Normally, Nicki would have made Dallas take her somewhere a bit classier – a Super 8, at least, or a Best Western, something brand-name. Not one of these fucking no-tell Current River shitholes with names like Bay Vue and Lakeshore, even though the only bay or lake you can see is in the cheap reproduction artwork hanging in the bathroom – but everything in town is booked up for some kind of baseball tournament. They’ve gone to a few different places in the six months they’ve been doing whatever the fuck it is they’re doing: hotels, friends’ apartments, the back room at Desi’s when it was closed, his parents’ place when they went to Poland to visit their cousins. One time they went up to his friend’s camp on Arrow Lake, a leisurely late-spring afternoon spent fucking and fishing and drinking beer, and Nicki came home with two medium-sized pickerel and splinters on her kneecaps from the wooden deck.

What the fuck are they doing? Sneaking around, lying to people, feeling disgusting ninety percent of the time. And for what? Nicki doesn’t even like Dallas. If she had ever thought there was any feeling there, anything at all, it had been wiped away the instant she walked into Desi’s and saw him standing behind the counter in that stupid long black apron taking people’s orders as if nothing had ever happened, as if he hadn’t knocked her up and then taken off for eight years. She had thrown a mug at him that day, still half-full with some mousy-haired Lakehead student’s lukewarm peppermint tea. Just picked it up off the nearest table and hurled it at Dallas’s head, although the mug was heavier than she thought and it ended up skidding across the counter and smashing on the floor at his feet.

“You fucking deadbeat!” she screamed, and Dallas just stood there like a drooling idiot, his mouth hanging open, until Nicki picked up a plate with the same girl’s half-eaten blueberry muffin on it and heaved it at him like a Frisbee. He reached one hand up and caught the plate seconds before it came in contact with his face.

“Nicki,” he said. “Holy shit.” He put the plate down and climbed under the counter, grabbed her by the wrists. She struggled, but he was surprisingly strong. He put his mouth near her ear. “You can hit me if you want,” he said, “but let’s just do it outside, okay?”

He led her through the back and out into the alleyway behind the café. As soon as they stepped outside, he let her go. “Jesus Christ,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a pack of smokes. “Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to do that?”

“What, throw a mug at your head?” Nicki asked. She leaned against the wall, her whole body shaking.