Wolf Point by Edward Falco

should know.”
    T said, “I didn’t have sex with Jenny.”
    “Please.” Lester tugged at his blanket. “I got this out of your closet. I walked right past you.”
    “I didn’t have sex with her,” T repeated, and went out into the hallway. He ignored the questioning look on Lester’s face. “I’ll sleep in the back bedroom,” he said. “There’s another bedroom across from the bathroom, if you don’t want to sleep on the couch.”
    Lester picked up the guitar case. “I don’t mind couches. Spent half my life sleeping on couches.”
    T looked past him out the kitchen window. The moon had moved out of sight, but he could still see its light reflecting on the river. “Well…” he said, and he started down the hallway. Behind him, he heard Lester take a few steps out of the kitchen, and when he turned around to close the bedroomdoor, he saw him standing in the hallway, looking back at him, a long-haired young man draped in a green blanket, holding what he claimed was a red guitar.
    He stood silently a while in the dark with his ear close to the door, and after the house was silent for several minutes, the only sounds the wind and an occasional loud pop from the burning logs, he undressed in the dark down to his underwear and undershirt, laid his clothes on top of the room’s single dresser, and climbed into bed under a weighty comforter and yet another of the plentiful green blankets. He lay on his back, bent the pillow in half to prop his head up higher, and folded his hands over his chest. He was tired, and he could tell it wouldn’t take him long to fall asleep. He let his thoughts slip back to Jenny fixing her hair in the moonlit bathroom, and then to Jenny again as she came through the bedroom door holding a towel around her, and then the moment when she let the towel drop before settling under the quilt with him. He tried to hold those moments in his mind’s eye for as long as he could, until he felt himself sinking toward sleep with the image of Jenny’s body floating over him, the flawless lines and curves of her torso and belly, the perfect weight of her breasts, and as he was imagining her, remaking her image out of memory and desire, the real Jenny pushed open the bedroom door trailing the white quilt over her shoulder and stood there panicky for a moment. “T?” she said. “T? Where are you?”
    T sat up in bed, shaking off sleep, and before he could say a word Jenny hurried under the covers with him. She was sobbing. Her face was so wet with tears that his undershirt soakedthrough as soon as she laid her head upon his chest. “Don’t leave me like that,” she whispered, and he felt her whole body shake with sobs and quiver like a child’s with quick, convulsive gasps.
    He put an arm around her back. He smoothed her hair. “How long have you been crying?” he asked.
    Between sobs, she answered, “I cry at night sometimes,” and then, “I wake up crying.” She pressed her body against his so hard and insistent it was as if she were trying to crawl inside him.
    “It’s okay,” he said. He held the back of her head in the palm of his hand. “It’s okay,” he repeated, and he felt her body loosen slightly in his arms while her sobs diminished, slowly changing to deep and rhythmic breathing as she bit by bit relaxed in his arms.

. 2 .
    Tawoke to the low rumble of thunder and the patter of rain against the bedroom window. He opened his eyes to morning light that seeped into the room through dusty, rose-colored blinds, giving the floorboards and single dresser and narrow bed a somber, rose-tinged aura. Alongside him, Jenny slept peacefully on her side, facing the closed bedroom door with the comforter pulled up to her neck so that all T could see of her was a bright blond profusion of hair spilling over the pillow and the shape of her body curled in an S under the quilt. He folded his pillow to prop up his head, lay on his back with his hands clasped over his chest, and watched