Mating for Life by Marissa Stapley

the knot on the rope tethering the front of the boat to the dock.
    Later, after the woman got in her car and waited for Myra to pull the truck out of her way so she could pull out, Myra sat and watched her taillights disappear and, unexpectedly, she felt envious.
    But you could just go, too. If you really wanted to.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Myra had come to Flipper’s for the first time during a girls’ weekend at a nearby cottage with women she didn’t see anymore. These women likely now thought she was crazy. She was probably now a cautionary tale. It all felt like a lifetimeago—and in some ways, she supposed, it had been. In other ways, it hadn’t been at all. Half a life, really. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
    In reality, it had been three years.
    Johnny had been tending the bar that night, mixing them margaritas, or cosmopolitans, or something predictable for a group of women of a certain age, which they were. He’d had a bartender’s guide behind the bar and he’d been magnanimous, happy to serve them whatever they wanted even though they probably all seemed like a bunch of cackling hens to him. Now she knew it was because of the money he was making off of them, but she had thought at the time that perhaps he actually enjoyed his job, enjoyed serving people, and also, just maybe, that he enjoyed being around her, was interested even, in her. When she looked at him, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up over arms that bore a tan that obviously reached the deepest layer of his dermis, the hair golden on top of his skin, she had very badly not wanted him to think she was a cackling hen. She had very badly, when she looked at him, wanted to go somewhere and kiss him. And this was not something that measured and shy Myra was prone to feel or be tempted to do.
    â€œWho is he?” she’d asked her friend Wendy, the one whose family owned the cottage the group of women were staying at for the weekend.
    â€œJohnny Hicks. Nice name, huh? Kind of appropriate, although he is rather delicious in a guy-from-the-sticks way. Very blue-collar. Rumor has it there’s a different woman with him here every few summers. He gets most of them pregnant, they all have boys, and then they all leave.”
    Myra had leaned in, fascinated. “Are you serious? Come on. That can’t really be true.”
    â€œFor real. I don’t even know how many sons he has, but there are lots of them and they all look the same. So do thewomen: pretty and blond.”
    â€œHow many women? How many sons?”
    â€œI told you, no idea. But I think the first woman had two kids before she left.”
    â€œBut why would they all leave?”
    â€œMaybe because they’re bored to tears.”
    Myra looked at Johnny and couldn’t imagine being bored. She was staring at him so hard she barely heard Wendy say, “The winters here are pretty deadly. Depressing. Nothing to do but cross-country ski and listen to the ice crack. And let’s face it, there’s only so much sex you can have, even with a guy like that.”
    Myra proceeded to drink several more cocktails, and later, out on the deck, she kissed Johnny Hicks with her hands clasped up and around the back of his neck. She went back inside after and was convinced none of her friends had ­noticed—but of course they all had, and were talking behind her back with a cruelness borne of jealousy. ( Isn’t she still technically married? What is she thinking? ) Later, she and Johnny snuck outside and kissed again and she ran her hands down his chest, over the softness of his shirt, and Wendy walked outside with two of the other women and they cleared their throats.
    Eventually the women all left and Myra and Johnny went to his place. The boys were sleeping, so he said she needed to be quiet. She whispered things in his ear like, “What did you want to be when you grew up?” and he said things like, “What I am