1. 1
Brittney Cannon
Tommy
The smell of gasoline and beer will always remind me of the summer I was with Tommy.
He was a balding son of a bitch with a chest like a Chevy and arm hair like a sleazy car
salesman. He was a jackass and a gentleman, and I loved how he loved me.
We met at a barbeque: cut grass and grills, and friends with kids. He and I were almost
forced onto each other, being the only singles at the get together; even the kids exchanging
licorice rings and saying I do.
Lynn introduced us in the eager way that housewives are prone to: as though they’re
making a profitable business connection. “Now, Mary Beth, this is just someone you’ve got to
meet.” Her cool fingers encircled my upper arm and gently tugged me in his direction. “Tommy
is friends with Paul…” and under her breath, “that husband of mine’s got to be around here
somewhere…” After a quick glace she shrugged. “Anywho, they go out to the NASCAR races
all the time, which is a blessing for him, now that I don’t have to go with him and ask all my
questions.” Lynn laughed enthusiastically at herself and was no later pursuing a shirtless and
sticky little boy with a popsicle.
“Pleasure,” I said.
He half smiled and tipped his beer at me, a worn hunting koozie blocking me from seeing
what was making his cheeks pink and half-lidded his eyes.
“So you like NASCAR?” I entreated.
Tommy exhaled smugly from his nostrils while he took another sip. An few
uncomfortably long breaths passed.
My cheeks warmed, and I embrarrassment wash up in my stomach. “What?”

2. 2
He stepped his legs out and crossed his arms across his chest, letting out an “Ahh,” like a
dad getting up out of a particularly plush couch. “I’m not into that whole small talk thing.”
Tommy’s stance, his expression, and the poorly disguised rejection got the better of my
southern upbringing. “I think NASCAR is stupid.” His eyebrows raised, but his face froze.
“Bunch of idiots driving around and around in a stupid circle. And everyone fucking hates small
talk, but it’s a necessary evil. But you know what’s not? Being a complete asshole. You’re an
unnecessary evil, like wasting a shit ton of gas driving around and around in a motherfucking
circle. Now if you’ll excuse me,” I fumed while I stormed from the yard through the sliding
glass doors into the kitchen.
Sweat prickled at the edge of my brow, and I downed a margarita sitting on the counter.
That seemed like the perfect time to head home.
“Mary Beth, I like you. I think you have spunk. I’m having a party this weekend, I want
you to come.”
“So you didn’t come. I get it. I was a jackass. I owe you an apology. I’m sorry, I was
rude. Let me take you out.”
“Miss Mary Beth, it’s Tommy, and this is the last voicemail I’m going to leave you. Give
me a chance to prove to you that I can be better than the poor first impression I made. Just one
chance, you might have a good time. Call me back.”

3. 3
I didn’t call Tommy back, but he came and he came with roses. Lynn had “revealed to
him the location of my secret lair” and there he stood. He didn’t stand on the porch, but rather
just in front of the bottom step leading to it. He wore khakis, a button down tight around the
middle, navy sportscoat, and a bowtie. It was a sight to behold, the last thing I noticed being the
bashful way he pawed at his neck and shrugged the arm holding the flowers.
“I’m going to make you give me a chance.”
“I don’t like roses. I like tulips.”
The next time I saw Tommy, he held twelve pink tulips wrapped in grocery store
cellophane, and almost every time after that.
I think Tommy fell in love with me at that barbeque, when I revealed to him the great
pitfalls of NASCAR, but my fate was sealed later, one night at a bar.
I volunteered myself to be the designated driver and watch Tommy and his drunk hunting
buddies shoot pool at a hole in the wall saloon only they had ever heard of. I was busying
myself with a game of darts when I heard two drunk idiots fighting behind me; one of which was
my drunk idiot.
“Tommy, stop, let’s just go. It’s getting late.”
He pulled his arm out of my grasp and continued to retort indistinguishable slurs toward
the stranger.
“Tommy, seriously. Whatever you’re fighting about is probably stupid anyway.”
“Listen to your woman, get the fuck out of here.”
“You’re going to watch your language in front of her,” or a less successfully executed
version to that effect. Tommy pressed his fingers against the chest of the drunk’s flannel and

4. 4
pushed him backwards. The stranger closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows with a smirk and
scoffed.
“Don’t push me.”
Tommy pushed him.
The brawl ended in moments, not so much from bar security or friends, but mostly from
the lack of motor control.
“Alright, big fella, let’s get you home.”
I listened as the accounts of the fight evolved in the backseat and dropped the party off
one by one. And then it was Tommy and me. He laid his head on my lap and mumbled sweet
things I barely understood but appreciated. I stroked the back of his neck and just thought, This
idiot defended my honor.
From that night on, most nights were spent at Tommy’s.
“You can leave some stuff here if you want, you know, like in a drawer.”
I looked down at his face in the bed while I laced up my boots. “Okay, yeah, sure. Next
time.”
His stuff inundated my closet and under my bed, admittedly because I loved the smell of
his fleece and the softness of his t shirts when I slept next to him; I was always too hot for him to
sleep next to when I wasn’t wearing anything.
We fit seamlessly into each other’s lives, until we didn’t.
He stumbled into the bed reeking of alcohol. “My sister got engaged.”
“You have a sister?”

