The next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Lisa P. Sutton! Here’s an excerpt:
When he touches her knee, just a forefinger drawn lightly over her jeans, she moves her coffee cup and saucer to cover the spot. It is both too much too quickly and also not enough. In her fantasies of this moment, she is younger, he is younger, they are awkward and unknowing together. They are both worried over acne, the freshness of their breath, the positioning of their noses. They are both uncomfortable in their bodies at the same time.Without asking, he takes her coffee from her lap and puts it on the end table beside her. It’s his confidence that offends her. She retrieves her cup and holds it up to her mouth for a long time, taking several sips. She looks straight ahead.He turns his body sideways on the couch so that he’s facing her. He tries to smooth her long bangs back over one ear, but his fingers are thick and clumsy—like a boy’s, she thinks—and the hair falls right back over her face. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, and though she flushes instantly, because she has waited too long on it, the compliment hits her in all the wrong ways. She wants to be the kind of girl who can brush it off, who doesn’t need him to say it.
Lisa P. Sutton has an MFA from University of California, Irvine and a JD from Boston University School of Law. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.
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