WE’RE HERE: THE BEST QUEER SPECULATIVE FICTION 2022 Ft. “Falling to Pieces”

Published by Neon Hemlock Press

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It was a tiny tear at first—barely noticeable.

Just her left ring finger detaching a bit. No big deal. Leah added a strip of silver duct tape and hid that with a flesh-colored bandage, then she got back to work, answering the phone and greeting customers and hustling hustling hustling at Giovanni’s Ristorante in the city’s second-trendiest neighborhood.

By the next weekend the finger had come clean off, and the other four fingers on that hand were separating too, but Leah fixed it with more duct tape and fancy, elbow-length gloves that she sort of liked. They made her feel elegant, even though she was just handing out menus and wine lists and rolls of polished silverware.

Plus, with her hands covered and especially her left one, random dudes sitting at the bar stopped making bad jokes about how she wasn’t wearing a ring—a precursor, Leah knew, to hitting on her which would never go their way, because all she wanted was for Christine, the bartender with the cropped red hair and capable hands, to notice her.

She willed Christine to look at her in quiet moments, thinking hard at her, feeling harder. But Christine didn’t, or at least not when Leah was looking at her, and the fall months passed and Leah taped her fingers on and brushed lint from her black gloves after rolling silverware, and she looked and she sighed but Christine, whose hands moved like a street magician’s trick in the bar’s recessed lighting, didn’t look back.

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In January things got worse.

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