Fragile

by Lisa Unger

When Jones Cooper was younger, he didn’t believe in mistakes. He thought that every road led you somewhere and wherever you wound up, that’s where you belonged.

Now a thunderstorm loomed, as if heaven itself had decided to launch a protest against the erratic conditions.

She thought maybe when marriage survives that shift from romance through friendship to partnership, it’s stronger. Maybe that’s when you go from being a couple to being a family.

He wondered what it would be like to grow up in one place and stay there all your life, to forever be defined by your childhood relationships, to never know if you got to be the person you wanted to be, to always be the person you were when you were young.

It was a pretty watercolor night

Jones thought Ricky looked just like he had when Jones used to lift him naked from the bath. Jones would dry his hair with a towel and kiss his face and belly and say, I love you so much, Ricky. And Ricky would throw his arms around Jones’s neck and say, I love you so much, too, Daddy.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t. It’s one thing to try and fail. It’s another thing to never try at all. That’s the stuff that eats you alive.”