Out of Grief Read Online Free PDF Page B

stayed. I’m sure reading to the baby would have been one of the things on my ‘to do’ list. I knew for a fact that Quinn loved my voice, and would often times have me read aloud to her, even well into our teens. I know it had irked her mother to find us lying on Quinn’s bed, me with a book in hand reading one of our assigned books aloud, and Quinn with her head tucked on my shoulder.
     
    “Do all lesbians feel the need to breed now?” Harrison drawled in my ear. His thick southern accent and whiskey-soaked voice were his trademarks.
     
    “Oh, please,” I said, turning around to give him a hug. “Like you all aren’t out looking for a good womb to incubate your baby in.”
     
    My cheek bumped against his boney shoulder as he crushed me to him. “So, you ready for this?”
     
    “Should be easy. You, me, the bookstore staff, a couple of patrons.”
     
    “Please, child; those twelve people who bought my last novel will be here.”
     
    “Let’s do this, so we can start drinking,” I said, following him to the spot designated for events. When I saw that there were definitely more than twelve people corralled into chairs waiting for us, I wished we had already started drinking.
     
    He squeezed my hand. “You’ll be fine. Besides,” he said as he bumped my shoulder, “we all know they’re here to see me.”
     
    I laughed, and he seemed pleased to have broken my tension.
     
    The Saturday we had spent prepping for our talk paid off. We were able to craft questions for each other that were interesting for the audience, and leave a small amount of time for questions. What I lacked in charisma, Harrison definitely made up for, and the hour flew by in no time.
     
    It was a lovely night, so the walk over to the restaurant was nice, and the menu boasted enough fish for me to go back every night for two weeks to try all of them. I settled on the Prosciutto-Wrapped Monkfish, just because I rarely saw monkfish on a menu. Harrison, true to nature, had the steak, and insisted that we both have the signature “Extra Virgin” martinis. One sip of the ridiculously sweet drink was enough for me, but he was more than happy to take mine, and allowed me to order a simple dirty martini. I think the vanilla bean crème brûlée took me over the edge from sated to stuffed. We walked back uptown for a while and parted company at 34 th Street so he could hop the train to Queens, and I could take a cab to Sugar Hill.
     
    I knew it would be a while before I could sleep, so I pulled out some papers to grade and brewed myself a cup of peppermint tea. I looked at the left side of the bed, now cluttered with my computer and various magazines and books I wanted to read. When my wife left me, I’d claimed the entire bed, sleeping in the middle, but as time went on, the indentation of those items on that side of the bed made it feel like someone else was there. Ridiculous when examined logically, but our bodies didn’t always respond to logic. I was rather engrossed in the short story I was reading, despite the jarring typos, when my phone rang. Who the hell would be calling me at this hour, I wondered as I grabbed the phone off my nightstand. Anger was replaced with fear as I saw Quinn’s name on the display “Is everything okay?” I asked when I answered.
     
    “I’m fine. I’m sorry, I realize it’s late, but I couldn’t sleep. And you’re the only friend that doesn’t go to sleep early. Can you talk? Are you alone?”
     
    Who did she think would be here at this hour? “Yeah, I can talk.”
     
    “So I didn’t interrupt anything?”
     
    Her voice sounded tentative. Like if I had said yes, she would have hung up immediately. Which was preposterous, because if I had a lover, she would have been the first one to know—so why the third degree? “Just grading papers — really short stories — for my class.”
     
    “Are they any good?”
     
    “This one isn’t too bad, if the kid would learn that spell check