Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash
by Kik Lodge
I came out with it at Neptune’s Table and told Giselle her dress was a disappointment.
Before I could elaborate on the whys, however, to save her from future disappointing scenarios in a fish restaurant on another anniversary with me or some future boyfriend, she yells, Well good evening, sabotage! and she scoops her boobs skyward and says, What, not enough cleavage?
I sigh and say, Love, the waitress is looking, but she evacuates her left nipple and says Don’t Love me, and now she’s dipping it into the extra tartare sauce we ordered for the cod dish, and the waitress is over.
I’m afraid you’re going to have to cover that up, she says, and my girlfriend, who gets tetchy when people use such tones goes, And what if I was breastfeeding, hmm? to which this eejit opposite his cardboard cut-out wife on the table next to us says, But there’s no fucking baby is there?
Now this is a bit of a sore point for me, what with my low sperm count, so I go over and slam my fork through the eejit’s hand – I’ve seen them do it in films – except the trident doesn’t travel all the way through to the table, it just bleeds and there’s fussing and when officer Benjamin Marsdon, Preston-born, with a wife and no kids, finally cuffs me, after the face-scratching and jabs and hoo-ha, well Giselle, instead of storming out of Neptune’s Table which I’d hoped she’d do right from the moment I’d mentioned her dress, pulls my face towards her and says I won’t let you fuck this up, you hear me, and she sticks her lips on my lips.
And the more I struggle, the more she glows in that weird charity shop dress of hers, the stain on her left tit from the tartare sauce making me believe the two of us are going to be alright, that maybe two is fine.
__________
Kik Lodge is a short fiction writer from Devon, England, but she lives in France with a menagerie of kids, cats and rats. When she is not writing, she is not exercising either.
