
    “She said Sunday.”
    It was Friday night when Joe dropped us at the Hilton Garden Inn, but we ordered margaritas anyway at the Great American Grill. The espadrilles I had bought for the trip were already giving me blisters. We were depressed.
    “I can't imagine myself in any of these McMansions,” I said, poking an ice cube with my straw.
    “I'm not hungry, but I'm getting fried chicken,” said Greg.
    “I miss it,” I said. Greg slid his chair next to mine and took me in his arms.
    “I know,” he said. “Me too.”
    Three nights before, I had climbed into bed and said, “I have a little blood in my underwear.”
    “What?”
    “But I looked on the Internet. Something about old blood, sometimes, like making room for the growing uterus or something. I don't know.” I felt a sick excitement, speculating that I'd get some extra attention and maybe see the baby on an early sonogram, paid for by Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
    “It's probably nothing,” Greg had said, putting one hand on my stomach and the other on his fruitfly genome data.
    After two rounds of margaritas, we went to our hotel room. Greg took a shower and joined me in bed, smelling of the hotel's ginger citrus shampoo. When he fell asleep, I was alone in a humid city.
    I was six when a man approached my mother near the perfume counter at Dillard's. Once in a while, she took us shopping in Atlanta, about an hour from our hometown of Haralson, Georgia, population 143. The man asked my mother if she'd ever thought of being a model. She laughed in a way I had never heard, showing her throat. She said she was happily married with two small children. The man told my mother they had nannies in Paris, who were called au pairs.
    In my memory, the man had dark hair and shiny skin. He wore a suit and tie. He handed her a card and said, “Just promise me you'll think about it.” My mother was a rare beauty, he said.
    She looked at the card, her forehead creased. She said, “I'll think about it. Okay, I will, I'll think about it.” She bought a shirt for my brother and a plaid jumper for me, and then she drove us home.
    She was beautiful, my mother. She'd rest her long, bare arms on her knees and stare into space while I tried to capture her attention. She didn't cook, like other mothers, or put name tags in my clothes. I can imagine her hanging my new dress in my closet, mulling her options. Did she even hesitate? Lighting a cigarette, dialing the number, packing her suitcase.
    I don't know if she made it to Paris, or became famous there. Whatever she found, I hope it brought her happiness. I hope it was better than my brother and me.
    At ten the next morning, I climbed into the front seat of Joe's mother-in-law's minivan. Greg was in the back, next to the cooler. We drove south, heading into a neighborhood I loved immediately. There was a big park with a swimming pool, and a jungle gym surrounded by moms holding take-out coffees.
    “Okeydokey,” said Joe, looking through a messy pile of papers, each a possible place for us to live. “Okay, now,” he said, “we're a few blocks from the Ginger Man, a good little bar.”
    Greg and I locked eyes happily.
    We walked into the house, and it was perfect. High ceilings, a big open kitchen for me to cook in, or learn to cook in. A bonus craft room, where I could put the Singer sewing machine my father had given me when I graduated from college three years before. I found Greg in a second garden, off the bedroom. He stood with his hands on his hips, gazing up at the canopy of trees. When I approached, he turned and looked at me.
    “We found it,” I said.
    “I could love this,” he agreed quietly.
    “Yes,” I said. My mind swam with visions of us: reading the paper on the front step, walking across the street with towels slung around our necks, tucking someone into bed in the kids' room. I