Cross-Smith - Every Kiss a War

Copyright 2014 Leesa Cross-Smith

Thank you more than I can say to Michael Dwayne Smith and Mojave River Press for believing in me, these stories, and for being a sublime editor and friend. Thank you to all the editors and friends who helped this little book along, read my work, published my stories, and encouraged me to keep on keeping on. Extra-special thanks to one of my dearest friends and first readers, Sarah Jarboe, for everything, but also for reading all of my stories, all of the time. Special thanks to Christian Cline, Elisabeth Cox, Justin Daugherty, Jeremy Okai Davis, Sean H. Doyle, Kathy Fish, Samantha Garner, Lindsey Gates-Markel, Roxane Gay, Stephanie Graf, Ashley Inguanta, Sarah Lynn Knowles, Marisa Leong, Matthew Limpede, Sarah Mimnaugh, Kevin OCuinn, Troy Palmer, Corina Rangel, Robert James Russell, Chad Simpson, Kristin van Namen and Teri Vlassopoulos. Thank you to my parents, Winfried and Jennifer, and my brother, WC, for support, love and laughter, always. And most of all thanks to my sweet and kind husband, Loran, and our children for being so good to me, for your patience, for making me tea and coffee and dinner so I can write, for a deep abiding love matched only by my Maker.

Cover painting by Jeremy Okai Davis

Book design by Michael Dwayne Smith

Published by MOJAVE RIVER PRESS

An imprint of Mojave River Media, Inc.

7516 SVL, Victorville, CA 92395

MojaveRiverPress.com / MojaveRiverMedia.com

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-63120-002-1

eISBN: 9781631200038

For Loran and my little family.

Everything and always.

Praise for EVERY KISS A WAR

Leesa Cross-Smith is a consummate storyteller who uses her for-midable talents to tell the oft-overlooked stories of people living in that great swath of place between the left and right coasts. She offers thrilling turns of phrase like, His mouth tasted like thousand-page Russian novels Id never read, or let your smeary mouth be his question mark. Where she is most stunning is in the endings of each of the 27 stories in Every Kiss a War, creating crisp, evocative moments that will linger long after youve read this books very last word.

ROXANE GAY, author of An Untamed State

Read the stories Leesa Cross-Smith has made for us here and remember the cheap beer & the old songs & fireworks & cowboys & ice clinky frontier whiskey & kisses that feel like tiny wars. Remember these things as if they happened to you because they did. Her writing is exquisite and fearless, exposed and bleeding onto the page. Every story without exception is smart, gentle, heartbreaking, and most importantly, real.

KATHY FISH, author of Together We Can Bury It

The stories in Every Kiss a War read like roaring hymns sung from some whiskey-fueled revival in the Kentucky woods. Leesa Cross-Smith sermonizes from dusty pages, bottle in hand, calling out her words to the gathered revelers from a bar stool pulpit. Gather round. Turn on an old-timey jukebox and let the country fill you. Listen, put a shot of bourbon to your lips, and drink down your salvation as Leesa shows you the way.

JUSTIN L. DAUGHERTY, author of Whatever Dont

Drown Will Always Rise

More praise for EVERY KISS A WAR

In the stories that make up Every Kiss a War, Leesa Cross-Smith deftly finds love in the sadness and light in the sorrow. These stories will burrow their way into your heart and head, taking their rightful place beside the love songs youve had on repeat for years.

TROY PALMER, editor of Little Fiction

Leesa Cross-Smith is a sorceress. Out of pop songs and humid Kentucky nights, out of big belt buckles and back-road drives, Cross-Smith conjures stories filled with sentences that dazzle and characters who yearn with their whole broken hearts. Every Kiss a War is a remarkable debut collection by a writer whose words Id follow down any starlit gravel road.

CHAD SIMPSON, author of Tell Everyone I Said Hi

Leesa Cross-Smiths Every Kiss A War is an emotional battlefield, a perfectly written anatomy of the human conditionthe good, the bad, the quiet moments that define our relationshipsthat you cant help but pick yourself out in the pages, cant help but be pulled into her sumptuous writing, her words becoming your favorite quilt to cover you from the cold.

ROBERT JAMES RUSSELL, author of Sea of Trees

Leesa Cross-Smiths stories are some of the most intimate Ive ever read. Her words delve not only into the minds of her characters, but into their deepest, most specific wounds. These are tales of strength despite fragility, of beauty despite darkness, of laughter despite immense hurt. I truly cant wait for the world to fall in love with these characters, as I have. Mark my words: Leesa Cross-Smith is a writer to watch.

SARAH LYNN KNOWLES, founder of Storychord.com

Skee Ball, Indiana

We got lost every time we crossed the Ohio. I said it was because they had different kinds of highways in Indiana. Highways, beginning and ending out of nowhere. The roads turn into highways and the highways turn into roads! Suddenly! They do! I said, taking my hands off of the wheel so I could wiggle them all around. My cheap, thin bracelets jingled down my wrists.

Thats not the reason, Rory. Its because youre a dumbass, Deladis said, smiling and patting me on my bare brown thigh. We were on the right road now, driving and driving through the grey and green. Two Kentucky girls in a little black hand-me-down five-speed Honda hatchback. We were listening to the BFF mix wed made specifically for the drive over. It started with Rihanna, had some Justin Timberlake, Heartless Bastards and Vampire Weekend in the middle and ended with Beyonc, The Avett Brothers and Taylor Swift. I turned the volume down.

Aw, be nice to me. I just had an abortion, I said. I stuck my bottom lip out, made my eyes all big.

That was like, six months ago. You cant use that anymore.

I can use it for as long as I want, I said.

Shut up. I love you, Deladis said back. She offered me the last puff of her nasty little bidi cigarette and tossed it when I shook my head no.

My mom signed for it, but still kicked me out for having an abortion. She promised to let me move back in when I learned my lesson but I didnt know which lesson I was supposed to be learning. And when I asked her, she threw her favorite Fiestaware cereal bowl on the floor and left the water running as she cleaned it up.

I was sobbing when I went to my bedroom to pack up my stuff, broken sounds escaping my mouth. Now I was living with my best friend, Deladis Carpenter, and her mom, Jo; the three of us sharing clothes and makeup like sisters. My mom had me when she was seventeen, Deladis said when I revealed I was pregnant. I hadnt known if Deladis meant it as encouragement or not. I didnt ask. When Tom Petty sang about Indiana girls on them Indiana nights in Mary Janes Last Dance, I always thought he was probably singing about seventeen-year-old Jo Carpenter with her long, bony legs and her foxy red hair. Jo Carpenter, stuck to my heart like a temporary mom tattoo.

I dont want to be a mom when Im seventeen, I told Brent. He wasnt my boyfriend when he got me pregnant, he wasnt my anything. We made out sometimes and one time we had sex at his friends Halloween party. Every boy came as a food. Brent was a piece of pizza. I was Pippi Long-stocking with stripey tights, wire in my braids and little curly ribbons tied on the end of them. Deladis and I were dressed the same; she hooked up with a carrot.