5. 5
He shrugged, “I guess.”
A few hours later he woke up asking what happened the night before, and even though
every thought I’d had through the sleepless night had been devoted to formulating the most
scathing and detached way to ask about his sister, I said nothing. The words oxidized in my
throat, rusting over completely and fusing into the landscape.
“Nothing, we just went to bed.”
I don’t know when I stopped knowing who Tommy was, but there we were and I couldn’t
ever find the right words to say. Like coals barely smoldering, we needed a douse of kerosene,
and I found it every fight. No matter who instigated, after every fight he always slept next to me.
If we were mad in bed, he always turned around and said, “Come here,” and held me until
neither of us cared. As long as I added that lighter fluid, I knew that he would always chase after
me, literally down the street sometimes.
Tommy’s eyes were my security; as long as he was looking at me we were okay, but
when his eyes were focused elsewhere he was lost to me. This guy who I had no physical
attraction to at first sight, rejected, and toyed with the idea of because my universe and defined
my reality.
Once Tommy realized my dependency, he played the game perfectly. Hands on other
girls’ legs on couches, hugs with kisses on the cheek, anything and everything that he knew
would make me explode, and explode I did, like a detonation in a glass castle.
I screamed, and I cried, and I hated the girls, and I hated him.

6. 6
“Why are you so jealous? I wouldn’t be dating you if I didn’t want to be. Fucking trust
me, alright?”
He had this way of making me feel like that psychotic girlfriend, or maybe I was one.
Maybe he created this insanity, and maybe he brought out an insanity that had always laid
dormant within me.
He took my essence and made it his, distorting it until I lost it completely in the drunken
fights and aggressive sex.
Waking up sober was petrifying. I felt like a little girl; I was back in high school
realizing once I was at the party that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. I was scared, I was lost,
and I was alone. Everything that I was had long left me. I wondered what there was for him to
love in me, because Mary Beth was gone, and who I became was some desperate stranger
soaking in his attention like a drug.
“Babe, I’m really, really sorry,” he insisted, pulling his khaki wranglers over his waist
hastily, the belt still looped through the holes from when I made him kick them off twenty
minutes ago. “I just have to go deal with this thing, and I’ll be right back. No more than an
hour.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and covered my chest with his duvet. “Yeah, okay.
I’ll be here.”
He rushed over and kissed me, his calloused fingers lingering on my cheek. “Stay up?”
I smiled and nodded. We’d planned this movie night in bed for our anniversary around
the fact that he couldn’t afford to spend too much on a fancy dinner and a movie, and I wanted to
tell him he had to stay with me, he couldn’t just up and leave when all I’d asked for was a night
in. “I’ll be up.”

7. 7
Hours later I felt him slide into bed and put a cold arm around my waist. Opening my
eyes meant crying and another fight, and I didn’t have the kerosene in me that night.
The night I left, I woke up suddenly and insecure. I snatched his phone from the bedside
table, a sickening feeling in my stomach with no known cause—a stronger source than intuition,
it was that part of you that suddenly wakes up sober, not knowing how it got there but disconnect
with last night to get its shit together that drove me to scour through his text messages. There,
six conversations back, was a text from an ex about a hickey, asking if they were children.
The sickening feeling rose throughout my entire body. I felt as if I was going to pass out.
They were children. No, I didn’t know the girl. He was a child and I was an adult who was
stupid enough to invest myself in his immaturity.
I found a grocery bag, and while he breathed heavily in the bed, I emptied my drawer and
slipped out, any evidence of my presence in his life removed with the skill of a seasoned burglar.
Tommy was always quitting, but never clean. Always hoping one day he’d wake up and
be done, but that’s not how it works—not with dipping and not with me. Quitting him was hard,
but the shame was a wall that kept me secure in my absence. It was like walking indoors after
laying in the sun for hours, but all the lights were burned out and I was left with a dim
substitution.
Being clean of him felt like being in another body. Nothing felt quite right, but it all
worked. I had stepped outside just at sunrise, the world fresh and new but not at all home.
But he wasn’t my sun; couldn’t be again. Our life was a fast drive down a straight
highway, whipping my hair around me and leaving me breathless and intoxicated.

8. 8
And then I was sitting in the aftermath of spinning off into a tree; sobered and in awe of
the damage toxic love can cause on a reality; a reality that before the meeting of two volatile
elements can seem so stable and real only to have the curtain pulled back to realize a foundation
so easily overturned.
My son’s name is Robert, and he’s got a spit of black hair on his head and thick arms for
a four year old. When his blue eyes look up at me and he smiles, I can’t believe how much I’m
in love with this gorgeous child.
Before I met this perfect face, I didn’t ever want children because they were somehow
sticky all the time, but Robert isn’t sticky. He’s soft and smooth, and gently scratching the
velvet nape of his neck while he sucked on his thumb and fell asleep made me feel safer than
anything I’d ever experienced.
I watch his face through the window of my truck while I fill it up with gas.
I can’t help but think on the afternoon I peed on that damned stick and discovered there
would be a new center of my universe.
It had been winter two months after my last night spent at Tommy’s. I was about to enter
the last stretch of my first trimester, but because I’d been skipping the red pills on my birth
control since college, the traditional red flag, or lack thereof, couldn’t give me the heads up. It
wasn’t until the third consecutive day of morning sickness that I entertained the thought.
After chugging a diet coke, I walked from work to the nearest drug store and ripped open
three boxes of pregnancy tests and let it rip right there in the store’s bathroom without even
pausing to pay.
They all told me the same thing; the thing I wouldn’t ever tell Tommy.