“God, no. We're supposed to be no contact...until December anyway. But he keeps fucking finding ways around that.” I pick at the distressing on my jeans. “Like this package. The card said he hoped the contents would help me remember the good times or something.”
“Fuck that!” Lucy stands so fast I'm almost startled. “Come on. Change of plans.” I take her offered hand and let her lead me to the counter.
“Change to what exactly?”
“I'm buying these,” she holds up the cards, “and we're going back to your place and?—”
“We can't go to my place,” I blurt.
“That's not suspicious at all.”
“It's . . .I haven't finished unpacking and?—”
“Oh, that's fine,” Lucy waves me off and buys the cards. “You just need to get that box.”
Despite my best efforts, including bribery, Lucy refuses to tell me what this mysterious new plan for our evening is. I finally accept not knowing until we pull into a dimly lit industrial park.
“Are we about to commit a crime?” I ask only half kidding.
She laughs, getting out of the car. “Nope. But we are going to play with fire.”
Sure, you should likely question something like that, but to be honest, setting some shit on fire sounds kind of amazing at the moment. I follow her to a large padlocked metal garage door without any further questions.
“Welcome to my lair,” she says, lifting the door with a clatter.
Lucy's metalworking studio gives equal parts biker femme and medieval blacksmith. Pallets covered in rugs,blankets, and pillows fill one corner to form a sort of DIY sectional next to a well-loved drum set. On the other side of the space, three motorcycles sit uncovered. The back half is all business, with anvils and kilns and tools for her to work her magic.
She tosses her bag onto the pallet-couch and pulls two ciders from the mini fridge. “What's your favorite comfort food?” She asks, passing me one.
“Mexican,” I say, taking a deep drink.
She nods, looking at her phone. “Food allergies?”
“None?”
“Fab.” Her fingers fly across the screen. “Food will be here in thirty which is enough time for us to get started.”
“Doing what?”
She tosses a pair of thick black gloves at me. I barely catch them without dropping my drink. “Purging.”
When the tacos arrive, the delivery driver looks at us with more than a little suspicion. In his defense, it is a valid reaction to seeing two women around a metal barrel in an empty industrial park at sundown.
“That man thinks we're dumping a body,” I laugh as I pull the gloves off.
“We are.” She begins pulling out food containers, setting them on one of the rugs we dragged out. “The corpse of your relationship with this asshole.” She holds up the card, sneering at it for at least the third time. “'I hope they remind you of all the good parts,'“she mocks. “Who writes shit like this?”
“Fucking David.” I take a bite of a swoon-worthy pupusa and pull out a small rectangle wrapped in black tissue paper.
“How long were you together?” Lucy asks.
“Almost three years.”
“What made you end it?”
I turn the rectangle over in my hands. “We were on the same page about kids and marriage for a bit at the beginning.But when our—or ratherhis—friends started doing those things, he changed his mind. I didn't.”
“Damn.”
