Page 3 of First Comes Love… Then Denial

“Girl, I’m gonna lose this weight. Been saying it since nineteen-eighty. Maybe by the time I’m in the grave, I’ll have me a flat stomach and looking fly.” She winked at me.

I found myself laughing wholeheartedly. It was the first true laugh in weeks. Or at least that’s how it felt.

“My name is Gloria. What’s yours?” she held out her hand.

“Candice,” I smiled and shook her hand.

“Whatcha in for?”

“Assault with a life preserver.”

“Come again?” Her eyebrow rose and she stared at me as though she had just seen a ghost. “A what? What’s a life preserver?”

“It’s the thing they throw out to a person who is drowning.” My words were soft and filled with embarrassment. Of all the things in the world to go to jail for.

“That little round thing,” Gloria laughed.

“The one and only,” I groaned.

“Honey, that isn’t nothing to be ashamed of. There are far worse things to beat a man… it was a man right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Good. Bastard probably deserved it.”

I was starting to feel lucky to have been locked in the same cell with Gloria. She was full of energy and high spirits. I was pretty sure her happiness came from the alcohol she had consumed prior to being arrested. She reeked of booze.

“What are you in for?” I asked walking over to the bench and taking a seat. Gloria sat beside me.

“I pushed a man.” Gloria shook her head and tsked quietly.

“You’re in here for pushing a man?” It was hard to hide my disgust from her being sent to jail for pushing a man. “What man reported a woman for pushing him?”

“I know right,” she rolled her eyes.

“Gloria, you pushed the man out a window on the sixth floor!” a female bailiff said, walking up to our cell with keys in his hand.

She was an elderly woman. Looked to be older than Gloria so perhaps late-sixties or so. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Wire-rimmed glasses teetered on her narrow nose. The gray uniform she wore was snug against her large curves.

“Why you telling all my business, Miss Sarah?” Gloria chuckled.Miss Sarahlaughed and shook her head.

“Why you only telling half-truths,MissGloria?” Miss Sarah retorted.

“I was getting to the good part of my story. It’s just that you interrupted.”

The two women shared laughs as though they were lifelong friends. It amazed me considering one was an inmate and the other a guard. If they could get along civilized, why couldn’t pea-brain and myself have gotten along?

“We can chitchat more after I get Miss Delaney unprocessed,” Miss Sarah turned to me. I quickly stood up.

“I’m released?” I asked in disbelief. I hadn’t called anyone to have them bail me out. Sitting in jail sounded better than having my ass handed to me by my boss and being fired.

“Yep. Some hunk of a man has come to save the damsel,” she gushed.

“Hunk of a man?”

There wasn’t a single person in my life who I would describe as ahunk of a man.

“Oh, yes.” Miss Sarah fanned herself.

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