I started to lose my fifth baby in the booth. You ordered Cobb salad because you didn’t know what to say; I just asked for extra strawberries. The waitress placed the cheesecake wedge between us, berry clots gleaming, oozing down the ledges, pooling red on porcelain. You winced as I tongued the spongy cream–warm, dream-sweet. Heaven. When the waitress returned I announced I craved another, please. Many others. I ached to plug this gnawing, squeezing emptiness with an entire cake of full-bodied slices. You spat your bacon. Said No; we’re done.
She brought the check. I swallowed it whole.
Mandy Lange has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and published in wildscape literary journal, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Washington Post, and other places. She’s won a couple writing contests and spends most of her time chasing children and animals on her fixer-upper farm in Michigan.
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