We’ve just indulged in Lebanese—lamb, chicken, chocolate mousse we devoured with small spoons—and we’re almost leg to leg, sipping cocktails in a candlelit lounge. I’m adoring the monocled rabbits and gentlemen giraffes, oval-framed, and when we talk about dream home aesthetics I tell him I converted my master post-divorce into a pole studio with sconces, mirrors, a tufted velvet couch. Now he’s holding my phone, witnessing me dance, and he’s not smiling but his chest is moving, in and out, in and out, heavy breaths as I lean back, swallow more gin, contemplate old habits and whether to break them.
Fall Contest 2024 “Flirt” Finalist! Michelle La Vone is a Nashville native who loves writing creative nonfiction. In her spare time, she designs stickers for her small business, doodlemaus. Of “Whisky & Flames,” our Contest Readers said: “brilliant write, solid evocative specific details” and “skillful use of white space, we are left also breathless, brilliant.”