The Prayers in Rossford

“Baby, you know any girls?”

Aidan looked at Layla.

“I just asked you,” Layla said, “if you know any girls.”

“What for?”

Layla said, “This is going to sound embarrassing. I feel embarrassed even bringing it up.”

“Okay,” Aidan said. He waited, folding his arms over his chest, and apparently didn’t care how embarrassed Layla was.

“I am looking for a date for someone. For prom. I’ve sort of been pushed into it.”

“Um hum,” Aidan shook his head. “No one ever pushed Layla Lawden into anything.”

“Well this time someone did. Besides, I want to help.”

“Okay,” said Aidan. “You’re looking for a date for someone? For one of your friends?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“Brendan.”

“Okay, firstly, Brendan’s gay, and he’s bringing his own date. And secondly Brendan isn’t ‘kind of a friend’. Seriously, Aidan, if you’re going to roll with me you gotta know the folks in my life.”

“Well, then who?”

“Does it matter?”

“Is it Will!”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“It’s Will?”

“Aidan!”

“Shit, Layla! Are you serious?”

“Well, what the fuck’s the problem?” Layla snapped. “Who the hell died and made you the Inquisition? I’m helping my ex find a date, and really, I’m helping Bren and Milo find him a date, and he doesn’t even know about it.”

“Why can’t he find his own date, Layla?”

“Probably for the same reason you can’t just let shit go and say yes you know a girl or no you don’t. And I don’t know why I even asked you, because all you know is those bonehead football players.”

“Ey’ wait a minute—”

“Wait a minute yourself. And those cheerleading hoes who couldn’t chant their way out of a paper bag, so I don’t even know why I asked you.”

“Are you through?”

“Almost,” Layla said. “I was going to add that you better not so much as think about telling anyone what we’re doing. Or you’ll be looking for a date too.”

“And now you’re through?”

“Yes, Aiden, now I’m through.”

Aiden made a noise and moved across the kitchen, clicking his tongue.

“I just don’t know why you should be busy looking for a date for your ex. I don’t know why he can’t find his own.”

Layla decided to say nothing at all, since she couldn’t say anything nice.

“But,” Aiden said, “since this is how we’ve decided to go…”

“Yes?”

“It just happens I might know someone.’

Layla turned around.

“Yeah. I thought that would get you.”

“Well, who, Aiden?”

Aiden lifted a finger.

“My sister.”

“Bleck!” Brendan made a face as he tasted the coffee and put it back on the bureau. “No more Coconut Crème. I remember it tasting better last time.”

Kenny pulled himself out of the bed and reached over Brendan.

“Tastes all right to me.”

“It tastes all right. That’s the point,” Brendan said. “But it doesn’t taste good. The Vanilla taste good. I should have used vanilla.

“I bet,” Kenny said, “we could add something to this, and then it would taste better.”

Brendan lay on his back with his face frowned up a little, and said, “You’ve got a point.”

“Or could the point be that we talk about coffee flavoring too much?”

“Kenny,” Brendan said, seriously.

“Hum?”

“The French Vanilla is really good.”

Kenny turned his back on Brendan.

“The best thing you ever did was get a single dorm,” Brendan told him, still sitting up and looking at the closed door.

“Well, I didn’t really see any other way for you to stay the weekend. And it’s totally out of the question for me to stay with you. Since last Thanksgiving.”

“Don’t remind me. I still blush every time I see my mom.”

“So your face is constantly red?”

“Pretty much.”

Kenny turned around and said, “You blush too much. Blushing’s like apologizing, and you think you have far too much to apologize for.”

“I think my mom walking in on us—”

“I’m talking about everything,” Kenny said. “Quit being so fucking sorry.”

“Okay,” Brendan nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

“Bren?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know…? Have you thought…?” Kenny twisted his finger in his ear, “about school next year. Where you’re going?”

“Well, shit it’s May, of course I’ve thought about it. Thought and enrolled.”

Kenny looked at him.

“Here, stupid!” Brendan said. “I’m coming here.”

Kenny looked visibly relieved.

“I was going to say… unless you didn’t want me to. But I can tell you want me to. Why the fuck didn’t you say so?”

“Cause I wanted it to be your choice, Bren. I didn’t want to pressure you into anything.”

“Look, I have a friend who lost his girlfriend because he said she wouldn’t be a factor in where he went to school.”

“Will and Layla, I know. But I’m not Layla. Shit, no one’s Layla. And I wouldn’t have held it against you.”

“But I would have held it against myself,” Brendan told Kenny. “See, I love you. I’m utterly and completely serious about loving you, and that means that keeping us together is the most important thing to me.”

