Read Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) for Free Online

laughs. Philip gets what he wanted. “Why not?” he asks.
    â€œWhy?” Maux starts sketching, angry lines stabbed across the paper.
    â€œBecause we’re in love,” Philip says. It has been almost four years since he was a Port St. Lucie dormkid, and everything around here was fresh and exciting and first time. Now, he finds amusement in riling up the easily riled, as Madonna pleads If we could have a holiday / it would be so nice!
    â€œWe’re only together because there’s nobody else around,” she says, punching dots into the pad. “You’re the best worst option.”
    He watches her as she draws, those mean blue eyes—spiteful, hate-filled—a bitter grin. He hates her. He wants her. And at the end of July, he will leave her. If not sooner.
    â€œHere,” she says, sliding the drawing pad across the table. “What do you think?”
    He grabs the pad by its spiraled wires across the top, turns it, holds it. It’s a one-panel drawing of Philip, wearing a sundress in an open field, holding a bouquet of limp flowers in his right fist. Arrows point to his “ ‘krazy’ punk haircut!,” “t-shirt advertising some generic southern California pop punk band,” “totally individualistic wallet chain,” and “camera-for taking ‘artistic’ pictures.” He is surrounded by six speech clouds: “You look nice today,” “Let’s go watch a movie,” “I’m really starting to like you,” “This camera is like my soul,” “When can I see you again?” and “I miss you.” He remembers when he said each of these to her—early in their “relationship”—and the scathing laughter and bitter remarks they engendered.
    â€œC’mon!” she says. “It’s funny!”
    He smiles, to give a pretense of a reaction. He considers leaving, putting the last two month’s absurdity with her to rest already, finishing this pint of Fancy Lad Irish Stout (or whatever you call it) and walking home through the quiet of a Gainesville Tuesday night. Maybe go down to the Nardic Track or the Bubbling Saucepot and see if any bands are playing. Maybe find a porch where friends are sitting around drinking and talking shit. Anywhere but here, with her. But if he leaves, he leaves the indigo, and the emerald tie, and everything underneath. He doesn’t feel hurt or offended by the drawing, and he’s not sure if it’s better or worse that he simply doesn’t care.
    â€œYou’re so ridiculous,” he throws out, to the empty space.
    â€œSo you’re not mad?” She sounds disappointed.
    â€œWhy would I be mad? It’s a beautiful rendering.” He slides the drawing pad back to her side of the table. “I’m flattered.”
    Maux rips the drawing out of the pad, crumples it up, throws it at his head. He dodges, it lands on the table of the booth behind him. “Let’s leave,” she says. “Even my apartment is better than this.”
    They finish their pints. She stomps out the door, ignoring the “Have a nice nights” of the bartender and server. Philip slides out the booth when the front door slams. He sees the drawing bunched up into the size of a softball, grabs it, planning on either keeping it or throwing it at Maux’s head in the parking lot.
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    DANCING GIRLS
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    Meghan sits in a wobbly wooden chair in Mouse’s living room, with that bobbed hair and the overbite and the lisp. She trills something flutey on the flute while Mouse rummages through piles of unwashed clothes and porno and emptied microwave dinner boxes for “The tape to record the song I want you to help me with, because I know, when you add what you’re going to add, and what you boys are going to add . . . ” (Here, Mouse points at Ronnie and Kelly. “Don’t patronize us, you