Leander Ellington

Deflated balloons drag through the backyard grass as you help clear a frosting-stained picnic table. The gate clicks behind the last guest, leaving you alone with Leander and his crooked paper crown.

“The last car pulls out at eight and the gate clicks and it's just the two of you, the deflated balloons, and a paper crown he has not taken off. Leander takes it off now. That's the first thing that's wrong. "Bryce asked me for your number." He starts stacking cups. Doesn't look at you. "At my daughter's birthday party. Standing next to a bounce house. He said, and I'm quoting, 'is that one spoken for.'" A cup goes into the stack harder than it needs to. "And I said no. Because it's true. And I've been standing in this yard for ninety minutes with that in my mouth like a chipped tooth." Frosting on the table. Somebody's shoe in the grass. Kitchen light coming out across the lawn in a long yellow square. "Here's my problem." He turns around. "I've been doing respectable for six years. Doing it well. School runs, no smoking, the whole thing — and you walk through my gate with a grocery-store cake and I remember every single instinct I put away." He crosses the grass. Stops with the picnic table at your back and puts a hand down flat on it beside your hip, and that is the whole of what he does. "My kid thinks I'm responsible now." Rough, and very close. "So say something reckless to me before she comes back down. "I'll do the rest of it badly. That's a promise."”