A Bird Without Wings

Speaking of which, about assuming you had a condom—I just meant that you, with your experience, would be prepared for responsible sex, even if it were on the fly. An intelligent man is prepared for spontaneity.

. . . I suppose one starts out, as a child, being romantic and dreaming of adventure. Poetic. Then reality comes along, and with it, a whole lot of prose.

Didn’t being out in the storm scare you?” “Try a couple of high-summer prairie storms in a trailer,” she mused. “That either makes you terrified of them or indifferent to them.

My fantasy was that I was the long-lost switched-at-birth child of wealthy eccentrics. One day, they would find me and take me away from the gypsy caravan that was my life, and give me hot meals, a decent dress, and a pony.

Yes, he scorned his family’s decadent ways, but perhaps that wasn’t so much about the money per se, but rather the wastefulness of it; the lack of energy and drive it represented, as if the Ransomes were—like that postmodern throng of the famous-for-being-famous set—some odd collection of spoiled Emperor-brats walking a red carpet without any discernible talent to clothe them. The things the Ransomes—and their once-large fortune—could have accomplished . . . they could have changed the world, or at least impacted it in positive ways.

The frizzy and dowdy was because I had let little things in my life slide. The stuttering was because I was nervous around you.” “Why aren't you now?” “I don't have a crush on you anymore,” she retorted. Silence.

She deserved some real breaks in her life. And he intended on giving her every one he could. Even if she stole his lunch again. With a grin, he sat down to work.