Page 21 of Soft Flannel Hank

“That’s all we have time for today, I’m afraid.”

Hank didn’t feel any better than he had when he walked in, but he did feel less strangled by the snarled jumble of his thoughts. Feeling hurt was a valid, healthy emotion, Nadja had said. He wasjustifiedin feeling hurt.

But beneath the heavy weight of his hurt was something else, a thick, hot emotion he hadn’t felt in a very long time. It had been smothered by his depression, by the self-loathing that covered him like an oil slick.

Hank wasn’t just heartbroken. He wasn’t just hurt. Hank wasangry.

Esther had kissed him. She had climbed in his lap and pressed herself tightly against him. She had taken him into her soft, strong body. She had told him she liked him. She had told him she wanted to go slow. “I’m trying to not mess things up before they have a chance to get started.”

She’d pressed her forehead to his and felt his heart pounding beneath her palms, held his hand and kissed his cheek and smiled like she couldn’t wait to see him again.

Esther had made him believe that maybe, just maybe, somebody would actually stay for once. That for the first time in so long, he wouldn’t have to rattle around his house like a ghost, eating the same things every day because he couldn’t taste them anyway, watching the same things at all hours of the night because time had no meaning when you had nowhere to go and no one to see.

She’d made him believe that he could hope again. And then she’d left without a word.

He climbed out of the truck, stripped off his jacket and his good flannel. He went to the shed behind the house, took his axe, and set a log on the stump.

Every downswing of his axe was like an extension of his own pounding heart. The wide arc it made, the moment in the swing where the axe seemed weightless before he brought his body into it, driving the blade down into the wood with so much force that he felt it in his teeth.

He stood panting. Sweat streamed down the peaks and valleys of his body, making his undershirt stick to his chest. Steam rose from his shoulders in the chilly afternoon.

Hank took load after load of split wood to his truck with the wheelbarrow. The heavy fatigue in his limbs was a comfort. He would take the wood to Buck to give to the elders on the reservation.Something good should come of this fucking mess. This fucking broken heart.

He looked at his reflection in the window of his truck before he opened the door and couldn’t help but remember looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror the night before when he’d almost looked like himself again. He’d recognized himself. His old self. He was still there, staring back from reflection in the truck window.

Esther may have carved out his heart with a melon baller. But before that, she’d made him feel more alive than he had in years. Now that he remembered what that felt like, he’d be damned if he went back to how he’d been before.

5

After a sleepless night lying in bed, staring at the light coming from the bathroom and letting her brain run wild, Esther found herself in the same seat she’d occupied not twelve hours before. The sun wasn’t up yet, and she was alone in the diner. A sleepy young server brewed coffee and set menus out at the counter. Esther’s coffee was warm in her hands, and the soft, yellow glow of the diner was a comfort.

Her car was packed. She’d been sitting by her room’s window, watching the parking lot so that she could check out the moment somebody arrived to open the office. She’d burst into the office and practically thrown cash at the old lady who owned the motel.

Esther hadn’t known where to go next, but her growling stomach and aching head were distracting. She needed food and coffee before she could plan her next move.

She thought about the last time she’d sat in this exact booth, Hank’s burly frame across from her. He’d smelled like Irish Spring and fabric softener and himself as he’d kissed her in his truck, as if they’d been trying to climb inside of one another’s bodies.

Then there had been the sex, which had felt like a riptide that took Esther completely by surprise with its force and momentum. Hank hadn’t been the shipwreck when he was under her. He’d been the storm, and she, lost bird that she was, had flown headfirst into it, into him.

Esther reached for her tarot cards and shuffled them restlessly while she waited for more coffee.

The bell over the door rang, and Esther looked up to see a short woman dressed in joggers and bright red sneakers. She had on a silver puffer jacket and a large purse slung over one shoulder. She strode with purpose to the diner counter and sat on top of the middle stool, hanging her purse on the hook beneath it. Her long hair was a silvery gray. The air crackled around her, and Esther recognized the presence of magic.

As Esther shuffled, a card jumped out of the deck and landed face-up on the table. The High Priestess stared up at her.

“Would you care for some company?” a husky voice asked from across the room.

Esther smiled and nodded. The woman picked up her coffee cup and shimmied off the stool, grabbing her purse and gliding over to Esther’s table.

She slid into the empty bench and studied Esther from across the table with pursed lips and a furrowed brow.

“You’re a long way from home, birdie,” she said.

Esther took a deep breath and nodded, feeling the tangible magic that surrounded the woman.

After what felt like a very long time, she extended her hand over the table. “Magda Nutter.”

The last name made Esther’s hands tingle, the magic alive and practically shrieking at her.