Kenny opened his mouth, but Brendan put up a hand,

“And I know,” Brendan continued, “that people will say that I am too young, we’re too young for it to matter. But I never knew that people got wiser as they got older. Unless they were already a little wise. And I never knew that love got better. Unless they already knew how to love. And we have fucked up sometimes. I know I have. And I can’t do everything, but Kenny… I can love you. I do love you. I’m really good at it. And I’m gonna keep it up.”

Kenny was so touched he turned his head away and muttered, “Shit, Bren.”

Brendan grinned at him.

“You are coming to prom, right?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, I want you to.”

“Won’t that be weird?”

“Not for me,” Brendan said. “I mean, didn’t you just say I need to stop apologizing?”

Kenny turned on his side again, reaching under the cover to put his hand on Bren’s thigh.

“You sure about that, Bren?”

“I just said I was.”

“It’s just… you’re Bren. You’re no wave maker.”

“I have made more waves than I wished in the last year and a half, Kenny. And they’ve all come from me trying to not make waves. I look at my parents, everyone’s parents. Heck, everyone we go to school with. Have you thought how much trouble we go through to avoid trouble?”

Kenny removed his hand, hugging the pillow as he looked up at Brendan.

“It’s like…” Brendan reflected, “we might as well just say… fuck it, right? And take the trouble. I bet life is so much better that way.”

There was a knock on Adele’s door and then she heard it open, so she assumed it was Nell, and she was right.

“What’s up?” Adele greeted her old friend.

“I just got back from the grocery store,” Nell said, putting the canvas bag on Adele’s kitchen table. “Here, have some eggs. And a head of lettuce. By the way, did you know Iceberg has no nutritional value?”

“No, I did not,” said her friend. “But at least now I won’t feel bad for not making salads. I always felt like I was a failure of a wife for not making salads. I wonder if Vanessa makes them.”

“Do you talk to… your half sister?”

“Hell, no. I can’t believe Layla pulled that shit.”

“I can,” Nell said while Adele discovered, “Yeah… I can too.”

“I really didn’t even need to go,” Nell said. “And that was when I realized something.” Nell waited for Adele to nod, and then she told her, “I keep thinking I’ll bump carts with someone, the way you did with Simon, and meet a new man.”

“I think they did that back in the Seventies.”

“Well, I wish it worked now.”

“Besides, you might just end up with another married man.”

Nell frowned at her, and Adele said, “Why don’t you put your face up on a dating site?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you know how well it worked for you.”

“But now I have Simon.”

“Not because of the dating site.”

“Okay, listen,” Adele said. “Here is my theory. You have to put yourself out there. You put yourself out for the universe, and the universe responds. Simon showed up because I put myself out. And if you put yourself out there, then someone will show up for you too.”

“The love of my life?”

“Maybe,” Adele shrugged. “If not that, then the lay of your life, which is something you could use.”

“God, no! Mom, change that.”

“But I am forty-three,”

On the other side of Nell from Dena, Adele bit into a carrot and shook her head.

“Okay, the one thing you have to understand about this shit is honesty is a no no.”

Nell looked at her friend.

“Look at this…” Adele clicked over. She read:

“‘I like long walks by the beach, moonlit dinners and classical music. I’m looking for a woman to experience the finer things in life with.’ Now that’s bullshit.”

“How do you know?”

“Mom,” Dena said, “if every guy on here who said he liked long walks by the beach was telling the truth, all we’d have to do is drive up to Lake Michigan and wrangle a few with a net.”

“The girl’s got a point. And then the body size thing.”

“I put a few extra pounds.”

“Firstly,” Adele said, “you don’t have a few extra pounds.”

“I do.”

“Nell, on this site, whatever you are, you should make lower. Slim means, sort of slim. Swimmer’s build is anorexic.”

“Average means pudgy,” Dena said and Adele nodded.

“And a few extra pounds,” Adele told her, “means fat as hell. So take that shit off.”

“And the age mom, don’t forget the age.”

Nell gave her daughter a longsuffering gaze.

“Ordinarily that forty is the new thirty is bullshit,” Adele said. “But in the case of a dating profile, it’s pretty true.”

“Like, look at her!” Dena pointed to one photo.

“There is no way,” Adele said clinically, “that this bitch is thirty-five.”

“They’ll say the same thing about me.”

“No they won’t, Mom,” Dena reached over and typed. “Which is why you get to be thirty!”

While Nell’s mouth hung open, Dena continued typing and said, “Which means you do not have a beautiful teenage daughter whose graduation you are eagerly awaiting. Now,” she said, deleting that sentence, “you do not have a daughter at all.”