King of Ashes

by S.A. Cosby

“He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t put me out there like that.” “Why wouldn’t he? Because y’all are friends? I work with money every day. Money is like acid. It burns through everything. Friendships, family, lovers, husbands and wives. Whatever bond you think you have, money will make that shit dissolve. It’s acid. Don’t ever lie to yourself and think it ain’t,” Roman said.

The more you love somebody, the more a broken heart turns that love to hate.

God, we have a good thing. Why would you wanna mess that up?” Chauncey said. Neveah looked at him. But we don’t have a good thing, she thought. We have a thing that makes us feel good. And even that is debatable at this point.

And for what? Fifteen or twenty minutes of moans and sweating and the crystalline rapture that exploded in her body and then faded like the last notes of a sad love song she knew had to end sooner rather than later?

Ancestry stretched marionette strings down through a generation of couplings, of sighs, of long winter days and champagne Saturday nights, to make them move with unpracticed synchronicity.

“How was the winery?” Roman asked. “Fine. A few white ladies trying to escape their poor choice to get married because their husband could play Savage Garden on the guitar.