Fiction
The jacket: Joey’s. Brown. Made from an ancient, creased leather that would have appeared pathetically outdated on anyone else, she thought. Anything belonging to Joey automatically held significance — in the way the syllables wound around in her mouth before she said his name, the way she tried to stretch the short name out, needing the listener to smell the gray cigarettes in his jacket pockets, a smell lingering on his prickly face; to understand the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, vulnerably, ashen, when he was sad or drunk or angry or ecstatic.
“That one looks like a sailboat,” I whispered to the billowy clouds on that muggy July afternoon.
At least, I thought that Derek would think that the cloud looked like a sailboat. I lacked his imagination, as well as his contagious laugh. That laugh echoed in my head as I closed my eyes and the tragedy replayed itself in my mind, almost instantly.
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