Manicure

happy mother's day | flash fiction | FRESH MEAT

Manicure

by Maegan Heil

I bit my thumbnail down too short, and underneath, in that curve of pink where you know you’ve gone too far, was the face of a man. I recognized the tiny features immediately: It was Daryl, my ex-boyfriend from high school. He still had that scar along his cheek from the away game against Jefferson and the heart-shaped freckle just beneath his lash-line. He smiled up at me like he’d been waiting there all along.

My lips started to curve back at him, then I remembered the cold pleather seats in the rear of his Honda. “You left me,” I said, covering my chest with my free arm. “For Gina. Gina Masselby.” It was a stupid name. It had been a decade since I’d been able to say it out loud.

Daryl blew a lock of hair off his forehead and dug his teeth into his bottom lip the way he used to do behind the bleachers after he had dumped me but still wanted to get together for sex.

“I want to get back together,” Daryl said.

I had the urge to squeeze him or snip off his nose. The clippers were in the container on the counter. Earlier, my children had flipped it, sending the contents flying. They stood there wide-eyed, waiting for me to yell, which of course, I did. I am the yelling type of mother, turns out. I looked down at Daryl, wondering if I would be the yelling type of mother had I ended up with him.

“I’ve missed you,” Daryl said, and I put my thumb in my mouth to shut him up. I could feel him inside, sticking his little tongue in and out, going nuts with it against mine.

The First Aid Kit was in the linen closet. I wrapped a bandaid around his face, then another over top of that. My husband was in the other room. “Honey?” I walked down the hall, through the dining room to where he was sitting reading a newspaper in the kitchen. The keys were on the hook by the door. “Honey, I’m going out.”

“Where we going?” Daryl said as I started the car. Already he had chewed a hole through both bandaids. “We,” Bits of gravel popped beneath the tires as I put the car in Reverse and backed out of the driveway, “are going nowhere.” I sped down the road and at the stop sign, made the left towards the salon where I sometimes did my toes.

The scar on Daryl’s cheek. The freckle beneath his lashes. What would happen to Daryl, to the real Daryl after I…

I pictured the nail technician and her spinning grinder. Erasing Daryl’s lips, sending chips of his nose flying.

“Daryl is a stupid name,” I heard my mother’s voice say, her tiny eyes peeking out from a few nails down.

---

Hi Lovelies. I miss you. I’m still back here writing. Him-hawing over what stories to put out and whether or not they are even really done. If you are reading this, it means I fell asleep before I could change my mind. I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for reading. And Happy Mother’s Day to the Mothers.

Until we MEAT again,

🥩🥩