Born Again at Granny's Cave

Callum laughed and kept going, and the blonde kept digging into him. She hadn’t pulled out the bear spray so I guess you could call it flirting.

I felt someone grab my hand.

“You’re married,” the spindly brunette said, holding up my wedding band as evidence.

“No,” I said, “I’m just depressed. I’m one of those idiots who really thought she’d stay married to me.”

“Stick of butter’ll get that ring right off.”

“Oh, really?” I said in a way she must have liked.

She held up her over-sized purple-red handbag. “I don’t have any butter in my purse, but I do have bolt cutters if you can trust my precision.”

“What kind of person keeps bolt cutters in her purse?”

“This kind of person,” she said, giving me the kind of smile you see on TV right before people hook up. “My name’s Kara.”

“Like Kara Thrace,” I replied with immediate regret.

“Who?”

“Uh… from Battlestar Galactica.”

She gave me a laugh. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I still think you’re cute.”

I bought Kara a shot of tequila and did my best to clean off a couch to sit on. As she sat down beside me she brushed up against my side in a way that couldn’t be mistaken for an accident.

It was all pretty textbook so far; I felt like I was on my way to waking up in a bathtub full of ice.

“You’re not a student,” I said. “I can tell.”

“Dropped out a long time ago.”

“Do you work around here?”

“I guess I’d say I’m a writer. So far it hasn’t paid much.”

“That sucks,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything better. I wasn’t about to ask her what kind of depressing jobs she’d taken to make ends meet, not that I could picture her wearing a hairnet.

“I think you can tell that Ashley and I aren’t like the other girls. I’m not sure you should be talking to me.”

“I’m a thirty-one-year-old divorced man with nothing to say. You probably shouldn’t be talking to me.”

“You’re only thirty one?”

“That hurts a little,” I said. “You’re wondering how I could have gotten so damned fat in just three decades?”

“Don’t put yourself down. It’s not attractive.”

“What is attractive?”

“Smiling and nodding. I’ll tell you random things about my life and my cat and my favourite metal bands, nothing the least bit interesting. And you’ll pretend to like it.” She leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Then you’ll take me back to your place, we’ll have awkward but reasonably enjoyable sex and after that I’ll overstay my welcome by a couple of months.”

“Sounds good,” I said. It did sound good.

And she was pretty spot on about the sex.

♥♥♥

Kara and Ashley stayed over for a few days. Ashley left on Sunday night after getting to know Callum well enough to make an informed decision; Kara never really left.

She did leave once, though, to bring over her cat. I guess I should have realized they were a package deal. Insert two pussies joke here, eh?

After a little prodding, she borrowed my laptop to show me some of her writing. It was like nothing I’d seen before, beautiful and sad… it wasn’t pretentious or anything, but it was definitely deeper than I was used to, a story about the past that read as though she’d been there.