Chapter 6: The Shower

I opened the door of Room 4 a crack, in a bedsheet, with two men's come drying on my stomach.

The groom held a mimosa through the gap.

"Drink that," he said. "Don't say anything. I have a flight at four."

"Where are you going?"

"Belize. Mom's in a mood, I'm told, and I'm not here for it."

"Did you come all the way over here to ask me that?" I said.

"I came to see if my seating chart worked," he said, looking past my shoulder at the bed. "It did. Be nice to my brother. Be nicer to my cousin."

I shut the door in his face.

I drank the mimosa anyway, leaning on the wood.

Behind me two grown men lay in a wrecked bed and did not say a thing.

By nine that night there were two trucks parked outside my apartment building in East Nashville.

I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at them through the window.

The black F-150 and the gray Silverado with the cracked taillight.

Nobody had asked to follow me home.

Nobody had asked me whether they could.

I opened my front door and set my keys in the dish and turned around.

They were standing on the landing with their hats in their hands.

"Rules," I said.

"Yes, ma'am," said Colt.

"Come in. Shut the door. Rules."

I stood in the middle of my living room with a throw blanket around my shoulders and counted them out on my fingers.

"One. This is a weekend."

"It's Sunday," Colt said.

"One weekend. Two. I'm the one who says when."

"When what?"

"When anything. When it starts, when it stops. When it's enough," I said.

"Is that right?" said Jesse, and I saw his ears pinking from across the room.

"Three. No names in public."

"What names?"

"Whatever I've let you call me. Not in front of anybody. Not at a restaurant, not at a gas station, not in front of your mother," I said.

"Not in front of my mother," Jesse agreed, with feeling.

"That's the rules."

Colt looked at me for a long second.

"One weekend," he said.

"I said it."

"You said it like you were reading it off a card."

"I'm very sure," I said.

"All right," Colt said, and set his hat on my kitchen counter. "Then we've got the rest of the night."

My bathroom was the only room in the apartment I'd spent real money on.

It had a clawfoot tub.

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