Everything New #2
Sean Ennis
source: Sonic
We just wanted to screw in a nice hotel. We’re going to be married, maybe order room service. The pandemic has been good to us—we got vaccinated because we smoke. That’s the calculus of our luck. But also, what would we do with the dogs and our son while we lounged suite-wise?
The new roof, you’ll want to know, has held through the winter, though it snowed in Mississippi and the temperature dropped below twenty. It is a comfort. Spring now and baseball is back and the fans from Arkansas have booked all the rooms. Like I care.
But I do. Our team is highly ranked and her friends are throwing a marriage party. The match should be exciting. The trick here is that I am talking about both sports and a wedding. Did you catch it? There will be no bouquet because we are not that type.
I found her—convincing her was easy—I believe somewhere that I am lovable. But the lawyers have taken all the hotel rooms and I had thought for a minute about becoming a lawyer. I have thought, too, long and hard, about becoming a husband. There is no test, but a thousand tests.
I can’t say enough about this little family, almost outnumbered by dogs, and clinging. Achieved in reverse. The rings will arrive in the mail. She found me—dying to know—she brought me here.
Still mad at those alumni lawyers, their whole floor of rooms, their diminution of us—nice try! We say, big things, mean it, then get ready to go to Sonic.
But a young woman has stopped her car in front of the house. She’s crying. How sorrowful to just leave the engine running.
Finally, I approach the car saying, “Please do this somewhere else. We’re going to be married soon. My fiancé is literally on roller skates.”
“No one cares,” she says, which could mean, “I don’t care,” or it could mean, probably more likely, more accurately, more in tune with the general state of things, upcoming wedding aside, “Hectoring pitilessness.”
She wipes her nose and drives off around the corner. When we get to Sonic, I order something bright blue, potentially deadly, delicious.
Sean Ennis is the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A) and his flash fiction has recently appeared in Passages North, Hobart, (mac)ro(mc), No Contact, and Tiny Molecules. @seanennis110