A dead chicken—that was his surprise. Not sure what I was expecting: a bottle of wine, a pair of sunglasses, a comfortable pillow—ideally faux goose down—but the lifeless bird wasn’t it.
“Oh, dear.” I grimaced at the sight. “Did you kill it?”
“I thought you’d like something besides fish.”
It would be a nice change from our daily meal of fruit, avocado, fish, sticky rice, or undercooked beans. I wanted to suggest to Hunter that he soak beans overnight to soften them like my mother used to, but it wasn’t my place to tell him what to do. He was kind enough to host me, so I appreciated any food he served.
“I’ll be honest with you.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust and gestured at the lifeless bird. “I don’t know how to pluck or gut that.”
“No worries, I’ll do it,” Hunter said. “Tonight, for dinner, we’ll have grilled chicken.”
My mother was against waste, so she found ways to get the most out of everything. I might have never helped, but I’d had the privilege of watching her cook while I did my homework in the kitchen.
“Why don’t we cut off bigger pieces, grill them, and use the rest to make a soup?” My eyes landed on a gigantic carrot on the picnic table, covered with dirt. I palmed the enormous root, testing its weight and feel. “Wow, that is huge! My fingers don’t fully wrap around… er… what do you call it? Its root? Shaft?”
Hunter threw a look at me over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised. “I don’t think carrots have shafts, but I’ve held larger things in my hand,” he deadpanned, but then a slight smile curved his lips into a full-on smirk. I shook my head, and my entire body burned with embarrassment because my mind couldn’t undo the image of Hunter holding his dick. “Why are you blushing?” he said. “I was talking about an eggplant. What did you think?”
Laughing, I left the vegetable alone and smoothed loose hairs off my forehead. Hunter reached for my face and lightly brushed his knuckles over my cheek. All my nerve endings telescoped to the one spot he touched.
“You have pen ink everywhere,” he said.
“Oh good.” I stepped to the mirror on the tree and gasped at my reflection. Blue streaks covered my face as if I was back in tenth grade writing a five-thousand-word essay on why physical education shouldn’t be part of the standard high school curriculum. I groaned and rubbed spots with my finger. “You should have told me I looked like this.”
“I didn’t notice it until now.” Hunter took a sharpening stone and moistened the top with water. He angled a knife and slowly drew the blade down and across the stone in a smooth motion.
“Phill would’ve pointed that out right away,” I said. Phill’s only talent was to find everything negative before he saw anything positive. I braced for the old anger to bubble up as it used to, but it didn’t.
“The good news is I am not Phill.”
Hunter had no idea how good that news was. If I had to spend an hour on a deserted island with my ex, I would’ve swum to the next dry land to get away from him. I wetted the towel and scrubbed my skin harder.
Hunter’s hands paused, and he looked up at me. “Do you mind if I ask you why you married him?”
I wished back at the high school senior prom, I didn’t think just because he was on his way to graduating as valedictorian—just like me—and headed to the same university, it was our fate to be together. “I thought I could have what my parents had since they were college sweethearts.” I sighed. “I was an idiot.”
“I have a strong feelingheis an idiot. Not you.” The muscles on his tan forearms flexed when Hunter flipped theknife to the other side and used the same motion. Then his hands changed blade sides again and repeated the same skillful and capable movements five times.
I tore my eyes away and rolled my head around, cracking my neck like I was getting ready for a ring fight. “My dad needed a lot of attention. I felt bad leaving him alone with a nurse. I quit my job and took care of him. Phill was unhappy that we were running through our savings because I stopped working. I suggested he get an actual job instead of waiting for a management position for the past five years. That didn’t go well. He also didn’t like that I spent so much time with my dad. Our house had a spare room, and I wanted my father to move in with us so I could look after him, but Phill said no. I wasn’t going to beg, and gave him an ultimatum: either my father moved in, or I moved out. By the end of the day, I moved out.” I gave Hunter a weak smile. “Two months later, Iwas served divorce papers.”
I scoffed at the memory of how surprised I’d been to open the door, thinking it was my lunch DoorDash delivery, to find a short young man with a letter. I didn’t even know why I was shocked. Somewhere deep down, I’d known that this would happen. Only I suppose I was hoping it would be me who filed first.
“He based his divorce on spousal abandonment. Which was, on some level, true. He got a good lawyer and robbed me of half of everything, including my 401k, never mind that since we got married, I had been the only one who had a job. I was tired and didn’t fight at all during our divorce. I just wanted it to be over. And to top it off, Phill lied to me about the debt he ran up online gambling. I couldn’t do anything about it because everything was in my name.” Close to three years had passed, but talking about it again made me feel like I was back there, my life being sucked out of me.
Hunter took a large pot and placed it under the pipe with running water. “Do you want to know a fun fact?”
“Um… sure.”
“When humans develop in the womb, the anus forms before any other opening. Which basically means at one point everyone was nothing but an asshole,” Hunter said, looking at me. I had no idea where he was going with this. Then he added, “I have a feeling Phill never developed beyond that stage.”
I blinked at him, then burst into laughter. “This is the best.” I wiped at my eyes. “Tina said, ‘You can’t fix stupid, but you can divorce it.’”
“And she is right.” Hunter nodded.
She also was sure Phill suffered from SPS (Small Penis Syndrome) and couldn’t handle my success. He wasn’t like that when we were in school. His personality only worsened after we graduated from university. I already had a job, and he couldn’t find one. I jumped at the first opportunity to get my foot in the door, but he waited for something better. As my career rocketed, his deep envy of me increased. Each time I got a promotion or a bonus, he wouldn’t talk to me for a day, sometimes longer.
Shaking out my hands and letting the pent-up energy out of my body and into the earth, I smiled. “All right. No more talk about the douchebag. Now it’s only fair since you asked about him, I get to ask you a personal question.”
“Do your worst.”
