The photo came through while I was at the Pilot Butte Drive-In, my thumb greasy from a basket of tater tots. Cole had left his phone on the table when he went to the restroom, and a message from his mom lit up the screen. A picture of him and my cousin Marissa, kissing on the balcony of a rental house in Cannon Beach. Their engagement party—the one I’d missed because of a stomach bug. I was supposed to be resting at home. Instead, I discovered my boyfriend of three years had his tongue down my own blood’s throat.
I didn’t cry. I ate three more tots, paid the check, and walked out into the October wind. The whole drive back to my little bungalow on Newport Avenue, I could taste the salt from the food and something sharper underneath. Gus, the neighbor’s one-eyed cat, was crouched on my porch rail hunting a moth. I stood there for ten minutes watching him, thinking about Sunday dinners at the Hendersons’. Cole’s dad, Richard—a retired contractor who laughed like a diesel engine—always made a point to compliment my hair, my laugh, my choice of beer. Linda, his mom, would rearrange the silverware and shoot me tight smiles. I’d been polite for years. Now the only thing in my head was: you shattered me, I’ll shatter something you love.
I didn’t want Richard for any kind of relationship. I wanted Cole to feel that sick lurch in his belly, the one where the world tilts and you can’t breathe. I knew exactly where to aim, because Richard spent every Thursday afternoon alone at his workshop out past the Old Mill District, restoring a ‘67 Mustang. No Linda, no Cole, no questions. Just classic rock and the smell of gasoline.
So the next Thursday, I showed up with a six-pack of 10 Barrel IPA and a story about being in the neighborhood. I wore my oldest jeans, a tank top that had seen better days, and knocked on the open bay door. Richard was bent over the engine block, wiping gunk off his hands. He blinked at me, surprised but not unhappy. I offered a beer and asked about the carburetor. He launched into a twenty-minute monologue, and I leaned against the workbench, nodding at the right spots. Gus had followed me, I guess; he sat on the concrete floor washing his face. When Richard made a joke about spark plugs, I touched his forearm. He didn’t pull away. I asked to see the restored interior, and he opened the passenger door for me. I slid onto the vinyl seat, and when he leaned in to point out the dashboard details, I kissed him. He froze for two seconds, then kissed back, rough and tasting of hops and metal.
It happened fast, on the workbench, a can of WD-40 rolling onto the floor. Right after, while his breathing was still shallow and the guilt hadn’t yet reached his eyes, I said, calm as a weather report, “Cole and my cousin Marissa have been sleeping together since July. I found out last week. Tell Linda I said hello.” Then I walked out, leaving the six-pack on the fender. Gus was already gone.
By Friday night, the family group chat had detonated. The annual Labor Day cookout was canceled—Linda posted a prim message about “unforeseen family difficulties.” She left me a voicemail that I saved solely for the way she spat the word “degenerate” with three extra vowels. Cole called five times, each message more unraveled. “She’s your cousin, Avery. He’s my dad. What is wrong with you?” I texted back a cropped version of that Cannon Beach photo, his hand on Marissa’s back, and typed, “You first.”
What I didn’t see coming was Marissa herself. Saturday morning, I was scraping frost off my Forester when her Subaru pulled up. She got out in a Pendleton coat, her cheeks pink from the cold, and she didn’t look sorry at all. She looked almost relieved. “I always knew you’d do something this stupid,” she said. “That’s why you never deserved him.” She told me she and Cole had been together on and off since junior year. He’d only stayed with me because his parents thought she was “trashy.” I was the respectable front, the one you bring to Sunday dinner while you keep the real thing in the backseat. Then she added, “You never had him. You just gave him the perfect excuse to hate you forever. He’s already on his way back to me.” She drove off, and I stood there with the ice scraper in my hand, my fingers numb and a hot, shameful knot tightening under my ribs.
That Wednesday, Linda appeared at Morning Bell Coffee where I work. She didn’t order anything. She just stood at the counter in her spotless hiking vest, staring holes into me while a line of tourists shuffled behind her. My manager finally asked her to order or leave. She left, but when my shift ended, there was a sticky note tucked under my windshield wiper: “You are dead to this family.” The paper smelled like her lavender hand sanitizer.
Cole’s calls stopped after two weeks. I heard from an old mutual friend that he and Marissa were already engaged, and that Richard had moved into a condo off Galveston Avenue. Linda was telling everyone I was a predator who’d seduced a married man. I didn’t bother correcting her. I just kept steaming milk and making hearts in the foam for strangers.
One afternoon, while I was sitting at Drake Park watching the Deschutes River move past, a call came from a number I almost didn’t recognize. Richard. He sounded tired. “I didn’t know about Cole and Marissa,” he said. “Not until you told me.” He said he’d filed for divorce—not because of me, but because the whole mess had cracked open a marriage that had been lying to itself for decades. He asked if we could talk sometime. I said no. Not out of anger. I was just done.
That night, I sat on my porch with a glass of cheap merlot. Gus hopped onto the rail and bumped his single eye against my elbow. I scratched his ear, and he rumbled like an old engine. Somewhere down the block, kids were building a tent in their yard, their flashlights bobbing in the dusk. I listened to them until the porch light flickered on, then I went inside and started a new book, one without a bookmark.
