Sublime

Men Explain Things to Me—and

In Paris, Faruq had expounded an idea that marriage could be a kind of romantic limitation, though not the province of romance itself.

She’d always been a little enamored with Stella, orbiting around her like a satellite planet happy to be washed in her light.

mollified,

able to “reobjectify” this man who day-to-day is so familiar.

Luxury is a weakness.

“A lone thirty-two-year-old woman, naked in the local swimming hole. Sounds like a good way to get arrested.”

She wasn’t in Mallard anymore, but somehow, the town wouldn’t leave her.