Amends: A Love Story by E.J. Swenson

Jody.
    Ethan puts a heavy, proprietary hand on my
neck and addresses the bear. "Did you know this kid's a virgin? A
stripper-virgin, can you believe that shit? The Kat Club's own holy
fucking Mary."
    "Ethan," I say, searching his face for signs
of the witty man-boy I once found so compelling. "You have a
fiancée. Go home. Be with her."
    "Yes, I have a fiancée. A wonderful fiancée.
But I also miss my friend. What the fuck happened to you?"
    As Jody and the bouncer—a two hundred-fifty
pound slab of tattooed meat named Alfredo—close in on Ethan, I
murmur, "I grew up."

    /////////////////////////

    Are you sure you don't need
a ride home? texts Gran.
    No thanks. I reply. I'm taking a cab
to Maggie's place for a late night goodbye gathering.
    Be safe! she writes.
    I tuck my phone into my bag. I'm already in
the back of a taxi. According to Maggie, Ethan is sleeping it off
at his fiancée's apartment. I have nothing to worry about
stalker-wise—at least for tonight.
    At last, the cabbie drops me at Maggie's
crumbling rental on Lake Everclear. Summer is ending, and
everyone—at least, everyone with a future—is preparing to leave
Triple Marsh. Miss Maggie herself will be heading to New York City
in just a few days. She's majoring in film, and she's already
cobbled together funding to shoot a pilot based on something she
wrote for class.
    I climb four flights of stairs and slap away
clouds of mosquitoes that seem to be breeding in the stairwell.
Maggie's door is ajar, and the sounds of a small, happy party reach
me at the end of the hallway. When I enter her apartment, I find
her holding court in the kitchen, wearing a green velvet cocktail
dress. She's the lovely, vibrant center of about ten gorgeous men
between the ages of twenty and forty. Her living room is full of
couples and pseudo-couples, reclining on cushions and kissing.
    This is one of my last nights in Triple Marsh
for the foreseeable future. I tell myself I should have fun. I
glance at the happy couples and consider peeling off one of
Maggie's incredible specimens for a random make out session. No, I
think, my heart just isn't in it. It's three a.m., and all I can
think about is how, in just a few days, I'm going to be more than a
thousand miles from my parents' graves.
    I brace myself to spend at least an hour
going through the social motions—happy get-to-know-you chatter,
catching up with Maggie, introductions to her growing circle of
friends—when it occurs to me that no one actually noticed me walk
in.
    Slowly and carefully, I leave the party and
creep back down the stairs. I look up directions to Forever Acres
and see that's it's only a mile away. I decide to walk it. The cab
to Maggie's has already put me twenty bucks into the hole.

    /////////////////////////

    A mile on pavement is a shockingly long
distance in stripper heels. I can feel the vinyl rubbing against by
skin with every step. But I keep at it, and soon I'm rewarded with
a familiar sight—the arched entrance to Forever Acres.
    I pass through the entryway undisturbed. The
guard who mans the kiosk—he must be at least seventy—is snoring
lightly. By the bright light of the waxing moon, I make my way to
my parents' graves. I haven't been here for at least a month, but I
still have that strange feeling of expectation, as if something
special—or something life changing—is going to happen to me
here.
    I know this feeling is ridiculous. It's all
because of that guy I met here almost three years ago, right after
my parents died. I remember him telling me that he'd lost his mom
to ovarian cancer. I also remember how he sobbed on my shoulder,
and how I ached with sympathy and understanding.
    But instead of talking with him at any length
or even getting his last name so I could find him on Facebook, I
ran away. I guess it was because I'd just started stripping, and I
felt strangely unworthy. Laird—I think that was his name—had seemed
so solid and wholesome. Anything I could have told him