Stories by Stacy Pease

“She’s not even listening,” I say.

“She is,” he says.

“I am,” she says.

I feel my sadness sink deeper into the room’s obligatory sofa, the unbearable weight of our truth anchoring her and I to the stink of these threadbare cushions. I am going to lose her here. After ten years. Here in the stench of thick, stale air and that rotted flower pot shoved into the dusty window frame. Where academic books stack lazily on untouched shelves and a terrarium dangles crookedly from a rusted brass chain in the corner. Here, where tension hangs in a storm cloud over all our heads, threatening to rain.